Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

Only intermittently confusing as hell this time. I think I'm almost following it. Almost.

Starting again from scratch. Damn, this book is good. Complex as all hell, yet beautifully written, and captures the absurd terror of London during WWII better than anything.

Random free ebook, proving an entertaining read so far, joining the dots between various myths, legends and folktales from Ireland to India. Not so hot on other parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas mostly ignored, and China and Japan may as well not exist, but what do you expect from a book from 1870?

Decided to return to this with the new year. It's full of impressive research, and well structured - but damn is it dense with unnecessary detail. Makes it quite confusing to follow, even while describing things (like the Throckmorton Plot) that I know quite well. No idea how newcomers to the events/period would be able to keep track.

Good fun, and speeding through. Appears to be a nicely solid mix of accessibly-explained sciency-mathematically-statisticy stuff so far, so no complaints. Learning things at Christmas. Shocking.

Picked up because I liked the title, started because I wanted something whimsical, and it sounded like it would be from the blurb. Nearly put off by the "Shortlisted by Richard and Judy's Book Club" bit on the back - but promising so far. Tone and style reminds me of something I've read before and liked, but can't quite put my finger on it.

Finding this slow going. Hugely episodic, fast-paced sentences but slow-paced chapters, and barely a character to relate to or care about. Some great ideas in there (though none as imaginative as I was expecting - most I've seen done before even in my limited Sci-fi reading), but without personalising those ideas with characters that evolve a little, what's the point?

Pretty promising so far, as fantasy goes. Not your standard Tolkein rip-off, despite looking to be following the more or less standard epic fantasy main character narrative - feels more sci fi than fantasy in the world-building. Sanderson did a great job finishing off Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (the books he wrote arguably the best of the series, in fact), so I should have had more faith.

Rare that I finish a book (even a short one) in one sitting, but Gaiman has a knack for readability, pacing, and intriguing ideas. The Sussex / countryside childhood nostalgia bit probably helped too.

Still enjoying every page, taking it slow to savour it.

A very readable introduction so far. Wish I'd had it with me when I was there back in March in the place of Peter Aykroyd's uninformatively pretentious one.

Chapter 4 reminded me why I hate technical terms for grammatical units. Almost unreadable.

Good stuff so far. Right balance of humour and history (more history than humour), and very readable as a result.

Not quite as readable as the extracts, and occasionally disconcerting to read a guide to American English as a Brit, but decent so far.