Jon Reading Books > Recent Status Updates

Haven't had much time to read lately, but this is a brilliant book. The antagonist is extremely compelling. His lack of moral grayness is made acceptable by the subtlety of his evil. And the colorful cast keeps things fresh.

Dickens' prose is so rich and layered, but not in a way that feels too fluffy. For me, he never approaches bloat—although I've heard that accusation of his work many times before.

The story, however, is a little bumpy. The pacing gets a little too hitchy at times, but I'm enjoying some of the characters quite a bit. And the setting is incredibly compelling to me, someone fascinated by Victorian England.

Just superb stuff. Simmons is great writer who's not afraid to be super weird, and I love that.

I'm attempting to give this one another shot with fresh eyes considering the release of the recent season on Amazon.

Frankly, it's not going well, but hopefully I'll bludgeon my way through some of the shallow worldbuilding and wooden prose to get to some better stuff ahead.

I remember liking the earlier books. Did this one really drop so far in quality, or are my standards really that much higher now?

Simmons' depiction of scurvy is some real body horror.

The older and more familiar with everyday life I become, the more I appreciate the absolute weirdness great writers are capable of producing.

Quite enjoying these characters now that Simmons has begun to dig into them a bit.

I swear I'm not intentionally trying to maintain a 3.00 review score average.

Goodreads keeps doing weird crap to my reviews (merging them with other reviews, deleting them at random, etc) so I'll be slowly logging them into an independent blog site as well as posting them here.

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The skillful way in which Simmons breaks up his pacing with different styles, modes, and settings makes this a joy to read thus far. The chapters aren't short, but neither do they ever seem to go on for too long.

Off to a great start.

Ah, so this is where Stephen King's style sprang from.

I can't decide whether I love this book for its imaginative, rambling style, or hate it because it can't seem to stay focused on telling its story for more than a paragraph at a time.

This is my first Bradbury and I'm finding it absolutely hypnotic. Is all of his writing like this? Poetry + Prose = Prosetry? Will have to grab Farenheit 451 pretty soon.

Shirley Jackson is brilliant.

Setting this one down until November to get into some more spooky, Halloween-y books!

Almost done. This is a heavy one. Thoughts—

The good: Deep, vivid, genuine characters; suspensefully written cat-and-mouse; amazing setting (St. Petersburg in the midst of summer).

The bad: Jagged pacing (big chunks of philosophizing jammed into dialogue), why does Sonya even like Raskolnikov? Desperation to escape life as a prostitute? Because he gave her money for Marmeladov's funeral? Doesn't feel 'earned'.

How are these even remotely close? A classic, tragic short story by Mark Twain versus whatever pulpy nonsense "Doomwar" is?

What's wrong with Goodreads algorithm?

So excited for my first dip back into this world since 2012. I don't often read new releases on day one—but I'll make an exception for Joe Abercrombie, whose work I've adored in the past.