2025 Reading Challenge discussion
ARCHIVE 2016
>
Paul's Spinning Carousel - 180+ books in 2016
But that would have just been rude. ;) (Seriously though, I'd liked to think that I would have explained it all or at least the basics somehow, but when I saw your reply I suddenly realised that I really had no idea what to say. Saying that though I'm sure if I'd sat down I'd've been able to knock out something eventually. All I had really fixed on for some reason is to mention his two Hugo nominations, though that would've been more to emphasise his legitimacy [in a sense] than to make the whole thing more important. Though aren't those kind of the same thing? I don't know.)It's been well over two years by now. At least - part of me wants to say up to four, but the truth is definitely somewhere in the middle. I do and I don't is the best answer. I'm somewhere behind and yet not with Discworld because I find it hard to have the time to read as continuously as everyone else seems to do so I'm always playing some amount of catchup. I've read all there is of the other author he has going on right now, but I stopped paying attention to that side of the site a fair while ago because to put it mildly I get the sense I haven't been agreeing with everyone else for quite some time. Some of that I'll admit is harsh on my part, but the rest ... I'm not sure. The upshot of that though is he's starting something new soon because he only has one book left with that, and I've read all of those so I'll be able to check in more actively there. The TV side is way rarer because I never really have access to most of the shows he does so they end up being things for later if at all. Though in the past few months I did get to be around for Sense8, Kings, Doctor Who Series 8, and Agent Carter, plus Death Note and Doctor Who Series 9 are coming later in the year so I'm pretty excited for those. I have so much written for Doctor Who that it's kinda ridiculous honestly. :D (And I do go back through his archives whenever relevant along with some other places I find generally reasonable. I'm doing it right now with Buffy in fact.)
Book #12
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Oz, #4) by L. Frank Baum
Finished 15th January 2016
160p
Why I read it: There's still more Oz.
Rating: 3/5
Well, the Wizard’s back, so that’s nice. It’s also fairly neat that we’re deep in the centre of the Earth for the most part, what with all the vegetable people and the walking on air and everything. Sadly, I can’t think of a whole lot to particularly say about this book, never mind anything that would really recommend it. It just sort of is, none of the new main characters are massively interesting (although Eureka does sort of gesture towards being interesting near the end, and I suppose Jim kind of is), and while it does bumble nicely along for about the first half or two thirds, the ending utterly kills it.
The problem in hindsight is that Dorothy and our heroes are functionally on a road to nowhere, or at the very least somewhere, no matter how pleasing that road can be at times or how full it is of invisible bears and wooden gargoyles. It’s not so much the road though, as what comes after it. Our heroes do eventually get rescued, yes, rescued to the Emerald City, and the Emerald City simply isn’t fun. At all. OK, sure, I suppose the horse race is all right, and it is kind of pleasant to see some of our old acquaintances again, but the book’s narrative momentum is practically zilch at this point, unless you count the weird, mildly annoying trial at the end. When the most interesting, and possibly the best, thing about the book is the Wizard unexpectedly pulling out a fricking gun and using it on some gargoyles, you know something’s wrong. It also doesn’t help either that Dorothy and the Wizard murder some vegetable people and that’s perfectly fine apparently. I mean, yes, the book’s all very pleasantly and amiably written throughout, but I can’t say I was all that down with it this time.
Categories: Fantasy, short, novel, male, white, USA, 1900s, January, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
Book #13
The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling
Finished 16th January 2016
40p
Why I read it: I imagine it was when I was trawling through free books on Amazon UK's storefront that I saw this and went, "hmmm, this is a thing I've heard of that people seem to have read a lot". Or something like that in any case. So I bought it.
Rating: 3/5
It’s grand enough I suppose, even if the idea in hindsight is profoundly awkward. I do like how the first half is narrated by some other random fellow who just got mildly embroiled in the whole scenario, and how he’s running around trying to work out what’s going on and that this is just something else in his life, but something that makes it interesting. The big problem here is that I couldn’t honestly tell you much of anything that happens in that first half, and even less so in the second half. The whole thing just got sort of weirdly annoying and wobbly and didn’t add up to all that much in the end, so while it was well-written, and I don’t mind having read it, it really wasn’t all that good for me in the end.
Categories: General, short, short story, male, white, India/UK/USA, earlier, January, familiar, ebook, standalone, adults.
Challenges: None?
Book #14
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Finished 16th January 2016
59p
Why I read it: It's The Raven! It's a classic!
Rating: 3/5
Well I can’t say that I haven’t tried. That one Dupin story about a letter or something, “Masque of the Red Death”, and now this, and it just doesn’t look like me and Mr. Poe are ever going to see eye to eye. Which is a shame, really! And I’m not sure why that is. To be fair I don’t quite want to give up on him yet (and I’m also being a fair bit more generous than I was going to be by also wanting to look at “Fall of the House of Usher” too and not just “The Tell-Tale Heart”), but my days of wanting to read him are really nearing an end now.
So what happened? What went wrong? Not much really. I mean, “The Raven” is still a pretty good poem. If nothing else, it was fun taking those “quoth the raven Nevermore” and Lenore puzzle pieces that Cultural Osmosis Jones left me years ago when he wasn’t doing the same thing in everyone else’s house and also solving crimes in their bodies or something, and putting them together with everything else the full poem gave to me, and coming out with ... something. Truth be told I don’t really remember the poem that well. But I do remember its sheer sense of rhythm and driving charge. It’s the kind of poem that makes you want to shout it out long, and emphasise its familiar bursts of emphasis and pleasing rhymes. It’s entirely possible that it ends a little abruptly, but again I can’t say I remember it that well. I do think the protagonist’s journey from grief to utter horror was fairly well handled though.
Really though the biggest problem with “The Raven” is simply that I read it on the Kindle. The way things were laid out sometimes left ending lines of stanzas on another page, so when I was in the middle of a good rhythm going or just about to get into one I’d have to flick the page button a bit, and that kind of dispelled things a bit. So it’s entirely possible I’d like “The Raven” way more if I were reading it on a properly formatted page or a winding sheet on a computer screen (which isn’t to say that whoever transcribed this didn’t do a great job otherwise; I didn’t notice any real errors or sudden gaps or extra lines), but to be all honest I don’t recall seeing enough in it to make me want to do that. And frankly, I still don’t.
It should also be said that the edition of “The Raven” I got (for free, incidentally) was fairly padded a bit; it includes a genuinely rather nice mini-biography of Edgar Allen Poe, which I like to think gave me a good sense of the man. He seemed reasonable enough, albeit with some weird parts to his history here and there, and it made me honestly disappointed that I didn’t like his work more. (That I’ve read of it, that is.) I mean, I don’t hate the guy or anything, and I certainly don’t think people who like him have bad taste automatically. Heck, I’m probably the last person to be going around accusing people of dodgy taste. Have you even seen my shelves? Wait, no, doesn’t matter, back on track.
Furthermore, the poem itself is actually printed twice in this edition. But that’s not a mistake! One is plain text, and the other has illustrations attached to it which I’m fairly sure were rather nice, suited the tone and scene of the poem, and didn’t distract or get in the way of reading the poem too badly. Pulling them out again on Kindle for PC (which I only mention now because I only started using it recently, and it’s great) tells me that ... actually while they’re still really nice, half the problem I mentioned up above of stray lines being forced on to the next page is because of the pictures being everywhere and crowding them out. So in a sense it’s honestly really good that they printed the poem twice because the first time you have the pictures to lend a helping hand, and the second time you can read it far more bunched together, and it’s great for if you’re the type of person who likes to re-evaluate something after you’ve read it by reading it again. Which I’ve never really been, but I still liked it.
So there you go. That’s “The Raven”, and I thought it was good enough. But not really good enough, if you get what I mean (hopefully). I completely get why it’s a classic though, and can you really ask for more than that sometimes?
Categories: Horror, short, poem, male, white, USA, earlier, January, familiar, ebook, standalone, adults.
Challenges: None?
Book #15
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Finished 16th January 2016
688p
Why I read it: It won the Booker Prize last year, which was more or less reason enough.
Rating: 4/5
I get the sense this review is gonna have its fair share of grumpiness and negativity threaded all through it, so I’d just like to say first that I definitely liked this book, and my lingering feelings on it all these months later are immensely positive. I’ve no idea whether it deserved to win the Booker Prize or not (definitely over A Spool of Blue Thread, though that book is still pretty-to-very good, possibly over A Little Life [I can’t help feeling like this would have been a really weird winner though! Kind of like this book to be honest, I can’t help wondering how we’re going to look back on this entire shortlist twenty years later, if only because it’s the first one I’ve followed in detail], The Fishermen and Year of the Runaways I haven’t read yet but am looking forward to immensely, and Satin Island I kind of want to read because it’s in my library in a spirit of “ah, why not?!”, but then I get scared off because I’d rather read Remainder or C first to get a sense of McCarthy that seems more solid than Satin Island, which I really have to admit I’ve no real idea what it’s doing there. To be fair it could be really good but reviews aren’t, and I kind of really want to know why. OK that’s a tangent, and it stops now!)
but it’s unquestionably a good book. Or at least to me it is. And I’d love to read it again someday, but probably not for a good while yet. The question remains as to how good a book it actually is.
First thing’s first. It’s long. It’s very long. Is it too long? I don’t think so. Granted, it was a bit of a struggle to read because of its length at times, but that’s really only because I got into the sense of I absolutely have to read 70 pages a night or disaster!, and sometimes that became a bit of a torturous effort to properly do. It doesn’t help either that the text is really small and the paragraphs get really big. More on that later.
There is one way in which it is a little long though, and that’s kind of because the ratio of story to words ... feels a little off. Although to be fair that’s partly my fault as well. And this really isn’t in a “oh it won the Booker Prize, it must be brilliant, and if I don’t think it’s brilliant then I’m clearly wrong!” sense, more in a “I’ve genuinely misinterpreted this book and not brought enough knowsmarts to the table” sense. “I’m not quite the right person” sense. Because let’s face it, it may be 688 pages long (in my edition at least, there may be fluctuations, and no I didn’t have to look that up, yes I know I’m weird) and full of monologues from several perspectives and charged full of slang and stuff, but it’s basically a crime novel. It’s basically a thriller. Although to say that is to say that being a crime novel or a thriller is inherently bad, which it isn’t. I’m in no way here to shame. Again, I’m sure you could rifle through my shelves and find tens of books that look at least slightly suspicious. And as well as that it’s a crime novel in the same way Wolf Hall is a historical novel and The Finkler Question is a comedy. Marlon James is going for something different here, something bigger, and it’s entirely possible he gets there.
See, I had come to the flimsy conclusion partway through The Glorious Heresies (more on which later) that crime novels weren’t really my thing, especially if they’re from the perspective of the perpetrators (smell that sustained alliteration. I don’t know why I said that). Similarly I’m not really sure why that is; it’s nothing I can really explain, I ended up really liking The Glorious Heresies (it’s not impossible that Lisa McInerney actually does certain things better than Marlon James here, admittedly), and I do ultimately like this book a lot. So this could just be a crappy plaster on a very big thing. I’m not sure. Certainly I wasn’t like repulsed or anything by reading about criminals, apart from the bits where I’m fairly sure I was meant to be repulsed.
Getting back on track, what I’m trying to say here is that I found it fairly hard a lot of the time to see where James was actually going with this. What he was trying to say, to bring about. I just couldn’t find the throughline. It seemed to weirdly both make sense and not make sense both at the macro and the micro level. A bit of the time there was this illusion, this sense of things happening, quickly going down, but sometimes that was really all that was there. A sense. It also doesn’t help that I’m not really familiar with Jamaica or the time period at all, so I found it hard to get a grip on the political parties and players of this game, especially as I tried really hard to figure out a sense of place throughout and wasn’t really sure I was getting it, as in where is everything in relation to everything else. And I’m not sure whether James was trying to be a teacher of these things in particular (definitely I got the sense he was trying to do that for other things), or whether he technically should be. (I didn’t get on too badly with most of the reggae talk though. Which is weird.)
Like a lot of things though, the clue’s in the title, and I completely missed it. The key word isn’t Brief (although that is kind of funny in a way considering it’s 688 pages, a joke that loads of people have made way before me), and not Seven, or Killings. It’s History. This is a History. And I never realised that. So it’s possible that I’m just desperately trying to pretend that this book is actually good, but I feel like now if I’d gone in with more awareness that this was a kind of history, detailing what had happened in Jamaica all these years ago, I’d have had a much better time of it.
Because I assume that’s basically what this is. I mean, again, I don’t really know much about Jamaica at all, and I imagine most of the names have been changed (for example, everyone knows that the Singer is clearly Bob Marley, and I get why he’s called the Singer, it gives him mythic dimensions and all that, but it did seem a little weird after a while that no-one ever called him anything but the Singer, and I’m not sure why), but I’m pretty willing to assume that most of this basically happened back in the day. A lot of gangsters try to kill Bob Marley in the broiling heart of 1970s Jamaica, here’s what happened to them before, and here’s what happened next. That’s it. That’s the book. And I got that, but I never really *got* that, you know?
On the plus side, I really do believe that the book is well written. In particular, James is fantastically good at differentiating his characters and narrators, which is pretty important and impressive considering that there’s like fifteen narrators who speak exclusively in first person monologue, ranging from powerful gangsters to lackeys to old dead white guys to douchey journalists and the CIA to what you could uncharitably call floozies, all with their own stories and things going on, and about a hundred named characters in all. All of them are listed at the beginning of the book, and while I did use that list from time to time, I don’t think I felt like I needed to use it that much. Granted, to an extent all the characters are fairly archetypical so far as I can remember, but I really do feel like I got a good sense of them all. And for the most part their words are really well-honed and written too. To be fair I never really got the drop on the old dead white guy – he was always too portentous for me – and when James broke out the page long stream of consciousness run-arounds they didn’t quite work for me either. They brought about this real alienating, unnerving effect that only managed to put me on the outside for the most part because of how awkward they were. Which was clearly the point, and I got the sense that it was the point, but still. In fact, it was genuinely disappointing when for the last section of the book James drops his habit of naming the chapters after their viewpoints like George R.R. Martin, instead numbering them, only to have it so their identities were revealed fairly early on. I kind of wanted to guess them! And there is a fair bit of slang and patois and argot and dialect in here, but I remember James using it just enough to have it seem realistic, and it never really felt like a struggle to read (not to say it won’t be a struggle for everyone, mind). It’s a pretty violent book, though, as you’d expect, but I didn’t want to not say it even if it’s kind of given.
Huh, I guess this turned out pretty positive after all! Which I wanted it to, and I was worried it wouldn’t, so I can’t say I’m not happy about that. I think I’ll leave it here for now in the hope that I keep things the way they are in that sense, but before I do I’ll repeat that I absolutely do want to read this book again someday, and that to me is a good sign for any book. Even if they’re not very good.
Which this book isn’t by the way. I really do think it’s very good indeed.
Categories: Historical/general, long, novel, male, POC, Jamaica/USA, 2010s, January, new, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: A to Z Character Edition (N), Around the World (Jamaica).
Paul wrote: "I love Kipling's works. I find the rhythm of how he writes captivating. I haven't read this book yet, but it's on the TBR!
I didn't particularly make much of this one, but then again I never seem to be all that jazzed by Kipling in general. It wasn't bad, mind, and I'll agree it was fairly reasonably paced, but yeah. Now that I think about it, I figure I'll leave him for the foreseeable future - I do have one other book from him, but I wasn't much looking forward to it even before now. I do hope you enjoy this one though. :)
Book #16
Poems of William Blake by William Blake
Finished 17th January 2016
45 pages
Why I read it: After surviving a year of the TARDIS Eruditorum and coming through changed, I figured it would be a good idea to properly figure out who this William Blake man was. This was free on the Amazon storefront, so I grabbed it.
Rating: 3/5
This Kindle edition contains Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience, with The Book of Thel thrown in as a neat/weird little bonus. I feel like this is a pretty good introduction to William Blake, but the problem is that that’s kind of it. It’s an introduction. Not much more.
Don’t get me wrong though, these poems are solid. More or less. Innocence is fairly solidly constructed even if it’s all very disarmingly simple to me, and Experience doesn’t progress very much further than that, but it’s still pretty interesting in the way it seems to take the concepts of Innocence and turn them on its head, and examine them, with plenty of simmering bitterness and distaste aimed all around and at The Way Things Are. But none of it is really what I was expecting. There’s no satanic mills. No Urizen. No Jerusalem, or feet in ancient time that do things that I’m not aware of because that’s the only line of that poem that I know. All I can really say or think right now is that this must surely be a prelude of what’s to come, that this is just Blake warming up and being relatively normal before he breaks out the original mythology and becomes the passionate weirdo genius philosopher kind of guy that I had the sense that he was. OK, to be fair The Book of Thel is probably more along the lines of what I’ve associated Blake with, but – ironically – that was just so strange that I kind of bewildered and skimmed my way over it, so I only really absorbed a fraction of what I could have absorbed if I was paying attention, which probably still might not have been much.
It strikes me now that part of the problem is probably just how I bought it. I got a free Kindle edition, you see, and although I’ve got no reason to attack people who (dis)like ebooks as long as you’re not particularly vilifying them or extolling them (I mean, I like physical books and ebooks too, you know, they’re perfectly capable of living in harmony in my eyes [more on which later]), for something like William Blake it just feels like I got myself a dodgy pamphlet printed off by some fella in a backend alley for a few pieces of old-timey money that has some poems of William Blake on it. The bad quarto, if you will. Or actually don’t, because the Kindle edition I got is perfectly competent, all the spelling and layout seems fine. So I guess call it the “perfectly-decent-but-still-not-all-that-great quarto” then. ;) And there’s more to Blake than that. I know there is. I mean, this edition didn’t even have any illustrations! I really feel like Blake is the kind of author poet I’d need to explore in the flesh, or at least in the paper, with a big chunky book over some sort of lamplight as I strive to uncover the mystery and gaze at awe at the prodigity of the imagination.
Also I read the poems fairly fast so that didn’t help much either.
I mean, I had a fairly good time, but I’m not really closer yet to figuring out why Phil Sandifer likes him so much (then again, neither did his post on “The Three Doctors” really, although I only skimmed that and I’ve never seen “The Three Doctors”, so maybe I should read it again someday when I get my copy of TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 3), and it still doesn’t leave me feeling much more than “hmmm, ok, sure” about “In the Forest of the Night” :P (Which to be honest I really don’t think is *that* bad of an episode, even if it’s kind of lacking in bits and pieces, I should really watch that again. And for what it’s worth, “The Tyger” is a genuinely good and striking poem, maybe the best in that entire collection, so that was great to finally figure out too. If only for a little while.)
Categories: Fantasy/general, short, poetry, male, white, UK, earlier, January, new, ebook, standalone, adults.
Challenges: Popsugar? (Poetry)
wow! you've made exemplary progress so far! I've been having trouble finding the right amount of motivation to read but this has actually helped inspire me to get back on track.I've always loved doing the review portion of reading and I guess seeing you do yours with such effort has reignited my reading. Thanks!
Patricia wrote: "wow! you've made exemplary progress so far! I've been having trouble finding the right amount of motivation to read but this has actually helped inspire me to get back on track.I've always loved ..."
Wonderful! :) I know that you've been having a lot of exams and assignments recently too, I hope those have been going well for you. :)
I don't know if I'd call it effort myself, seems like it's more procrastination leading into bloody-minded determination to just get the thing done! ;) I mean, I do still have another eight left to write properly, and the eight I have wrote poured out in two concentrated sessions. Plus I don't feel like they took that much effort even if they do seem larger than average because I had ideas jangling around my head for a good while before that.
But enough about me, back to you. I'm glad that I could help get you back to reading, and thank you for the kind words as well. :)
It's nice to see that you're getting around to writing your reviews for the books you've already read. The difference between us is that I don't post anything until I'm reading to write the review. I find it keeps me from forgetting to do things. To each their own!
Paul wrote: "Book #16
Poems of William Blake by William Blake
Finished 17th January 2016
45 pages
Why I read it: After surviving a year of the TARDIS Eruditorum and..."
William Blake is probably my favorite poet. I am glad you seemed to enjoy them. I love his symbolism. Makes me want to read them all over again.
Jackie B. wrote: "It's nice to see that you're getting around to writing your reviews for the books you've already read. The difference between us is that I don't post anything until I'm reading to write the review...."Yeah, part of me wonders whether your way isn't the better way, but I just get the sense that this is how I want to do things, to get them out there as soon as I can and worry about the other things later. The thing is though, I don't feel like I'm going to forget to do them, it's just a question of when I'm going to do them. I already have at least one full review more or less percolating through my head already, all I have to do is organise it and put it on the page. There's going to be gifs and weird references and everything, it's going to be amazing ;)
(Sorry for not replying sooner incidentally, it's been a fairly hectic week and I'm still in the middle of it, this has pretty much been my first opportunity to talk at length for a few days.)
Stephanie (R-A) wrote: "Paul wrote: "Book #16
Poems of William Blake by William Blake
Finished 17th January 2016
45 pages
Why I read it: After surviving a year of the TARDIS E..."
I did like them! Not massively, admittedly, but I did. Definitely the kind of poetry that deserves and demands more than a half an hour runthrough though. I doubt Songs of Innocence would improve that much (it was a bit cutesy and well... innocent for my liking), but I was fairly well intrigued by Songs of Experience, and another slower runthrough might make the general weirdness come across better than it did. Maybe some day. :)
(Sorry for not replying sooner incidentally, it's been a fairly hectic week and I'm still in the middle of it, this has pretty much been my first opportunity to talk at length for a few days.)
Book #17
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Finished 23rd January 2016
784p
Why I read it: It had always been somewhere in the back of my mind to read this someday, but it wasn't until it appeared as a Kindle Daily Deal in a biography-themed selection that I decided to finally do it.
Rating: 4/5
When the only problems you can come up with are that the plot progression is sometimes obscure and that you kinda wish it was even longer, you know you’re onto a winner. And those are just the problems that are actually problems.
Let me elaborate. I don’t think this is thanks to me being really forgetful and not remembering things I read a week ago never mind months ago; I picked up on it even while I was reading. It’s just that sometimes I found it really hard to track Mandela’s advancement through the years, as he moves higher and higher up the ladder of the ANC. Don’t get me wrong, mind; his strengths and qualities are never in doubt (more on which later), and you could always argue I suppose it lends an air of sort of how fortunate Mandela was to be given these opportunities, but it never quite felt like that to me. What I mean is it would be like I blinked and all of a sudden I’d find Mandela in a new role, and maybe I’m just being way way way too obtuse here, but I would have liked it to have been made a bit more specific (not really in general – again, it’s easy to make the case that *Mandela* makes the case for his advancement more than ably in this book) as to what exactly had happened.
Long Walk to Freedom is 784 pages long. In a sense it doesn’t need to be any longer. Indeed it could possibly do with being a small bit shorter – although I feel like Mandela generally has an extremely good sense of pacing, there is the odd section that drags here and there. Especially at the beginning. Though to an extent I can forgive that as being thanks to typical early on growing pains, and also because I appreciate Mandela emphasising throughout that Southern (as opposed to South) Africa has a genuine, rich and complex culture of its own, one which bears a heavy influence on the rest of his life.
So. Yes. Long Walk to Freedom really doesn’t need to be any longer. In itself. It takes the reader from when Nelson Mandela was born right up to his election of President of South Africa in 1994, and basically leaves nothing out inbetween. That in itself is more or less enough. Except. Think of something else for the moment. Think about Hamilton. If there was such a thing as Mandela (where not everyone is white incidentally), this book would be Act 1. Or indeed most of Act 1; you’d still have the equivalents of “Dear Theodesia” and “Non-Stop” to squirrel away. Hamilton of course has an Act 2, and Long Walk to Freedom just doesn’t. At least not in itself it doesn’t. Mandela himself says at the end that his long walk still isn’t over. And he kind of makes you want that story, that tale of what happened next once he became President and all the various struggles and triumphs to enact the new South Africa and the tenets of the ANC. Now, this isn’t actually Long Walk to Freedom’s fault. That would be an entire book on its own. Putting it on the end of Long Walk would make Long Walk ingloriously long, and probably badly paced too. As it is, Long Walk ends in a pretty much perfect place.
What’s the rest of the book like then? It’s basically a triumph. Mandela shows himself as being basically a natural storyteller, running the gamut of his life and times, taking you through a lot of the travails and struggles and hardships that make up the way. It’s true that he definitely swirls in a fair sized portion of what you could call his philosophy and core convictions into this, but oddly he never really made me feel like he was talking down to me or even that he was letting the message get in the way of the rest of the book, which would have been so easy to do. It also helps that while he is most certainly a great man, he actively refuses to be a Great Man (I feel), not just in the way that he constantly and consistently praises and credits his family and associates because he just couldn’t have done it on his own, but in how he admits throughout when he was wrong, when he was neglectful, when he needed to think things through clearer, and when he needed help along the walk towards freedom.
Make no mistake, Mandela was a great man. At least for me he manages to transcend and shrug off easy labels and aspirational posturing, and strike as a proper, genuine inspiration. In this book, he peels away the legend to reveal the man inside. He recognises the importance of working with the enemy to create a new South Africa acceptable to all, and recognises that that wasn’t a popular option. He takes on violent resistance only as a last resort, and as far as I remember always tried to minimise injury and loss of life. His spirit wasn’t so indomitable as to mean he was never brought down, but he was never brought down for very long. (I was thinking it was kind of a problem that his later prison sentences weren’t actually that insufferable, before I realised that it probably isn’t fair to view real life accounts as I do fictional ones (to an extent), and that one of the reasons they weren’t “that bad” is because Mandela and his associates actively worked to ensure that. Plus it made me think about the idea of the political prisoner for quite some time, which is definitely a good thing.) He takes pride in the high qualities of South Africa while recognising its downsides for what they are. He’s the sort of man you look at and say “that’s the kind of man you want to be”. He was, if not always that, then certainly for a long time, but/and it’s Long Walk to Freedom that shows you how. And I’m really glad I read it.
(He’s also pretty funny. Surprisingly often too. It’d be really easy to have Long Walk to Freedom be unremitting unrelenting gloom and rather boring political negotiations etc. from beginning to just before the end. But it isn’t. It really isn’t. At least to me it wasn’t.]
Categories: Biography/memoir, very long, memoir, male, POC, South Africa, 1990s, January, new, ebook, standalone, adults.
Challenges: A to Z Character Edition (L), Around the World (South Africa), Popsugar (political memoir).
Book #18
The Road to Oz (Oz, #5) by L. Frank Baum
Finished 24th January 2016
272p
Why I read it: Still Oz.
Rating: 3/5
I remember this book being kind of meh, but let’s see, shall we? *checks Wikipedia* Aha!
To be honest this book never really recovers from the introduction of the Shaggy Man, who, for the record I’m fairly sure never made me think of the Scooby-Doo character or the man who sang that song. That doesn’t really help/hinder him though, because he goes and ruins it for himself by stealing Toto. Just putting him in his pocket. To be fair people have explained this by saying that surely he was going to put him down eventually and he just wanted to get those delicious apples in peace. Maybe. I wouldn’t mind him so much though, if it weren’t for the Love Magnet.
Ah yes, the Love Magnet. To put it simply, I find the concept of the Love Magnet amazingly creepy, and it makes me think of uses that people could make for it in various adult-rated thingamajigs and ugh moving on.
(The idea of not wanting to go somewhere because somebody there owes *you* money is pretty funny though.)
One of the big problems with this book is that it doesn’t really have a main plot at all. It’s just our heroes being lost and sort of going along for the ride before they figure out they’re going to Oz anyway and just going along for the ride as they were. It doesn’t help either that while Polychrome is actually pretty delightful, Button-Bright is insufferable and weird. The fact that pretty much everyone seems to love him despite that makes it even worse.
I really don’t have anything to say about the rest of the book, partly because I don’t remember the events that well even when I’m reading about them again (I mean, sure, I remember the animal heads and Johnny Dooit’s amazing boat, but I don’t have very many strong thoughts on them) and mostly because the book basically ends once we get to Oz and L. Frank Baum has his equivalent of The Avengers a hundred years early by throwing All the Characters into one place from all his other books. Which works weirdly well, actually; it’s fun to read about all of these people. I mean I don’t want to read about more of them anytime soon (all of the Baum Oz books feels like enough Baum for ages at least), but I feel like I could read about them someday, which feels like a victory. Certainly it’s a victory Baum didn’t get quite enough of. There’s really not much else I can say apart from that. Pretty sure I read it in an hour with just a tiny bit extra effort and push, which isn’t too bad going if you’re into this sort of thing. Would I recommend it though? Just about. It’s definitely not one of the better ones though.
Categories: Fantasy, medium, novel, male, white, USA, 1900s, January, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
Book #19
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Finished 25th January 2016
720p
Why I read it: People on another forum I lurk on got me interested in it the way they kept talking about how good and tragic it was, so I'd more or less made my mind up by then. Getting nominated for the National Book Award and the Booker cemented that, but not actually by that much.
Rating: 4/5
Because it needs to be said: this book is flawed.
What else needs to be said, though, is this: these flaws are not fatal.
First things first (maybe?): it’s long. It’s very long. Is it too long? Not really. Perhaps. Just about. It’s a feeling you don’t really have at all at the start, then it sinks in just a little, though not that much, as you go on, and then as you go through the Happy Years it pretty much gets to you there. The thing is though, I can understand why. I get what Yanagihara was going for. She really wants to impress that sense of happiness on you before it all comes crashing down on you as you surely expected it to, and it more or less works. Otherwise for the most part it felt basically fine to me as far as length goes, the only real other problem being that it does admittedly get repetitive sometimes. But again, and while I don’t want to just throw off “life/these things are repetitive” like the big cliché that it really is, it feels like that’s how it works. Again, what I’m saying is that wasn’t a big problem for me.
Speaking of repeating, yes this book is traumatic. Yes it’s sad. Yes it’s horrifying and wrenching and harrowing, and all those things it’s been said to be by all good people. And sometimes that really works; you can feel the sense of impeding dread slowing moving its way up around you as you read. And sometimes the shocks are just so short and sharp that all you can do is clutch something deep down inside. Sometimes though the moments of surrender are just so long and horrendous (and maybe a bit repetitive) that, though I hate to say it, something inside me shuts down. I got put on the inside. And as a result it just didn’t work quite as well as I wanted it to.
Also the characters are like 10 years older than you’d think they’d be all the time. Which is weird. I know. I know that this is something probably no-one else ever thought. But I did. I’d see people’s ages being given in text and I’d think “wait, what? That’s way too old!” Not that tales about older men simply can’t be told of course. It was just kind of jarring here and there.
Otherwise though? It’s pretty much brilliant. I feel like the reason I like it (so much) is that it’s total and encompassing. It has characters you know and come to care about intimately, it’s wonderfully written and near-perfectly paced, and its world feels like it emerges out of this one in all its blunder/wonder, even if it’s carefully detached from time and history. And even if it sometimes gets really melodramatic. What can I say? Not “life is melodramatic sometimes”, because that’s a cliché too, and even if it’s true there’s such a thing as *too* melodramatic. It worked for me though, and I’m not sure I can say any much more than that.
(That blunder/wonder bit is what it all comes down to really. It’s not that the whole world is here, but that Yanagahira pretty much plumbs the foulest depths and highest glories of it, and human behaviour too. It’s got a way of looking at things that’s ambiguous, contradictory, empathetic, and true. Kind of like life in general, maybe. But would I really know?)
At the same time, it’s true to say that the world in A Little Life is mostly a man’s world. Indeed, nearly totally. Women don’t really figure into this book much at all. Sure, they’re there, but they’re pretty much always on the sidelines. One of my college friends said as much to me (way more pithily though, which really shouldn’t be a surprise by now ;)) when he saw me lugging this book around, and I probably deserved it, for wanting people to talk about the book to me and being kind of arrogant. (I left my Kindle at home to get through this quicker. Which probably made it seem longer and more awkward come to think of it.)
The thing is, he’s right. But I don’t mind. Because it needs to be said though, I’m not approaching this from some sort of perspective of “what about teh mennnn?!” Instead I’m coming from the sort of perspective that’s pretty much down with HeForShe but largely stays on the sidelines because of fear of being the brash rough and tough man. I cheer though. Do I ever cheer. So even if in some hypothetical far-off quantum split world there’s a book called A Little Life written by Hayao Yamashiro about four women named Judith, Mallory, Wilhelmina, and JB living in SoHo, a book that either actually won the Booker Prize to contradictory cries or disappeared into obscurity to be revealed years later, like a Stoner out of the water, for me I feel like the world still needs books like this to exist, books where men are allowed to be emotional. Books where men are allowed to fall in love, and fall in love with each other. Books where men have great unholy deep-rooted emotional trauma that never quite goes away, and that might always be a part of them. It will probably always need books like this. Because once the long walk to freedom ends, it’s only then that the long walk *with* freedom can finally began.
(And do they ever fall in love with each other. This book really could be the great gay novel of our time. Although part of me does feel a bit oogy about the “great gay novel” being One of the Books That Everybody’s Talking About, that gets nominated for the awards. The one that’s 720 pages long. If only because of all the other great gay (and M/M) novels that are surely out there, and the people who have been reading them all along.)
It’s a small world after all that Yanagihara creates, is what I guess I’m saying, and it’s a pretty little life Jude lives indeed. And yet both manage to be bigger than anything, at least for me, and if only for a smaller while. Kind of like a lot of things, I suppose.
Categories: General, long, novel, female, POC, USA, 2010s, January, new, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: A to Z Character Edition (I)
Wow-- You are making quick progress in your reading challenge, Paul! I'm quite jealous. I wish I could keep up! :)
Jackie B. wrote: "Wow-- You are making quick progress in your reading challenge, Paul! I'm quite jealous. I wish I could keep up! :)"Thank you!
Now not to lay on the jealousy even more or anything, but I was curious so I went and checked, and it turns out I'm technically behind on last year? I've only managed to read 19 books and 5,640 pages so far this year, as opposed to 21 books and 6,264 pages by around the same time last year. Clearly I'm slacking or something. ;) (To be fair, I've had some graduate interviews this year that I've had to prepare for, so that's pushed things back a bit. Still though, totally slacking. That's totally it. :P) I do feel a fair bit more fired up than I did last year though, which is nice.
And hey, don't worry. (Then again, this is probably easier coming from me... ;)) As long as you're reading books you like and find interesting, then that's probably all that matters. :) (Although there is tilting against the never-ending TBR list and all that...)
EDIT: OK, make that 20 books and 5,983 pages this year so far. Still unacceptable though. ;)
Book #20
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Finished 26th January 2016
340p
Why I read it: There must have been a fair amount of buzz, praise, and attention around the film, which probably introduced me to the book through its showing up as a Kindle Monthly Deal around the same time. I dithered on buying it because I wasn't sure as to what extent it would turn out to be an Alzheimer's Novel, as opposed to be an Alzheimer's novel, but when it turned out it wasn't in my library I decided to plump for it after all.
Rating: 3/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: General, medium, novel, female, white, USA, 2000s, January, new, ebook, standalone, adults.
Challenges: I Spy Book Titles, Recommended by Reading Challengers, A to Z Character Edition (D)
Book #21
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Finished 28th January 2016
419p
Why I read it: Something about it demanded reappraisal.
Rating: 4/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: General/historical, medium, novel, male, POC, Afghanistan/USA, 2000s, January, familiar, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: Group Reads
Book #22
The Emerald City of Oz (Oz, #6) by L. Frank Baum
Finished 29th January 2016
150p
Why I read it: Oz again.
Rating: 2/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: Fantasy, short, novel, male, white, USA, 1910s, January, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
Book #23
Tide of Shadows and Other Stories by Aidan Moher
Finished 30th January 2016
86p
Why I read it: Aidan Moher posts fairly often in the book threads at another forum I lurk at, so one day in a strange bout of solidarity-of-a-sort I decided to read his thing.
Rating: 3/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: Fantasy/sci-fi, short, short story anthology, male, white, Canada, 2010s, January, new, ebook, standalone, adults.
Challenges: None?
Book #24
Through the Looking-Glass (Alice, #2) by Lewis Carroll
Finished 30th January 2016
87p
Why I read it: I'm not sure. It's a classic, I guess, but now I don't know what to say.
Rating: 3/5
Review to hopefully follow, on some frabjous sort of day.
Categories: Fantasy, short, novel, male, white, UK, earlier, January, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
Book #25
The Princess Diaries (Princess Diaries, #1) by Meg Cabot
Finished 31st January 2016
244p
Why I read it: I remember liking the film years ago, and when it cropped up as a free option during that one meaningless Amazon spectacular last year, it was more or less the most appealing one there, so I figured I'd go for it.
Rating: 4/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: General/coming of age, short, novel, female, white, USA/France, 2000s, January, new, ebook, series, young adult.
Challenges: I Spy Book Titles Edition, Every Year Challenge
Paul wrote: "Book #25
The Princess Diaries (Princess Diaries, #1) by Meg Cabot
Finished 31st January 2016
244p"
This is not a book I expected to see here! That said, I was surprised with how fun it was to read. An enjoyable fluffy story, for sure.
Jackie B. wrote: "Paul wrote: "Book #25
The Princess Diaries (Princess Diaries, #1) by Meg Cabot
Finished 31st January 2016
244p"
This is not a book I expected to see here..."
Haha, yes! Even if - not to brag - I like to think I can pride myself on not confining myself to one box or even a few of them (nothing wrong with people who do, of course), now that you say it maybe I'd be surprised too if I ended up wandering in here and saw this. Then again, who knows.
But yes, no, it's definitely enjoyable and fun (for the most part, the third quarter kind of dragged for me but the last quarter turned it around). Not quite sure about fluffy though, certainly partly fluffy, but there's a fair amount of spark and spikiness in there too. Which I thought was great for the record, but it sure did lead to a very bizarre experience every now and then.
And on that note, I look forward to hopefully surprising people again in the future some time. Not sure how or when that'll be, but I'll surely find a way somehow. ;)
Hahaha. When I say "fluffy" I mean that I don't have to apply myself mentally a lot to the literature I'm reading. I can just enjoy the words without hurting my brain with all the thought. Do you plan on reading more of the series?
Jackie B. wrote: "Hahaha. When I say "fluffy" I mean that I don't have to apply myself mentally a lot to the literature I'm reading. I can just enjoy the words without hurting my brain with all the thought. Do you..."
For me, there was kind of more of a heady mixture of spikiness and fluffiness more than anything else, although I could still be defining fluffy weirdly. My review might make this all make more sense someday, then again it might not.
I'm not sure! Part of me wants to, and part of me sees it's ten eleven books long and then recoils. That being said I'm full deep in another ten book series right now so I can't really say much. ;) It'd probably be something I'd wait around for to come to me, even if I didn't have way too much going on right now and in the near to medium future as it is. It's fairly low priority, is what I'm saying. :)
I think the next two or three are just as good, but they tend to fall off pretty quickly after that. But, this is not a genre I read often. I'll just stalk you and see what your final review is like. :)
Book #26
Rock and Popular Music in Ireland: Before and After U2 by Noel McLaughlin and Martin McLoone
Finished 2nd February 2016
352p
Why I read it: As part of my quest to more actively materially engage with, interrogate, and understand the Irish condition through books this year, I made one of my first ever wanderings into the non-fiction section of my library some time ago and found this. I thought it looked interesting.
Rating: 4/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: Music, medium, nonfiction, male white, Ireland/UK, 2010s, February, new, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: Léamh go Brách
Book #27
Games Wizards Play (Young Wizards, #10) by Diane Duane
Finished 5th February 2016
624p
Why I read it: Mark Oshiro is going to be reading it at some point, and I liked the last nine and a half books sufficiently (though not equally) to preorder this six months before it came out.
Rating: 4/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: Fantasy/sci-fi, large, novel, female, white, Ireland/USA, 2010s, February, familiar, ebook, series, young adults.
Challenges: Léamh go Brách, Around the World (Ireland), Every Year (2016), Popsugar (book published in 2016), A to Z Character Edition (C)
Book #28
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1) by Maya Angelou
Finished 5th February 2016
309p
Why I read it: I'd had the idea in my head that it was some sort of classic, and when it showed up in the I Spy challenge and it turned out to be in my library I decided to finally go for it.
Rating: 4/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: Memoir/coming of age, medium, nonfictional, female, POC, USA, 1960s, February, new, borrowed, series, adults.
Challenges: I Spy Book Titles (extra), A to Z Character Edition (U)
Book #29
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts by Samuel Beckett
Finished 6th February 2016
83p
Why I read it: It's Waiting for Godot. It had to happen eventually, I feel.
Rating: 5/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: General, short, play, male, white, Ireland/France, 1950s, February, new, borrowed, standalone, adults.
Challenges: None?
Book #30
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (Oz, #7) by L. Frank Baum
Finished 6th February 2016
262p
Why I read it: It's more Oz, but that doesn't mean I had to read it, considering I could've got away with finishing with the previous book. Perhaps it's the radium, but I rather think it's L. Frank Baum's splendid writing. Maybe.
Rating: 4/5
Review to hopefully follow.
Categories: Fantasy, short, novel, male, white, USA, 1910s, February, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
You gave Waiting for Godot 5/5?! I cannot wait for your review. I've never read it, but I did see it performed once. All I'll say is that I was not prepared.
Jackie B. wrote: "You gave Waiting for Godot 5/5?! I cannot wait for your review. I've never read it, but I did see it performed once. All I'll say is that I was not prepared."
I'm probably going to have to make you wait unfortunately, college and post-college is getting so busy right now that I don't trust myself to say I can do much on that front until Easter at least :/ Doesn't help that I feel like it's something I have to psych myself up for as well. Or something.
But yeah, I think what I decided beforehand is that after what seemed like years of buildup and reputation that I was going to read this and I was going to like it. And it worked! Admittedly it likely helped that I was aware of some of its... more interesting features beforehand. And granted, the second act is a tad weaker than the first act and it's entirely impossible that it doesn't actually deserve the full five, but to be honest it just worked that well for me that I'm going to put it out there regardless. And hopefully I'll get to explain why someday, but considering the way things are right now and that I still have 15 odd reviews to go before that, it's going to be a long while coming I'm afraid. :/
Book #31
Back from the Brink: The Autobiography by Paul McGrath with Vincent Hogan
Finished 11th February 2016
352p
Why I read it: My quest to read more Hibernian books and finally brave the non-fiction section at my library led me to this fairly highly regarded autobiography from years back, which I decided I would tackle based on its familiarity and reputation, even if I'm not really into soccer.
Rating: 5/5
Review to follow?
Categories: Biography/memoir, medium, other, male, POC, Ireland/UK, 2000s, February, new, borrowed, standalone, adults.
Challenges: Popsugar? (book by a celebrity), Léamh go Brách
Book #32
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir of a Childhood (Frank McCourt's Autobiography, #1) by Frank McCourt
Finished 11th February 2016
426p
Why I read it: Something about it cried out for a revisit.
Rating: 4/5
Review to follow?
Categories: Biography/memoir/coming of age, medium, other, male, white, Ireland/USA, 1990s, February, reread, familiar, physical, series, adults.
Challenges: Popsugar (autobiography), Every Year (1996), Nonfiction, Léamh go Brách, A to Z Character (A), Rereading Monthly Challenge
Paul wrote: "Why I read it: Something about it cried out for a revisit."
Did it improve upon revisiting?
Honestly, no, though it was at the kind of place where all it could really do was go down. I hadn't read it in years, but when I did it all came back to me, and not really in a good way. For the most part it sort of just flowed under and over me in a way I really can't explain. I felt kind of distanced from it. It's still good though. I think. Maybe.
Book #33
Little Wizard Stories of Oz (Oz, #7.5) by L. Frank Baum
Finished 12th February 2016
37p
Why I read it: It's Oz again. Huzzah.
Rating: 3/5
Categories: Fantasy, short, short story anthology, male, white, USA, 1910s, February, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
Book #34
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Finished 13th February 2016
249p
Why I read it: Full of scorpions was my mind, so I decided to return to this secret, blue, and midday book, full of sound and fury, signifying something.
Rating: 4/5
Categories: Classics/historical/fantasy, short, play, male, white, UK, earlier, February, reread, familiar, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: Popsugar (book not read since high school), February reread challenge, A to Z Character Edition (S)
Book #35
Tik-Tok of Oz (Oz, #8) by L. Frank Baum
Finished 13th February 2016
232p
Why I read it: Still more Oz.
Rating: 3/5
Categories: Fantasy, short, novel, male, white, USA, 1910s, February, familiar, ebook, series, children.
Challenges: None?
Book #36
The Moon King by Siobhán Parkinson
Finished 13th February 2016
173p
Why I read it: Siobhán Parkinson was a fairly well-regarded Irish children's author back in the day, but I never read as much of her work as I really should have. This year I decided to change that.
Rating: 4/5
Categories: General, short, novel, male, white, Ireland, 1990s, February, familiar, borrowed, standalone, children.
Challenges: Léamh go Brách
Book #37
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Finished 16th February 2016
195p
Why I read it: After rereading Macbeth I couldn't not follow it up with Hamlet.
Rating: 4/5
Categories: Classics/historical, short, play, male, white, UK, earlier, February, familiar, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: February reread challenge.
Book #38
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
Finished 17th February 2016
256p
Why I read it: I've still got that 16 feeling, so much so that I worked my way back to this reasonably well-loved author who I've never quite managed to connect with, to see if there was a chance at redemption. Plus I was intrigued by the chronicling of the immigrant experience in Ireland that he was aiming to bring about here.
Rating: 3/5
Categories: General, medium, short story anthology, male, white, Ireland, 2000s, February, familiar, physical, standalone, adults.
Challenges: Léamh go Brách
Paul wrote: "Book #38
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
Finished 17th February 2016
256p
Why I read it: I've still got that 16 feeling, so much s..."
Have you read Doyle's The Giggler Treatment? It's a kid's book and both of my sons loved it. Our copy is completely battered and worn out. It was my first Doyle book.
2025 Reading Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
Cirque Du Freak (other topics)Men Explain Things to Me: And Other Essays (other topics)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (other topics)
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (other topics)
The Undertaking (other topics)
More...
Have you been following him long? Are you keeping up with his readings/reviews?