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Reading Challenges 2018
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Week 9 Check In
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This week was work heavy, so the reads were light to compensate: The Princess Bride was Popsugar #1 - "book made into a movie you've already seen". Absolutely delicious and added a layer to my experience of the movie, which I just had to watch again once I was done.Then I selected Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for Popsugar #31 - "book mentioned in another book". Don't ask me which - I don't remember! It was in the prompt discussion on here. It also fits BookRiot # 11 - "children's classic published before 1980".
That brings me to 15/40 (2/10) for Popsugar 2018.
I have two current reads, which is not something I do often, but I needed a smaller book to carry on a recent outing. First is Neverwhere, my FoE book flood book, which I'll put under Popsugar #17 - "book you borrowed or were given as a gift". Second is The Satanic Verses, which will count as Popsugar advanced #1 - "a bestseller from the year you graduated high school". I have no idea where this story is going, but I am deeply in love with Rushdie's writing. I'm almost cross with myself for having this gem on my shelf for so long and only now discovering its beauty.
And last night, a book fitting the Popsugar advanced #7 prompt - "a book by a person who shares your first or last name" fell into my lap! I had dinner with a group of coworkers, and one brought AU COEUR DE MES VALEURS, by businesswoman Danièle Henkel (she's one of the dragons on the Quebec version of Dragons' Den/Shark Tank). As it's the less common spelling of my first name, I could not pass it up!
On the whole, I give writers a lot of slack. I suppose my main foible is texts that need tighter editing, which is pretty much a deal-breaker for me. You'd have to be a mighty storyteller to hook me in nevertheless. I mean, even Melville couldn't do it!
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My mindless reading for the plane ride (and I'm still finishing it up) is Flowers on Main. It is a just a lightweight romance novel that does not make me think too hard (or not really at all, actually)!
My FoE Secret Santa arrived while I was gone. Stewart C, the organizer, had to come to the rescue since my Santa went silent and never sent anything. In keeping with my love of cooking, I'm reading one of the cookbooks he sent, Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking. I cannot wait to try many of the recipes in here. Books like this I tend to read/page through like a novel! The other two he sent me are Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook: Over 650 recipes and Nadiya's British Food Adventure. So far reading through the GBBO one, there are a lot of ingredients that are unusually named so this will be an adventure! For instance, black treacle is molasses. I didn't know that before last night. I'm excited because a number of the recipes are for homemade crackers. I make the ones from Alton Brown and my hubby loves those. There are several varieties of crackers in the GBBO book to try too. All the recipes are by weight so it's a good thing I have a good kitchen scale.
My biggest foible, typically with romance novels, is that it annoys me to no end when the entire book and plot revolves around lack of communication. I'm a very analytic,al straightforward sort of person and that just drives me insane. No one would behave that way (or if one does, one gets what they deserve). All the problems could be solved and life would go on if the characters just spoke a couple sentences. But then there would be no book.
Also, like Sheri, something too formulaic can get me sour on an author. That has happened with Nora Roberts to some extent. I was a huge fan and still can be at times. There are a few of her novels that I've stopped and didn't finish just a couple chapters in because they didn't do it for me. With her trilogies I expect formulaic writing so I give more leeway there and enjoy them more. I guess I need to set my own expectations appropriately.
I tend to like some amount of info dumps. I think that is why I loved The Martian and The Hunt for Red October so much. They were detailed to make them so entirely realistic.
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Checking in for my last two (likely closer to three) weeks. Finally got my class finished, and survived Flu Week in my family, so we’re back to reading, at last. Sorry-typing on the app, and it’s not letting me tag books. I have Hidden Figures just barely started- I have been wanting to read it since we did it for book club, but it was on the state high school reading list this year, so library copies have been scarce. I’ve also got a library conference next week, so I’m debating what to put in line next, for that event.
Finished this week:
The Know-It-All by AJ Jacobs, following our fearless author as he reads the encyclopedia cover to cover. The trivia junkie in me loved it, but I found Jacob’s writing style to come off a bit entitled and pretentious.
Also, Orange is the New Black, by Piper Kerman, following our less-than-fearless author through a year in prison. I enjoyed the progression of this one, as Kerman starts out super entitled, and by the end of the book has an appreciation for the diversity of experiences and backgrounds of other women, plus a sense of humility for how her crimes fit into the big picture of affecting others, and how broken the “system” is. I’ve also got some personal connections to our local women’s prison, so it was super interesting to read about Kerman’s experiences, which are very different from what I’ve seen.
My writing pet peeve is profanity being used out of cultural context. I don’t mind it in something like Orange, where the context fits appropriately, but in fantasy and sci-fi it drives me nuts. You’ve got an amazingly intricate world built, often with a different culture, different norms, and histories, but the characters still use 4-letter words (or other colloquial expressions)? It’s really jarring, and feels somehow cheap and under-thought, like the author took the easy way out, creatively. Some of the best series that I’ve read have had vulgarity woven intentionally into the world-building, and it’s a touch that really bothers me when any effort in this direction is absent.
I'm also checking in after a couple weeks off. Slow reading weeks for me because we were headed on a trip to Disneyland and I was determined to sew matching shirts for the trip.... I ended up getting them all done, but it meant I didn't get anything else done. Anyway, during the trip I read Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book. It was a fun story! Love and Death are sisters who have a bet going whether or not Beast will beat Love's curse. Death realizes that Belle is falling for Beast and is concerned she might lose the bet, so she sends Belle an enchanted book hoping to lure Belle away from Beast. It's a really cute J/YA fiction and was a great distraction while waiting for rides at Disneyland.
I also finished Artemis by Andy Weir. I didn't like it as much as The Martian, but it was a good read. This book follows a smuggler who lives in Artemis, the moon's only city. She gets into a fair amount of trouble and then has to get out of it. There's action, sabotage, murder, and a little bit of love. I thought the science parts about living on the moon were really cool, but the plot fell a little short for me. Overall I liked it though.
When I came back from vacation, Origin was waiting for me at the library. I requested it 6 weeks ago or so and was #93 on the list. I was excited to see that it had come up so early. I'm only a few pages in, but so far it reads as any other Dan Brown book.
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It's been another slow reading week for me. But, this is my last week at the maternity leave coverage job I've had for the last 14 months, and then I have a break before going back to my old job, so after this week I should be plowing through some books pretty quickly.
I'm still reading Written in Red and am about 1/2 way through. This was my book flood gift and I have mixed feelings about it. Many of the reviews I've scouted says it picks up after page 200, which is where I am now. I'm still really engaged in it, but I'm a little uncomfortable with how the author has appropriated elements of Native American culture to build her alternative reality, which is where I'm feeling mixed, because otherwise I'm enjoying the central story of the book and actually like the slower pacing.
For my audio book, I'm almost finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie--I'll probably be finished it today on my walk home or tomorrow on my way back in. I've enjoyed parts of this book, but don't think I'll check out the rest in the series. The main character is just a bit too unlikable for me and there is a lot of detail that makes these book longer than they need to be. I'm not against detail, but when it comes to character development, it's nice to have the author show me instead of tell me sometimes.
I'm with Susan on the lack of communication issue. Just talk to each other, already!
Hi everyone, it was a little busier reading for me.I read Beartown for the book involving a sport. It was very good, but it has a big Trigger Warning on it for being about a rape, which I didn't know when I picked it up. So, I would recommend it, if the rape element isn't a problem for you, it's really well handled. And maddening, but real.
I also listened to the audiobook of A Wrinkle in Time. I had read it in 2012 as part of my year-ish of reading female Sci-fi/Fantasy books. But, I wanted a refresher before the movie comes out. It was read by Hope Davis and was mostly good, but the way she did Meg's voice drove me crazy. It was just whiny all the time.
I also finished A Closed and Common Orbit. I had read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet a year or maybe two ago and really enjoyed it. But I hadn't picked up the second book yet. It involves a couple of characters from the first book, but it is mostly a standalone book. It was really good, if you liked the first one, you will probably like this one too.
It did contain one of the things I hate, which is when a story jumps back and forth between two characters. I know why they do it, but I generally don't like it because one thread will get interesting and then they drop it and I feel like I'm rushing through the other thread just to see what happens next in the first one.
The lack of communication issue bothers me as well, and it's overused, especially in the romance genre.
And when I run across a book, usually a Kindle book that has apparently never been looked at by anyone other than the author before being published. Not an editor, not even a well-read friend that could have picked up the homophone issues or the just weirdly written paragraphs. That's about the only thing that will have me putting a book down and not finishing it.
For this week I am starting One Good Turn. I had read the first one a while back and just found out there is a TV series version with Jason Isaacs. So I watched the two episodes that went with the first book, but can't watch more until I read the book. I'm probably also going to look into what audiobook to listen to next.
That prompt to read a book for a movie you've seen but never read the book is a challenge for me, I almost always read the book first. But, on the thread, I saw a few suggestions that might work for me.
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Have your read his other books as well: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible and Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection?
His writing style is not much different but they are also fairly amusing. Basically he did a deep dive into mind, body and soul, so to speak.
Susan- I have both of them both on my shelf and in my queue to read.
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (other topics)Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection (other topics)
Beartown (other topics)
A Closed and Common Orbit (other topics)
One Good Turn (other topics)
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Michigan decided to be a butt and dump 7 inches of snow after a week of spring-like weather, so glad to be escaping town a bit. Not that I'm heading far south, but at least it'll be sunny and above freezing in Chicago.
I didn't finish much this week, I was trying to get caught up on some of my comics. (for the record, I did NOT accomplish this). So the only book I finished was The Cruel Prince I liked it pretty well, but it's brand new so the next book probably won't be until next year, at best. sigh .I'm counting it as my book with characters that are twins.
Currently I'm reading The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.. I read somewhere that it could be considered a heist, so might count it on that prompt. If not, it'll be my book with two authors. It's good so far. I'm also amused, because usually I read sephanson's solo work. He's pretty notorious for big infodumps on subjects he researched for his novels. I personally don't mind them, but a lot of people hate his writing because of them. At one point the narrator said "If you don't know what databases are, rest assured a lengthy explanation of what they are and how they work will not further the story at all. Go look it up yourself." Which I'm guessing is Nicole slapping Neal on the wrist saying "stop. we're not putting that in." It's also probably why this book is under 800 pages instead of over 1000 like his last few, haha.
How's everyone's reading going?
I don't have a handy question prepared this week, so I'll wing it.
Do you have certain writing foibles that you normally don't like, but are willing to forgive in certain books or authors because you love them?
As I mentioned, Stephanson is king of the info dump. Normally I don't like that kind of thing, I'll skim through chunks of other books if I find they're being tediously detailed. But I love his writing and his stories, so I'll sit there and absorb the convoluted gaming culture of gold farming in the middle of everything else going on. I also normally don't like series that are really formulaic but i'll still buy all of the Argeneau vampire romances by Lyndsay Sands. Even when I'm annoyed at them, I still just keep reading.