Katherine Nabity's Blog, page 219
December 16, 2013
It’s Monday! What am I Reading? (12/16/2013)
Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between! This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!
Happy Monday Everyone!
Working through a couple overdue ARCs this week:
I’m 10%-ish through both of these at the moment and enjoying them.
Next up (probably):
December 15, 2013
Review ~ Ghosts at Christmas by Darren W. Ritson
Featuring eyewitness accounts, a unique history of how Christmas came to be associated with ghosts, spirits and apparitions of all kinds
From Charles Dickens’ famous A Christmas Carol to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, the festive season has long been closely associated with ghostly tales. This fascinating work looks not only at the fictional treatment of Christmas ghosts but also at a host of true-life stories from across the country. Featuring accounts of unexplained phenomena, apparitions, and poltergeists from across the country, and including the stories of Christmas Eve Kitty in Blackpool, the Carlisle Devil Dog, the ghost children of Bramber Castle, and the skulls of Calgarth Hall this book is will delight anyone interested in the paranormal. Drawing on historical and contemporary sources and illustrated with over 70 images, this collection of spine-chilling tales will entertain and terrify in equal measure and is guaranteed to spice up the festive season. (via Goodreads)
I abandoned this book after about 19 pages.
The book starts with Darren Ritson trying to academically answer the question of why ghosts compliment Christmas so well. He gives it a go citing Dickens and pagan roots and mixing in pop culture references including Home Alone and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which don’t have much (anything) to do with ghosts. The volume is also padded out with some Christmas quotes at the beginning, which again have little to do with the ghosts.
Ritson is a ghost hunter and the rest of the book is a sampling of ghost tales from around England that occur in December-ish. None of the tales I read were particularly interesting or presented in a creative manner. I lost patience when I encountered as tale introduced as originating from William T. Stead’s 1891 volume Real Ghost Stories. I have no problem with a good story being repeated, but it felt like anachronisms had crept into Ritson’s re-telling. For exmple, were phones so common in 1891 that a employee might call in sick? This made me curious so I tracked down a copy of Real Ghost Stories. The internet is wonderful place and two minutes on Amazon reaped the public domain volume. Stead’s telling of the same story is leaner in prose, lacking all the details that seemed false. Worse, Ritson seems to miss a key point in the story, overlooking a chilling piece of dialogue. And, at that point, I didn’t see much point in continuing on with Mr. Ritson and his Ghosts at Christmas.
Genre: Christmas horror
Why did I choose to read this book? Christmas horror, maybe a nonfiction slant.
Did I finish this book? (If not, why?) No. Boring and tamed.
Format: OverDrive Read
Procurement: Greater Phoenix Digital Library
December 10, 2013
Review ~ The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1
From hitRECord, the immensely popular open collaborative production company, and its founder, Golden Globe-nominated actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, comes The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1.
The universe is not made of atoms; it’s made of tiny stories.
To create The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, known within the hitRECord community as RegularJOE–directed thousands of collaborators to tell tiny stories through words and art. With the help of the entire creative collective, Gordon-Levitt culled, edited and curated over 8,500 contributions into this finely tuned collection of original art from 67 contributors. Reminiscent of the 6-Word Memoir series, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 brings together art and voices from around the world to unite and tell stories that defy size (via Goodreads)
I nabbed this little volume at San Diego ComicCon. I’ll be honest, I purchased it to get at a free Sherlock tote, but the book honestly intrigued me. It was different, small and red and hardback, in a world of door stoppers, overpriced paperbacks, and electronic files. Previous to it, I had no idea about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and HitRECord, though it doesn’t surprise me. Gordon-Leavitt seems to be the type to parley his fame into projects he wants to do. (I imagine his continued career will be a bit like Clint Eastwood’s–does what he likes and, generally, you’ll like it too.)
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories is what it says on the tin. Slim and smaller than a mass market paperback, the stories are very short, just a few evocative sentences at most, and quirkily illustrated. You can consume this book all at once, or maybe just nibble at a time, but you can definitely come back for seconds.
There are two other volumes which I haven’t read yet. And they’re stocking-stuffer sized!
Genre: Super Short Stories
Why did I choose to read this book? Intrigued
Did I finish this book? (If not, why?) Yes
Format: Hardback
Procurement: Booth at ComicCon
December 9, 2013
Book Tree!
My old, fake tree is pretty tattered. Until I nab a good half-off tree after Christmas, a book tree will have to do. Featuring lots of Robert Jordan, George Sand, TE Lawrence, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.
MODEL SPECIES
Book #1 of The Apothic Man
In Kenos, the c...
Book #1 of The Apothic Man
In Kenos, the city of enlightenment and innovation, a body with bizarre wounds is fished from the bay.
On the case are a middling apothynom, Investigator Paulos Gaent, and a religious objector to apothynom rule, Clerk Teria Bellaphaerenous. At cross purposes, a private investigator, Laros Nero, is hired by an anonymous client to discover the identity of the murderer for reasons other than justice.
It will take more than keen investigative abilities to stop the ongoing series of crimes in Kenos. It will require the unearthing of dark apothic knowledge that has been buried for an age.
Model Species is available for FREE from Smashwords (no log-in required).
Learn more about Weordan, the setting of the Apothic Man series.
WEORDAN
Weordan is a world of apothos.
The chemistry of glowing yellow blood sustains life and drives technology. Apothos is a personal technology practiced by apothynom, talented men and women who train their whole lives to build their metabolic capacity and hone their skill at directing that energy in novel ways. They construct apothic machines called emetanisms, mostly as tools to enhance their personal apothic capacity, but also to perform simple tasks in place of apothic effort.
End of the Year 2013 #ReadingCram
Hosted by DanaSquare or Juliababyjen’s Reading Room
End of the Year 2013 #ReadingCram Read-a-thon December 9th – 22nd
If you are anything like me you have a huge stack (or even bookcases) full of book you haven’t read. Did you have a goal for how many books you wanted to read during the year? Are you behind like I am?
Then this is the perfect time to read as much as you can before the new year!
GOAL
Yeah, I’m an oak. The only readathons I don’t take part in are the ones I don’t know about. I managed 400 pages during DDD, so I’m going to shoot for 900 before the 22nd.
TBR PILE
The kick-off, hosted By Jen @JuliababyJen’s ReadingRoom, is the TBR Challenge: “All you need to do is to create a TBR list for the read-a-thon!”
In Progress
In Progress
That’s my tentative TBR list for the next couple weeks, but I don’t keep to lists very well.
PROGRESS
NOTES & CHALLENGES
Day 2:
Teaser Challenge, hosted by Book Loving Hippo: “Open the current book you are reading to a random page and post 2 sentences.”
From Death from a Top Hat:
pg. 95 – There would have to be an interruption at a spot like that!
pg. 211 – “That last crack, Inspector,” Merlini objected, “was the unkindest cut of all.”
Day 1:
Decent day of reading. Went out to dinner and put up my “Christmas tree.” Death from a Top Hat might be the first hard-boiled 30′s mystery I’ve read. I’m not sure I’m a fan of the style.
December 7, 2013
Review ~ Christmas Tales of Terror
From malevolent snowmen to Father Christmas – with a difference … Chris Priestley is on absolute top form in these atmospheric, clever and thoroughly chilling stories. Add a new kind of thrill to the fluffiest of seasons with seven brilliantly conceived examples of why you’d better be good at Christmas time. For stories which can be enjoyed by the whole family, unwrap these perfectly formed festive tales of terror, each with a gripping yarn and genius twist.Singing carols may never seem quite the same again … especially after dark. (via Goodreads)
One distinct disadvantage of digital books is that it’s hard to immediately tell what you have. This anthology was much shorter than I expected. Seven stories, the longest at 16 pages long and the shortest half that. While these stories are geared toward a younger audience, I think that most of them didn’t need to be as short as they were. There were occasions when background information was introduced in an “oh-by-the-way” matter and I wished that the story had simply been told from the beginning. They weren’t being served narratively by their starting point anyway. I think a young audience could deal with the increased length and the increase in tension.
Conversely, the best of this collection were the shorter stories that were simply told:
“Frost” – A young artist sketches out the cold fate of a rich man that ill-used him.
“In the Bleak Midwinter” – A group of almost charitable choir boys learn why you should never sing in a graveyard.
“Soot” – Two little girls discover that it isn’t Father Christmas coming down the chimney.
Genre: Horror
Why did I choose to read this book? Looking for genre Christmas books
Did I finish this book? (If not, why?) Yes
Craft Lessons: Stories. It’s okay to tell them from beginning to end.
Format: OverDrive Read
Procurement: Greater Phoenix Digital Library
December 6, 2013
Dreamy December Days Challenge 6
The name of today’s challenge is Dreamy Characters. In this challenge you will all share the characters from books that you really love. It could be a character that you’re madly in love with (i.e. book boyfriend), or characters that you find funny or someone you want to be. Including pictures would be great too!
Sherlock Holmes has been my book boyfriend ever since I saw this illustration by Sidney Paget in one of my library book when I was binging on Holmes in grade school. During the summer my parents had a basement dug for their house, I stayed inside, out of the way of the workman, and plowed through all the Holmes there was. The hawk-nose, the long fingers, the air of someone in contemplation. I would have done anything to be Watson.
Reviews ~ Spore & Whom the Gods Would Destroy (dual review)
(Whom the Gods Would Destroy was provided to me by DarkFuse via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)
Dual review for these two novellas.
Spore by Alex Scarrow
In a small town in the Nevada desert, an alien pathogen has reduced the entire population to a seething mass of black slime. When the Eighth Doctor arrives, he realises this latest threat to humanity is horrifyingly familiar – it is a virus which almost annihilated his entire race, the Time Lords…
Eleven Doctors, eleven months, eleven stories: a year-long celebration of Doctor Who! The most exciting names in children’s fiction each create their own unique adventure about the time-travelling Time Lord.(via Goodreads)
Whom the Gods Would Destroy by Brian Hodge
“Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from godhood.”
For Damien, growing up was all about being an outsider in his own home. His mother and brother shared an unfathomable bond that left him excluded from their lives. Yet his earliest, fragmentary memory of them was so nightmarish, their lives were something he ran from as soon as he could.
Now an astronomy graduate student in Seattle, Damien is happy with his place as a speck in a cosmos vast beyond comprehension. Until his brother turns up after 13 years, to make amends and seek his expertise on a discovery that may not be of this Earth. The more the world expands to admit the possibilities of a universe stranger than even Damien has imagined, the greater is his urgency to resist being reclaimed by a past that never seemed to want him…until now.
Like a collision of galaxies between H.P. Lovecraft and Carl Sagan, Whom the Gods Would Destroy looks to the night skies as the source of our greatest wonder, and finds them swarming with our worst fears. (via NetGalley)
I wouldn’t have suspected that a short novella for young people and longer, darker novella meant for an adult audience had much in common. Sure, both are science fiction of a sort, but one is Doctor Who and the other invokes Lovecraft. They are surprising bedfellows.
While Spore is part of the 50th Anniversary collection of short works written presumably for young people, its characters are adults and it pulls no punches. One of my favorite aspects of Doctor Who is that, while it purports to be science fiction and is commonly fantasy, it’s also quite often horror. As reputation dictates, kids don’t hide behind the couch while watching Doctor Who for no reason. Thrills should be part of childhood and Spore delivers. The spore, as it liquifies people and gathers itself into more complex forms, is pretty squicky. Its impetus is to test the intelligence of the foremost native species on a planet and, if the species is found wanting, wipe the planet clean for its own colonization. I haven’t read much Doctor Who fiction, but this is the best written of the lot thus far.
Whom the Gods Would Destroy is also a story of colonization. In both cases, von Neumann probes are referenced, but with a twist. In both cases, the self-replicating “spaceship” is of biological nature. Whom the Gods… is an incredibly dark tale. There is no Doctor to rescue the world, only a graduate student whose own family history can shed light on what’s occurring, but can not stop it. It’s a more personal tale and it *is* a more unsettling tale. Hodge plays with the notion of evil versus amorality. If an advanced enough intelligence seems like a god to us humans, what do we seem like to it? Not a pleasant concept to contemplate. Hodge’s writing is tight and suspenseful with the right amount of jolts.
Whom the Gods Would Destroy will be available from DarkFuse on December 10, 2013.
December 3, 2013
Review ~ The Turk
On an autumn day in 1769, a Hungarian nobleman named Wolfgang von Kempelen attended a conjuring show at the court of Maria Theresa, empress of Austria-Hungary. So unimpressed was Kempelen by the performance that he declared he could do better himself. Maria Theresa held him to his word and gave him six months to prepare a show of his own. Kempelen did not disappoint; he returned to the court the following spring with a mechanical man, fashioned from wood, powered by clockwork, dressed in a stylish Turkish costume—and capable of playing chess.
The Turk, as this contraption became known, was an instant success, and Tom Standage’s book chronicles its illustrious career in Europe and America over the next eighty five years. Associated over time with a host of historical figures, including Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Babbage, and Edgar Allan Poe, Kempelen’s creation unwittingly also helped to inspire the development of the power loom, the computer, and the detective story. Everywhere it went, the Turk baffled spectators and provoked frenzied speculation about whether a machine could really think. Many rival theories were published, but they served only to undermine each other. (via Goodreads)
Sometimes, I lose track of history. What existed when, for instance. I think of the age of machines and steam to be the 1830s-ish forward when in reality the beginnings of that technology stretches back at least 50 years. Rather sophisticated automata, for example, date back to the 8th century, though they really didn’t come into their own until a certain amount of miniaturization of parts was achieved. I picked up The Turk in order to learn some of the history behind the early 20th century devices I’ve been reading about; notably, Joseffy’s mechanical rabbit and duck.
The chess-playing Turk was an automaton illusion that premiered in 1770. It was a sensation. A machine that could think? Inconceivable! This is a concept that still causes a stir today.
One of the things that struck me while reading The Turk is how relatively slowly technology moved from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s. Many of the concepts behind industrialization were in place, but it seems that the social climate wasn’t right. Royal patrons sometimes favored entertainments over useful devices. Von Kempelen benefited from the Turk’s publicity, but also distinctly felt its shadow. He died poor when patronage was withdrawn.
The Turk outlived von Kempelen, but with help. The automaton was not a solo act. He required a stage manager with a certain amount of talent to present him properly and keep his mystique alive. Skepticism and theories followed the Turk and none ever correctly described his secrets. And, none ever really tarnished the Turk’s reputation. It’s that complicit willingness to be fooled that makes magic interesting.
Tom Standage does a great job introducing us to von Kempelen, the Turk, Maelzel, and the other men and women involved in this story. There were many myths to sift through, most of them perpetrated by the Turk’s PR machine. I’m not terribly knowledgeable of mechanical engineering and only passingly familar with chess tactics, but The Turk is incredibly readable. It’s a good story and Standage presents it in an easy and entertaining way.
Genre: Non-fiction
Why did I choose to read this book? Looking for mechanical duck info. Ducks are awesome.
Did I finish this book? (If not, why?) Yes, and quickly too.
Format: Hardback
Procurement: Tempe Public Library
Bookmark: Checkout slip.
