Mike > Recent Status Updates

I guess this is better than the Coraline adaptation, in that the narration is less invasive than before. But just like Coraline, this story isn't very suitable for graphic novel format, and it doesn't help that the artwork is mediocre at best.

Challenge update: I read another two books yesterday, meaning I have eight days left (including today) to read four more books. I thought these updates were going to be a suspense-filled log of how I'm barely making a near-impossible deadline, but I'm actually doing a lot better than I thought I'd be.

This isn't bad exactly - I like the characters. But I'm not a huge fan of the artwork - it's too cluttered for me, and the gag bits ruin the serious atmosphere. (It's the same problem I had with Pandora Hearts.) And I'm not sure what I think of the story yet - the premise is sort of interesting, but Hino has yet to do anything interesting with it.

Is it wrong that I'm kind of happy my rating average just dropped below 3.40? When I started here, it was at around 3.25, but then I rated a bunch of books I read a long time ago, and it shot up to 3.50, and it's been slowly dropping since then. Idk, I'm actually really happy to have a lower rating average, for some reason.

Ughhhhhhh. I hated this arc in the anime, and it's no better here. Tsugumi's attempts at gags and romantic comedy are just pathetic. The artwork isn't great either; it's losing its sublte grace from the beginning of the series and becoming more exaggerated. The whole series is going downhill. There's no more of the passion for manga we saw in the first few volumes - the focus is now more on dumb drama.

Challenge update: I finished THREE BOOKS yesterday. I am amazing. I now have nine days left, including today, to finish six more books. Finishing this challenge on time suddenly feels a lot more possible.

So almost every single driving plot element behind the first ten books has been completely abandoned, and the story almost totally started anew. I knew this series was infamous for plotholes and unsolved mysteries, but the lack of continuity here is astounding. It's really not that bad apart from that, but it's just frustrating to me how little effort was put into it.

Rendition by Paul McAuley: 2/5 Confusing

Fright Club by Brian Hodge: 5/5 Original

In the Cloud by Pat Cadigan: 2/5 Rushed

Corpse Gas by Peter Crowther: 2/5 Confusing

Getting it Right by Michael Marshall Smith: 3/5 Meh

A Shamble of Zombies by Roz Kaveney: 3/5 Some potential

Day of the Dead by Lisa Morton: 2/5 Boring

To Serve Man by Amanda Foubister: 1/5 Unfunny

Update on my challenge:
I made a mistake yesterday - I said that I had to read a book every day, when in fact, I had eleven days to read ten books. I now have ten days (including today) to read nine books, so I guess I'm doing as good as I could expect to be doing, given the circumstances.

For Esme - with Love and Squalor: 4/5 I definitely liked the first half better than the second, but this was still strong.

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes: 5/5 Excellent characterization.

#zOmBEY by Simon Strantzas: 4/5 The Twitter format was kinda awkward, but it was actually surprisingly suspenseful.

As of today, I officially have to finish a book every single day for the next ten days in order to meet my reading challenge. Thankfully, I don't have school or work at all for the next week and a half, so I can devote a lot of time to reading, and I plan on reading a bunch of manga books right in a row, to speed things up. But it's still gonna be hella close.

Just Before the War with the Eskimos: 4/5 I literally have no idea what this story 'means', or why Salinger decided to write it, but it's still well-written.

The Laughing Man: 4/5 Interesting use of story within a story.

Down at the Dinghy: 5/5 Very powerful; probably my favorite story here so far.

ZZ Experiment Camp by John Llewellyn Probert: 4/5 A little confusing, but I liked the different character voices.

Down Among the Dead Man by Neil Gaiman and Les Edwards: 2/5 Format nonsensical, not an interesting twist on the formula of these stories.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish: 4/5 I'm still trying to figure this one out - I maybe would've liked to see a little more of Seymour's life. But it's really well-written.

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut: 5/5 An excellent portrait of nostalgia and loneliness.

Overall, there's a goddamn reason people like Salinger so much. I really like his writing style - he captures character voice in a way that few others can.

Pages from a British Army Field Manual by Guy Adams: 5/5 I really, really liked this section. The central character was endearing, and I like that it doesn't follow the general pattern that these stories have (character and their situation is established, character gets killed).

Peace Land Blood by Sarah Pinborough: 2/5 This is the most boring way they could've possibly told this story.

Hard News by Jo Fletcher: 3/5 Better

Dead Air by Paul Finch: 2/5 Confusing

Consent Form by Amanda Foubister: 3/5 Unnoteworthy

From Simon Wesley #3 by Christopher Fowler: 4/5 Interesting

The Wall of Seven by Christopher Fowler: 4/5 Well-written

From Simon Wesley #4 by Christopher Fowler: 3/5 Suspenseful

In Paris When it Sizzles by Anne Bilson: 4/5 Well-developed

Lord of the Fleas by Reggie Oliver: 3/5 Characterization was good, but it was too long - it needed to be split into multiple sections, with other stuff in between.

The Hobbs End Horror by Jo Fletcher: 2/5 Not well-written, barely relevant to the story.

From Simon Wesley #2 by Christopher Fowler: 4/5 Pretty interesting, for an infodump.

Morphogenesis by Brian Hodge: 4/5 Good characterization and story.

That was a well-written fight scene, although I predicted the ending before it happened. Overall, this is looking like a very nice ending.

GoodReads has time to change the font and organization of every page of the website, but not enough time to replace the green 'Want to Read' tabs that are completely unusable for people with certain reading disabilities.

I do like Micah as a protagonist, there' s just not much else going on. The story isn't that interesting, and Micah doesn't even seem to have much of a character arc.

Yeah, the main plot is actually pretty boring. Not a lot happening - it all just feels like padding. The weirdness of the circus has worn off, and the only reason I'm not skipping these sections is because I like Micah as a character.

Major story-telling problem here: We get introduced to the beginnings of a basic conflict in the first 15 pages, then the book switches to something that at first seems completely unrelated, set two hundred years before the main action. It's disorienting - I'm not sure what's important and what isn't.

This seems to me like an MG book that could only have any value to kids. Which just isn't an interesting reading experience for me, and it's disappointing from an author I like as much as McVoy.

Maybe if I were ten, I would find this dialogue realistic. But holy god, this is cheesy. I've read cheesy MG books before, but this is one of the cheesiest I've run into. Everything just lacks subtlety - not just the dialogue, but the characterization and the conflict as well. Obviously, MG books can't be too subtle, but I feel like they can be done better than this.

The flashbacks work so much better than the main plot. I kind of wish Lam had just focused on them.

I guess the main conflict is Micah hiding his secret from the other circus performers. The problem here is that the stakes aren't very well-established. I have no idea what will happen if the circus performers find out, and Micah never really wonders about it. We're too far in for there to be no driving force behind the action.

Tabloid Tales by Jo Fletcher: 2/5 The newspaper articles were basically just unrealistic infodumps.

From Prof. Margaret Winn by Christopher Fowler: 4/5 Not much characterization done, but it's surprisingly suspenseful in tone.

From Simon Wesley #1 by Christopher Fowler: 3/5 I didn't like this as much - it's written in the same voice as the last one, and there's less suspense.

Overall: Kinda predictable.

Boy, I was really enthusiastic about this at the onset. And it's not that this is bad or anything, it's definitely in 4-star territory it's just... I really thought this would be amazing.

Wow. I did not see that coming. I take back everything I said about the whole novel not leading up to anything. That was a really, really good twist, almost on par with Liar or We Were Liars. Almost.