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The Carousel Returns: Paul reads at least 250 books in 2019 probably
Book #186
Monstress #23, written by Marjorie M. Liu and illustrated by Sana Takeda
28 pages
Read 1st July 2019
Why I read it: It's Monstress!
Rating: **** - Now this is more like it.
Book #187
Doctor Who: Old Soldiers, by James Swallow
1 hour, 19 minutes = 79 pages
Listened to 1st to 2nd July 2019
Why I listened to it: Listening to the Companion Chronicles for Doctor Who that are available on Spotify.
Rating: *** - I think I might have been expecting something more profound than I actually got. Then again it doesn't help that the Pertwee years aren't some of my favourites, though I do like more than I thought I would have.
Book #188
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol. 1: After Life
128 pages
Read 2nd to 4th July 2019
Why I read it: Reading more of my Doctor Who comics.
Rating: *** - Comes across a little too glib than it's likely going for (then again I read this really quickly), but still exceptionally promising. Art looks great, I dig the characters, the Eleventh Doctor is kind of surprisingly fun to be around, and what this run is attempting to do looks supremely promising.
Book #189
Doctor Who: The Catalyst, by Nigel Fairs
1 hour, 19 minutes = 79 pages
Listened to 4th to 5th July 2019
Why I listened to it: Listening to the Companion Chronicles for Doctor Who that are available on Spotify.
Rating: ** - Blah. I've never been that huge on Hinchcliffe, and this just took a left turn into dullness partway through and never came back. Easily the weakest of the first four Companion Chronicles.
Book #190
City of Brass, by S.A. Chakraborty
544 pages
Read 1st to 5th July 2019
Why I read it: Chakraborty was a finalist for this year's Astounding Award for Best New Writer.
Rating: *** - Good until it's not. Starts out really promisingly with a vibrant historical Cairo, then that gets ditched for what's admittedly also a vibrant and fantastical setting. This isn't really a problem, but what is a problem is that it takes our heroes hundreds of pages to get to that other setting, and then they don't really do a whole lot once they're there. This is an introductory book in one of its very worst forms, where things really only kick off until the end and it at least seems like the next book should be interesting. Unfortunately, the ending also goes completely off the rails in terms of tone and violence, which wouldn't be a big problem either, except that this comes across as a book that was conspicuously mis-sold to us as adult fantasy (not that YA fantasy is bad, but this struck me as more that than not), and the hard pivot comes across as an attempt at course correction that fails woefully. Not to mention that one of the main characters is a terrible person and really not the kind of person one of the other main characters should be having a romance with, which - again - isn't a problem, except the book doesn't seem to be aware of that. The third main character though, he's pretty cool.
Book #191
The Call, by Peadar Ó Guilín
320 pages
Read 7th to 9th July 2019
Why I read it: The follow-up was a finalist for this year's Lodestar, and I hadn't gotten around to the first one before now.
Rating: **** - Quite a lot better than I was expecting honestly. Had some delightful soupcons of queerness and managed to leaven the overriding grimness of its setting with appealing characters and some solid commentary on how a militaristic nationalistic society would affect everyone living under it, and even those responsible in some way for enacting it. Ó Guilín's foreshadowing game is on point, it gets pleasingly downright conceptually weird in places, and the switching back and forth between the Call and Ireland and the different perspectives is handled very well. Definitely worth reading.
Book #192
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol. 2: Serve You
128 pages
Read 6th to 9th July 2019
Why I read it: Continuing to read my Doctor Who comics.
Rating: **** - The best the Doctor Who comics (that I've read) have ever been. All three companions are given time to shine, the Doctor is allowed to make cataclysmic miscalculations of judgment and have to work to regain his friends' trust, I guess the art is also pretty good, and the resolutions are properly powerful. I didn't think the comics were capable of being this good, and granted this should probably set more of a baseline for them rather than being a watermark, but the Titan line has made a genuine compelling case for its existence at last.
Book #193
Fullmetal Alchemist: Volume 14, written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa
192 pages
Read 12th to 14th July 2019
Why I read it: More Fullmetal Alchemist.
Rating: *** - This didn't quite work for me, and I'm not sure why. Ed and Al finally meeting Father was familiar from the show but still charming in the way that Father is quite happy to see them and wants them to go free for now. To be honest the description from the page isn't giving me much to go on. Though now that I've looked at the description for Volume 15 I do remember Volume 14 ending at kind of an awkward cutoff point, the kind that you wouldn't question reading month to month or all together, but one that sticks out a little as an end-of-volume marker.
Book #194
Dread Nation, by Justina Ireland
315 pages
Read 10th to 14th July 2019
Why I read it: It was a finalist for this year's Lodestar, and I'd been wanting to read it most of last year but it had never came out over here.
Rating: **** - An awkward book in some ways - I just wish I could remember those ways, the ones I have are mostly vague in hindsight. Characters disappear for hundreds of pages before coming back conveniently near the end, the action starts out in one location for a good chunk of time before suddenly shifting to another (admittedly well-realised and resonant) setting, and the plot seems to unfurl in fits and spurts more than anything else. Nonetheless, the alternate historical setting is fascinating, the characters and their bonds are great to be around, the book is very good at suggesting parallels with the world of today without being too overt about it, and I can't hate a book that ends with (view spoiler). This is a book where I'm more than happy to admit I underestimated it; apparently its winning the Locus was no fluke. It came low enough down my final Lodestar ballot, but if I'd reread the entire final six it's possible I might have rated it higher, and I am unambiguously happy I read it.
Book #195
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol. 3: Conversion
136 pages
Read 10th to 15th July 2019
Why I read it: Continuing to read more of my Doctor Who comics.
Rating: *** - Continues in the fine tradition set up by Volume 2, but for whatever reason doesn't manage to live up to it. Still a perfectly enjoyable and somewhat successful collection of comics though.
Book #196
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
385 pages
Read 14th to 17th July 2019
Why I read it: It was a finalist for this year's Lodestar, and I had kind of wanted to get around to it last year but never managed to work up the interest.
Rating: *** - It's ... fine. For most of it it's just a mix of your basic Faerie court book and one of your basic high school stories, which I'm admittedly not sure if it's been done before, but in any case for me Black failed to bring anything new to the table with it. It also probably didn't help that the book starts with the brutal murder of the main character's parents, such that I'm not sure making her murderer and I guess surrogate father ambiguous and conflicting was really a good idea. Things warm up after a while as Jude gets drawn into the intrigue and has to make alliances and the twists start happening, but even here things fall more than a bit flat, as I rarely got the sense that the writing was being emotionally honest. Like, I hate feeling like this, but Jude would think something, and more often than not, I would just go "No. I don't believe you. I don't think the text has done enough to convince me of this." The book isn't impenetrable as such, but for a long time it was harder than it should have been to work out what Black was trying to do, and even now I'm still a bit unsure. So, solid enough, and I'm admittedly intrigued as to where it's gonna go next, but I don't think I'm intrigued enough to continue.
Book #197
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol. 4: The Then and The Now
128 pages
Read 16th to 19th July 2019
Why I read it: Continuing to read more of my Doctor Who comics.
Rating: *** - Appealing, but also possibly messy? Again, this is a Doctor Who comic that makes for a perfectly fun and solid time without ever really wowing me.
Book #198
Fullmetal Alchemist: Volume 15, written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa
192 pages
Read 19th to 22nd July 2019
Why I read it: More Fullmetal Alchemist.
Rating: **** - Very good. We get a fairly comprehensive overview of the War of Ishbal and how it affected all the familiar characters who took part in it, and it's affecting and kind of devastating.
Book #199
Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman
538 pages
Read 21th to 24th July 2019
Why I read it: It was a finalist for this year's Lodestar.
Rating: **** - Genuinely one of the most, if not the most, psychologically mature YA books I've ever read, at times to staggering, stunning effect. Tess is a character that I feel like even people who hate YA heroines would like, someone who's been dealt an unambiguously rough break, but also someone who has a propensity for self-destruction with honest-to-goodness character flaws that hold her back. The book starts out fairly slow - I mean the book is slow in general, but it takes a while for this to become a virtue. Once it does though, it gradually unfolds into this mostly low-burn tale of redemption, the conflicted legacy of religion, the appeal and limitations and necessity of simple (or should I say "simple") observation and concrete action, overhauling old stories and learning new stories in order to make your own, and the importance of doing right by the people you love and who love you.
Weirdly enough the book at times reminds me of nothing so much as Becky Chambers's The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Tess of the Road arguably has more plot, or at least more evenly distributes it than Chambers's book does, but they both seem to share an ethos that they are largely going to be about discovering a world (and Hartman's world, to give it credit, is built with enough unorthodox nuts and bolts that it manages to stand out), the main character discovering herself, and that they're going to have a bunch of fairly long dialogues where the characters hash each other out. They're not really that similar, but I do guess I think YA fantasy is better for having Tess of the Road the same way sci-fi is better for having Chambers. Perhaps even more so.
The book does have some flaws, it has to be said. Honestly they're fairly minor, but they did affect my enjoyment some bit. As I said the book takes some time to ramp up, and it also took me some time to accept the legitimacy of Tess's feelings about her situation. I'm also not entirely sure why Tess disguises herself as a boy - there is some commentary on the differences between the sexes, but possibly not enough to justify it. It's kind of old hat, y'see. Though I will grant that there is a sense that Tess is simply trying to get as far away from herself as possible. The ending is also a little misjudged, I don't really have a problem with the major revelation as such, it cements that Tess still has a long way to go. It's more that Tess seems to bounce back from it very quickly and it makes the concluding paragraphs somewhat sunnier than I think they should be. I'm also not convinced that the sequel will be as good, that Hartman can essentially do it again, but that's not really on this book, and we'll see. In the meantime, Tess of the Road is searingly, astoundingly good, and demands your immediate and continuous attention.
Book #201
Shimmer #46, edited by E. Catherine Tobler
157 pages
Read 25th to 26th July 2019
Why I read it: It was a finalist for this year's Hugo for Beset Semiprozine, and Tobler was a finalist for this year's Hugo for Best Professional Editor - Short Form.
Rating: **** - The appeal wears a little by the end and the quality (understandably, especially since this was an extra-large issue) isn't always consistent, but dang, I really liked this. It really felt like the magazine had cultivated its own particular and unique and somewhat ... slipstreamy and transitory aesthetic, and one that I'm sad I didn't discover sooner. The author interviews after every story were also immensely appreciated. This and Tobler got done dirty at the Hugos this year, and I hope it was due to unfamiliarity instead of contempt.
Book #202
Doctor Who: Max Warp, by Jonathan Morris
1 hour, 12 minutes = 72 pages
Listened to 29th July 2019
Why I listened to it: Big Finish put some Eighth Doctor stuff up for sale, so I got the second series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures except for the ones I was assured weren't that good.
Rating: *** - Enjoyably pokes fun at Top Gear and rattles along nicely... until the end. Then it just gets kind of awkward and falls into a rut of explaining a bunch of stuff that happened just off screen. So pretty good, but not great.
Book #203
Doctor Who: Brave New Town, by Jonathan Clements
1 hour, 12 minutes = 72 pages
Listened to 1st August 2019
Why I listened to it: Still listening to The Eighth Doctor Adventures Series 2.
Rating: *** - Sets up some interesting situations and plays with some decent themes, but it doesn't add up to enough for me to be happier with it.
Book #204
Citadel of Dreams, by Dave Stone
112 pages
Read 31st July to 1st August 2019
Why I read it: Continuing to read the Telos Novellas.
Rating: *** - Fascinatingly distinct in terms of its setting, and notable for shaking things up radically with its narrative voice and approach. I'm not completely into what it's doing, but I respect it. For me though it just about fails to come together cohesively (which I think you can do and still have it be strange), and while the ending isn't bad exactly, I get what it's going for, but it left me slightly on the wrong side of it. For my introduction to Dave Stone I probably picked the wrong book, but that's just how I rolled the dice. His VNAs should hopefully be good, if/when I ever get around to those.
Book #205
Strange Horizons July 2019, edited by Vanessa Rose Phin
231 pages
Read July to August 2019
Why I read it: More Strange Horizons.
Rating: ****
Book #207
Doctor Who: Grand Theft Cosmos, by Eddie Robson
1 hour, 15 minutes = 75 pages
Listened to 2nd August 2019
Why I listened to it: Still listening to the second series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Rating: **** - Not as good as Robson at his best, it's a bit scrambled and sometimes casts around without a clear purpose. But it's a lot of fun, more fun than the second series has been so far, the setting is a nice confluence of clashing elements, and the callbacks to Series 1 are charming, albeit not adding up to that much. I'd definitely recommend it.
Book #208
Fullmetal Alchemist: Volume 16, written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa
192 pages
Read 4th to 5th August 2019
Why I read it: More Fullmetal Alchemist.
Rating: ***
Book #209
Doctor Who Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors, edited by John Binns
202 pages
Read 2nd to 5th August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading Doctor Who books.
Rating: *** - A quintessential ups and downs book, with a bunch of middle. Some stories are really quite good, and some are just sort of all right, and some are downright lacking. Interesting as a curiosity, but probably not worth reading cover to cover.
Book #210
A Guide to Japanese Grammar, by Tae Kim
350 pages
Read 15th March to 5th August 2019
Why I read it: Attempting to get into Japanese grammar.
Rating: **** - A really strong and comprehensive guide, it really does lay it all out for you. The problem with that is that it sometimes doesn't so much more than that, it packs the pages with tiny kanji and whole lists of suitable verbs and can get extremely technical, expecting you to cope with quite a lot of information. In fairness this isn't so much a problem with the book, more that there was a fundamental but not insurmountable incompatibility between it and me. Essentially, I wasn't ready for it at this time of my life, about halfway through I dropped off massively and just ended up pushing through out of a sense of wanting to get it done. Reading it on my Kindle didn't help, I now recognise. I absolutely do want to come back to it at some point when I'm in the right mood, but for now I've picked up Genki and Bunpro and that seems to be going much better.
Book #211
Doctor Who: The Zygon Who Fell to Earth, by Paul Magrs
1 hour, 14 minutes = 74 pages
Listened to 5th August 2019
Why I listened to it: Listening to more of the second series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Rating: **** - A little more wonky than I'd like, and a little more wonky than this rating arguably reflects. Still, a gentle and more than solid story of redemption and family history.
Book #212
Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman, by Laura Kate Dale
192 pages
Read 2nd to 5th August 2019
Why I read it: Laura Kate Dale mentioned it during hbomberguy's stream for Mermaids at one point, and I thought "Yes. I need that."
Rating: **** - Has what feel like straightforward first-book errors, it tends to repeat itself a lot in its word choices and can sometimes be stark in its sheer straightforwardness. Which admittedly isn't necessarily always a problem. That said, this is a refreshing and comprehensive memoir that speaks from experience, and Dale is open about her struggles and clear-eyed in suggestions and diagnosing a better future. Definitely worth reading.
Book #213
Doctor Who: Sisters of the Flame, by Nicholas Briggs
1 hour, 6 minutes = 66 pages
Listened to 6th August 2019
Why I listened to it: Finishing up the second series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Rating: *** - Gets bogged down in drawing on the past and pitching towards the epic, but enlivened considerably by Lucie's bond with an alien centipede cop.
Book #214
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Archives Omnibus Vol. 1
336 pages
Read 2nd to 7th August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading my Doctor Who comics.
Rating: *** - A glorious grab bag of stories, making terrible decisions and having incredible ideas from one to the next. Nothing essential, but continues in that fine tradition of the Eleventh Doctor stories going down better than the Tenth Doctor ones. I'd recommend checking it out.
Book #215
FIYAH Literary Magazine: Year Two, edited by Justina Ireland, Troy L. Wiggins, and Davaun Saunders
456 pages
Read 23rd July to 8th August 2019
Why I read it: It was included in the Hugo voter packet this year.
Rating: *** - Somewhat disappointing, truth be told. I came into it with pretty high hopes, but the better stories for the most part were kept towards the end, and the quality in general was to the lower end of the magazines I've read. The stories that were good were very good, but there weren't enough of them, and the stories that weren't good were more inert than anything else. The poetry overall however was universally strong. I didn't feel great about putting this last in my final six, but I felt it was warranted, and its relatively low showing was reasonable enough, considering the competition.
Book #216
Doctor Who: The Vengeance of Morbius, by Nicholas Briggs
1 hour, 7 minutes
Listened to 8th August 2019
Why I listened to it: Finishing up the second series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Rating: *** - This on the other hand collapses near-completely into the past and the epic and has very little to offer someone like me, who doesn't really care about Morbius and wasn't listening at the time so I can get worked up about the cliffhanger. Gets by pretty much on acting and sound design, and not really to be recommended. Stick with the first series? Probably for the best.
Book #218
Monstress #24, written by Marjorie M. Liu and illustrated by Sana Takeda
25 pages
Read 9th August 2019
Why I read it: Continuing with Monstress.
Rating: **** - Monstress Volume Four comes to a suitably odd and frustrating end. It's been a weird volume tbh. It might be that Liu is moving into bolder and more ambitious, ambiguous territory, but a good chunk of it was lost on me. And it might have been that I read this issue by issue where I read the first three volumes in trade. We could also just be well deep into the flow of things now and I don't remember enough of what's been going on before any particular point. I'll keep reading, but I might need to switch back to trades and read this volume again.
Book #219
Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family, by Amanda Jetté Knox
288 pages
Read 8th to 10th August 2019
Why I read it: I first heard about Knox when one of my Internet acquaintances replied to her Tweet, then at a later point I started reading her blog and crying at work, so I figured I needed to get the book after that.
Rating: **** - Straightforward enough, but that's no bad thing. It speaks from the heart. Knox is really good at giving the different stories space, so while the book is about herself as well, it's never at the expense of her wife or her daughter. It doesn't go into certain aspects as much as I would've liked, but it feels kind of churlish to talk about that, considering how well it goes into others. The thing I'd say I'd appreciate most is how honest Knox is, or appears to be. She isn't afraid to admit that she didn't always have the answers or that she wasn't sure whether things would turn out the way they did. Thankfully they did turn out the way they did, and one of the many good results of that is that it made this book possible. Definitely worth reading.
Book #220
"The Migratory Pattern of Dancers", by Katherine Sparrow
33 pages
Read 12th August 2019
Why I read it: Another Giganotosaurus story.
Rating: **** - This lovely and strange mixture of capitalism in a dying world, bird men, bicycles (for some reason, but it works), and standing up and holding fast to your own when predatory forces hold the puppet strings of your life. An unexpected delight.
Book #221
Doctor Who: The Last Day at Work, by Harry Draper
40 pages
Listened to 12th August 2019
Why I listened to it: The third winner of the Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity.
Rating: *** - Has a gloriously audacious twist, but spends a bit too much time just ambling about before that twist, and a bit too long on the twist itself. It's rather nice ambling around in fairness, but it leaves this feeling more decent than anything else. That said, I wouldn't have minded paying the typical price these go for when they're not free.
Book #222
Tales from Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
320 pages
Read 11th to 14th August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading the Earthsea series.
Rating: *** - Just kind of all right really. The stories nicely fill in gaps and serve to illuminate some of the themes of Earthsea better, but they never really sparkle like the rest of the series does, even at its weakest. Very much inessential, except for the last story, and even that isn't all that great. I'd probably like it more if I went back to reread it now that I've read The Other Wind though. I do wonder what it would be like if it had come at the start of The Other Wind, but it arguably does enough to justify being a separate story.
Book #223
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Archives Omnibus Vol. 2
336 pages
Read 9th to 14th August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading all those Doctor Who comics.
Rating: *** - Apparently I didn't like this? Maybe I put the wrong score in. It definitely didn't start out great with its... Nazi Sontarans. That said, looking through the story synopses again they seem pretty all right, though nothing special. Yeah, I'm fairly sure I put down the wrong score.
Book #224
A Universal History of Iniquity, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley
128 pages
Read 15th August 2019
Why I read it: Finally starting to read the Collected Fictions of Borges.
Rating: *** - Nice and fast and pulpy, and I definitely liked reading it. It's all very straightforward though, and I didn't exactly get much out of it. You're better off saving this one until later, that is if you ever read it at all, and it'd be fine if you didn't either.
Book #225
Doctor Who Short Trips: The Muses, edited by Jacqueline Rayner
192 pages
Read 9th to 16th August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading Doctor Who books.
Rating: ***
Book #226
Doctor Who: Short Trips - Volume 1
2 hours, 15 minutes = 135 pages
Listened to 13th to 16th August 2019
Why I listened to it: Listening to some Big Finish stuff I got from Humble.
Rating: **** - Now this is the really good stuff. Not all of it works - that Eighth Doctor story at the end is just too grimdark - but the rest runs the gamut from cute and charming (A True Gentleman, The Wings of a Butterfly by Colin Baker himself) to outright stunning (Rise and Fall), and makes sure to get in the properly anarchic madness as well. Where else would you get a story about the TARDIS turning into a whale or whatever the heck A Stain of Red in the Sand was?
Book #227
"This Strange Way of Dying", by Silvio Moreno-Garcia
18 pages
Read 16th August 2019
Why I read it: Still looking back through Giganotosaurus's back catalogue.
Rating: *** - I wanted to like this one more than I did. Sets up a fresh and spirited tale of death and defiance, but the pieces don't fit together like I'd like them to. Not bad though.
Book #228
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
288 pages
Read 16th to 20nd August 2019
Why I read it: It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction years back.
Rating: **** - I liked this a lot, and I'm not entirely sure why. It wasn't astounding, exactly, but there was something genuinely considered and reflective about it. About people trying to get through to each other and understand each other, and the travails of living in an ordinary and turbulent world. It hasn't really stuck with me, except to some degree, and it should have.
Book #229
A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett
298 pages
Read 17th to 21st August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading Discworld.
Rating: **** - Not quite as straightforwardly brilliant as The Wee Free Men, but still very enjoyable. Has a lot of kooky characters and situations, with a strong core of intent underpinning it all.
Book #230
Hot Dog Taste Test, by Lisa Hanawalt
176 pages
Read 19th to 21st August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading Discworld.
Rating: **** - Takes a little while to get into, in terms of Hanawalt's sense of humour, the overall structure - the mix of outright whimsy and the moments where it gets less seemingly fictional - but once I did this was a delight. Bold and sharp colouring and design, a somewhat scattershot but still strangely cohesive focus on food and housing and relationships, it all adds up to a fine time all around. Plus surprise Tuca and Bertie!
Book #231
Doctor Who: Short Trips - Volume 2
2 hours, 14 minutes = 134 pages
Listened to 19th to 23rd August 2019
Why I listened to it: Listening to more Doctor Who audios that I got from Humble.
Rating: *** - All much of a muchness. The highlights are pleasingly weird and melancholy, but not to the extent that they were in Volume 1. The rest of the stories... a few of these I don't even remember. It'll always be a delight to listen to these voices, but sometimes what they're saying isn't necessarily worth it.
Book #232
Hunger's Truth, by AJ Fitzwater
? pages
Read April 2019
Why I read it: It was a new Giganotosaurus story.
Rating: **** - I don't remember much concrete about this story, but I do remember liking it a lot. Quite nasty though, I will say that.
Book #233
Nightdreamers, by Tom Arden
112 pages
Read 23rd August 2019
Why I read it: Still reading the Telos Novellas.
Rating: *** - Kind of a big mess and a little overly obvious in where it draws its inspiration from, but still somehow charming. The Third Doctor is probably the perfect Doctor to throw into this, partly just because of how much he clashes with the whole thing. It's hardly essential, but I'm still glad I read it.
Book #234
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 17, written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa
192 pages
Read 24th August 2019
Why I read it: More Fullmetal Alchemist.
Rating: **** - Absolutely delightful.
Book #235
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 18, written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa
192 pages
Read 25th August 2019
Why I read it: More Fullmetal Alchemist.
Rating: *** - I'd need to check and see why I didn't like this one as much tbh.
Book #236
Cells at Work! Volume 1, written and illustrated by Akane Shimizu
192 pages
Read 24th to 26th August 2019
Why I read it: I got it in a Humble Bundle.
Rating: **** - I'm surprised by how much I liked this. It's a bit of a weird sell, and it spends a lot of time repeating biological facts, but in fairness the repetition helps to bed them in, and I definitely needed it! The art is legitimately quite nice; I thought it'd be sunk once it stopped using coloured pages, but the character designs are distinct enough that you're never stuck wondering what cell type a certain character is supposed to represent, the action is generally clear, and the backgrounds are not standout but do a very good job of depicting the conceptualised body as a proper society. The tone of the whole thing is also quite nicely handled, striking a balance between being standardly but charmingly cute and sometimes absurdly violent. Would definitely recommend checking it out!
Book #237
Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley
179 pages
Read 23rd to 26th August 2019
Why I read it: Continuing to read my copy of Jorge Luis Borges's Collected Fictions.
Rating: **** - Pretty much as good as advertised. A head spinning mix of mind games, philosophical exercises, and stories that you know what, really did leave me thinking differently for a while. It'd be interesting to go back and see what I'd think of it now that I've read more Borges, considering that a lot of his usual motifs presumably first show up here if they don't show up in The Aleph, but looking at the description I'm continually going "I remember that! Wow!" Tell you the truth looking at the rest of the Borges books I've read I wouldn't say anything else has come close. Admittedly some of this is for idiosyncratic reasons and the ratings I've given some are a little harsh, but I would say that for now Fictions is definitely the pinnacle. It's very good.
2025 Reading Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 23 (other topics)Touchstone (other topics)
Pokémon Adventures, Vol. 1 (other topics)
Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 22 (other topics)
Doctor Who: Energy of the Daleks (other topics)
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Book #185
Strange Horizons 2019 June, edited by Vanessa Rose Phin
244 pages
Read June to July 2019
Why I read it: More Strange Horizons.
Rating: ****