Mount TBR 2016 discussion
Level 5: Mt. Kilimanjaro (60)
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Fay's push to clear the shelves
Laura wrote: "Fay wrote: "21) Love in the Time of Cholera - another successful buddy read. We is getting smarter all the time :-)"Yay, Smarts!!! :D"
;-)
Jessika wrote: "Fay wrote: "21) Love in the Time of Cholera - another successful buddy read. We is getting smarter all the time :-)"Nice job! I'm trying to talk myself into starting [book:One Hundred..."
Oh me too. We went for this one because it was shorter.... He/the translator has a beautiful turn of phrase and the characters were wonderfully flawed. I will definitely go for this author again when I get brain rot from all my Nora Robert's and YA.
Oliver Twist starts today because we both hate Dickens and feel we should make an effort (don't shoot us :-) )
22) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.Obs not my first read of this title (I'm an avid reader who doesn't live under a rock. But first time illustrated and read out loud to the children :-) wonderful to share with them,
21) Oliver Twist - another buddy read and great to clear off the shelves :-)
23) The Pillars of the Earth Another buddy read and a long one in a hectic period of my life. Completely slowed down with this but still only have one more to go! Whoop!
How did your kids like Harry Potter?Oh, I love the Mallory Towers series, such comfy reads!
... just one book to go for the next peak ...
hey Sam. Sorry I didn't reply, life has taken over the last few months. The illustrated Harry Potter was amazing for me and the kids to share together. I can't wait for Chamber of Secrets.
24) The Night Ferry by Michael Rothbourn. And that's peak reached - yay!
So how do I move my thread to the next leak folder?
28) The Iliad by Homer (1616 translation)
29) The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick
@Jessika. Thanks. I slowed right down when I had some personal issues but am back on track now :-) How's yours going, I can't find your thread.....
30) Last Term at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton
Fay wrote: "33) Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer" I enjoyed reading the Artemis Fowl books with my son several years ago. Good memories. :)
@Laura I really enjoy the humour in it. Did you read any of the rest? My friend and I were wondering if they "aged" like the Harry Potter series
34) Every Last One by Anna Quindlan (I highly recommend this one)
Fay wrote: "@Laura I really enjoy the humour in it. Did you read any of the rest? My friend and I were wondering if they "aged" like the Harry Potter series"I recall reading 3 of the books but I don't really remember Artemis aging much. My son and I read them about 10 years ago and enjoyed Artemis' creative, independent, take-charge personality. Neither of us had the patience to solve the code in the margins.
Laura wrote: "Fay wrote: "@Laura I really enjoy the humour in it. Did you read any of the rest? My friend and I were wondering if they "aged" like the Harry Potter series"I recall reading 3 of the books but I ..."
Thanks, I will probably wait and leave them as a bedtime book with my son then :-)
Thanks guys. It's going slower than I thought because people keep giving and lending me new stuff lol
Fay wrote: "36) The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair And that's the mountain conquered :-) Moving on up!"Congrats!
Kendyle wrote: "Fay wrote: "37) Ringworld"Did you like it? I have a copy of this on my shelves."
It was OK. The story was intriguing - a real grown up's adventure, but the writing style was a little clunky. Also, it is old so there are some dated ideas about women and sex but I don't get offended by it and it wasn't too bad. I liked it enough to consider reading the next one (which is also on the tbr list lol)
Leslie wrote: "Fay wrote: "36) The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair And that's the mountain conquered :-) Moving on up!"Congrats!"
Thank you, how is yours going?
39) My Blood Approves. This has been kicking around on my kindle since 2009, when the book was self-published and free. As an adult reader I've got to admit that it probably wasn't the greatest book I've ever read. However, I am pleased that in the intervening years the series has been picked up and is now available in various formats through a publisher. Inevitable comparisons will be made between The Vampire Diaries and Twilight and in my humble opinion Hocking compares favorably on various points to both. I'm really pleased that it got picked up and the author is getting some of the recognition she deserves.Hocking's writing style is much more readable than Smith's (The Vampire Diaries; although I did love her as a teen). It's clearer, more cohesive and she manages to really capture the essence of a teenager's life. Like Smith's protagonist, and unlike Meyer's Bella Swan (Twight), Alice isn't a straight laced, good girl, who is rewarded for her virtue. I liked this refreshing change. Alice also isn't as hard assed as many other YA heroines, she has emotional outbursts of tears and often is confused and conflicted. This made her seem very real and very relatable compared to a lot of 2D YA heroines.
Plot wise there are some new twists on the genre and mythology of vampires, which were refreshing. They don't sparkle and Hocking answered that question that a lot of adult YA readers end up asking "how on earth would a 'person' of advanced maturity and knowledge with unlimited wealth and power have a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with a teenager?" (read to find out Hocking's clever way around this.) The book also didn't focus on the romance between a human and a vampire in gushing terms. The vampires in the book also don't go crazy protective, jealous, and border line abusive towards the human protagonist.
The plot is good, if not a little predictable, but it's a solid start to a series in this genre. If I was a little younger I'd probably gulp up the rest of the series but as a adult who's been reading in and around this genre for years I've got to admit that it was missing that certain something that had me reaching for the next Twilight or Vampire Academy book over and over (if anyone ever finds out what that is please let me know because as soon as I'd finished them I had this "what trash have I just filled my mind with and why, oh why, did I do it?" moment, kind of like when you've overdone the Pringles).
If you're a teenager looking for your next paranormal fix I urge this upon you as a well written, relatable, tale that will capture your imagination.
Fay wrote: "what trash have I just filled my mind with and why, oh why, did I do it?" moment, kind of like when you've overdone the Pringles)"Love it! Where's a meme when you need one, right?
Laura wrote: "Fay wrote: "what trash have I just filled my mind with and why, oh why, did I do it?" moment, kind of like when you've overdone the Pringles)"Love it! Where's a meme when you need one, right?"
Haha, I will have to find one :-)
41) The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
42) Born of Night This was just plain dire. It read like a 1980's romance novel (apart from the sex scenes). No sense of character or character development, no building of an actual relationship between the protagonists, and overly simplistic language. The world building was poor at best and over complicated. At the end of the novel there was still no real idea of what The League really was. And the male lead's back story was just a complete mess and massively over complicated and unbelievable. I hope I don'r cave and try another in the series but I'm a sucker for seeing things through to the end.
43) The Slap This book had been kicking around on my Kindle since 2010 when family and friends started urging me to read it and I'm kind of disappointed that I held off so long. I was entranced from the start by the novel eagerly turning pages and devouring a whole chunk of one character in a sitting. Each section is told in the third person from the POV of a host of inter connected people of all different races, ages, and income brackets. I was impressed with Tsiolkas' ability to tap into the psyche of each character regardless of age or gender and I loved the way the inner monologue of each person gave a gritty and witty social commentary on today's society, touching on and succinctly encapsulating a variety of issues from parenting, lost youth, infidelity, and drug taking. For myself I found that this was a novel about the self and how you may age and you may curb certain impulses but the person inside never really changes. There is a message in there about the boredom and lost dreams of life but ultimately I found the novel up-lifting in the way that it reminded me that ultimately we all feel at times the dissatisfaction of our lives but we all continue living and doing the best we can. I knew the book had been nominated for and won prizes and I had enjoyed it so much that I was surprised when I updated my reading status and saw such a low average reader rating. What makes this so powerful for me and yet not for others?Well firstly I guess it's because it straddles that fine line between "prize worthy" and "accessible". It's not as stylized, flowery or philosophical as a lot of the prize winners and the subject matter not as grand. Tsiolkas' clear style and accessible language and thought processes immediately loses the literary crowd. However, it's inter changing view points and the fact that you are forced to form opinions on a variety of tender issues a lot of the time moves it out of the popular genre readers pile.
It's littered with profanity losing the purists again and also the popular genre readers but it wasn't used to shock. Profanity pervades our everyday life. We think it, we hear it, we are surrounded by it but we aren't confronted by it so often on the page. The odd expletive is sometimes used in exclamation in the modern novel but for some reason we have this sense that using profanity in a written narrative makes the content 'shocking', or means the writer has a limited vocabulary. This novel was meant to be realistic to modern life. Try and take some time today to notice how much profanity is in your inner monologue and how often it is littered in speech around you and on the TV. Unless you are deeply religious or actually make a conscious effort not to use it I think you'll be surprised at how much a part of the English lexicon it is.
One of the most likely reasons for poor reader response is that there is no hero in this book. Every single one of these character's is flawed. By entering into each individual's psyche you get a mixed up view of who people are and you change your opinion about them constantly as you see them through other's eyes or through their own minds. You have a deep understanding of each person and, just like in real life with your friends and family, sometimes you like them and sometimes you don't (this is skillfully done in the novel as a character can vacillate from affection to irritation towards someone in the space of a second. It also examines what holds a group of people together). No one is unwaveringly loyal, stead fast, or just plain good. People think about sex and sometimes act on it, they take drugs and smoke and drink in spite of being middle aged, because you know what, becoming parents didn't change us. We are still seeking something "more". And that's uncomfortable. None of us want to admit that. When we read we want a clear hero (with maybe a quirky flaw) who is doing the right thing and a clear villain who is always wrong. But in The Slap everyone is right ,according to their philosophy, all of them are trying to be good people, as they see it, and all of them are doing things that when laid out in black and white we are meant to think of as "wrong". And what's uncomfortable about it is that we are doing it too. If we don't drink then we are over zealous in our parenting ideas, if we aren't committing adultery we are dissatisfied in some way with our relationship, if we achieved one goal we wish we'd achieved a different one. No matter our ethnic back ground we do categorize the world according to race and we may not be going around acting on it but we do see the differences in culture and skin tone and we segregate the world accordingly in our minds (and then feel so guilty about it because we are "good" people and not racists). We treat our children as an extension of us. We project our ideals and philosophies onto them giving them what we felt was lacking when we were children and then complaining about how they receive it and how things were different and better when we were kids. And we think that every body else in the world is parenting wrong. And that is exactly why I found the novel so uplifting. Every single person out there is just like me in the way that they are getting everything wrong. And that doesn't make me uncomfortable, it makes me relieved. Whatever I do to and for my kids will be wrong, I will never please every single person in my group of friends and family at one time, I will never be PC no matter how hard I try. I will never be completely 100% accepted, validated or agreed with. And that's really liberating, and that's why I think The Slap deserves 5 stars.
44) The Weight of Silence. This was definitely a grower, not a shower and wasn't worth the hype that surrounded it's release but it picked up towards the end.
You are almost at the peak!! Good going :)
Leslie wrote: "You are almost at the peak!! Good going :)"Thanks, how are you doing? Signed up for next year yet?
Fay wrote: "43) The Slap This book had been kicking around on my Kindle since 2010 when family and friends started urging me to read it and I'm kind of disappointed that I held off so long. I w..."Wow! What a review! #ClicksToAddToGrowingTBRShelf
Laura wrote: "Fay wrote: "43) The Slap This book had been kicking around on my Kindle since 2010 when family and friends started urging me to read it and I'm kind of disappointed that I held off ..."Thanks. I needed something substantial after all my brain rot fodder :-)
Mount TBR 2016
Books mentioned in this topic
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (other topics)All the Light We Cannot See (other topics)
The Slap (other topics)
The Slap (other topics)
The Slap (other topics)
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Yay, Smarts!!! :D