Books I've read this year
Apr. 12th, 2003 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI'm eventually going to repost this to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50bookchallenge which I've been neglecting of late, but first I'm going to post it here so I'll be able to find my list on short notice next time instead of rooting through the community's calendar.
1- Deathscent (Robin Jarvis); a well-written novel in the fantasy genre, with a well-conceived background, finely crafted plotlines and likeable characters. Can't say much as I highly recommend it as an afternoon read and there would be major spoilers involved.
2- The Ill-Made Mute (Cecilia Dart-Thornton); a book which made me want to scream in frustration, because everything was excellent except for the writing, which ruined the whole thing. It's a fantasy novel, and the setting obviously had a lot of thought put into it and was incredibly elaborate and consistent (which is difficult). The characters were credible and three-dimensional, and the plot had a lot of merit. The author just seemed to feel compelled to write in that horrid pseudo-middle-English which just makes me cringe. It was also grammatically incorrect, although not many people short of English scholars would be able to tell, for what that's worth.
3- Sir À Propos of Nothing (Peter David); (can we tell I was doing holiday reading?) This was a fun romp, again in a fantasy setting, starring an unlikely hero named Apropos, son of a whore in the kingdom of good king Runcible.
4- La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes (Gaétan Soucy); roughly translated: The Little Girl Who Loved Matches too much. A bizarre, slightly twisted tale of a little girl who's convinced she's a boy. The language is exquisite, sometimes too much so the way French novels can be, the characterisation subtle, at once punitive and gentle with the two main characters. It's just a few shades short of genius, IMNSHO.
5- One Good Story, That One (Thomas King); one of my favourite collections of short stories: subtle, ironic, sarcastic, yet gentle and probing at the same time. A thoughtful yet not abusive look at how Native Americans are perceived by white people, and what has become of the tradition of oral storytelling.
6- Traitor's Purse (Margery Allingham); an Albert Campion mystery, which I always enjoy no matter how silly they are. This one reads much like any other Campion, and I can heartily recommend it to any fancier of British Detective novels.
7- The Bone Doll's Twin (Lynn Flewelling); the first in what promises to be a truly excellent fantasy series. The writing is a tad uneven, but it has moments of chilling intensity. It's the story of a kingdom condemned to plague and famine and drought as long as a man rules, but the current king is intent on having the male line inherit the throne. In a terrifying biblical parallel, he has all the daughters born into his house and the rest of the families in his line put to death. Only one wizard and her apprentice decide to seal the fate of the kingdom by saving one girl, but at a price they aren't sure they can ever fully accept.
8- Why Cats Paint (I don't remember the author offhand); people with nothing better to do than give their cats some watercolour gouache paint to play with noticed that their cats actually were capable of representational art. I found myself unable to take it entirely seriously, but at the same time had to fight the urge to head off to my local art supply shop and see if my George and my Pan-Pan could do the same thing. The last thing I need is coloured paw prints in my apartment!
9- City Magick (Christopher Penczak); recommended by a friend, it's a look at how practisers of the modern pagan/wiccan faiths which are closely in tune with nature can coexist with the urban landscape. Not for everyone, obviously, but it has some points of interest.
10- The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E. Baring-Gould); I'm hesitant about putting that as a reading, as it's more a re-reading. I go back to old books like comfort food.
11- The Life of Pi (Yann Martel); an extraordinary allegory about religion and love of life, and winner of the Man Booker Prize 2002. Highly recommend it, as it reads beautifully and on so many levels.
12- Post Captain (Patrick O'Brian); I struggled through this one. Apart from the naval battle scenes, which sprang to life under O'Brian's pen, I found the writing stilted, the characters' motivations always unclear, and the sentence structure sometimes baffling. There were leaps in logic, tremendous holes in the plot, no resolution anywhere to be seen, and events that I would classify as red herrings would it not be an injustice to the herrings to do so. In other words, it wasn't bad enough that I didn't finish it, but I wasn't impressed either.
13- A Test of Wills (Charles Todd); a masterfully crafted mystery, set in the English countryside after the end of the First World War. Apart from an ever so slightly Agatha Christie-esque ending, the book proved to show great insight into the workings of the human mind, and drew a detailed and sensitive portrait of its subject matter.
14- Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk); read it against my better judgement as I found the movie to be pretty pointless and predictable. The book wasn't much better, except that I loved the ending: the movie copped out, while the book didn't. Thus, my theory of "the book is always better than the movie" still stands.
15- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey); a re-read, and still as good as ever.
16- "Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor" (Stephanie Barron); take Jane Austen and turn her into a Victorian Miss Marple, and there you go. It works surprisingly well for such an odd premise. The author decided that Jane Austen, with her uncanny insight into human nature, would make a great amateur detective, and she does. The voice of the books, written in the first person, is dry, witty, and utterly believable. Not a very serious read, but a good one nonetheless.
17- The Deadly Percheron (John Franklin Bardin); this book begins with the lines: "Jacob Blunt was my last patient. He came into my office wearing a scarlet hibiscus in his curly blond hair. He sat down in an easy chair across from my desk, and said, 'Doctor, I think I'm losing my mind.'" Need I say more? It's an old murder mystery, but it is sheer brilliance and I will never ever stop recommending it.
18- The Last of Phillip Banter (John Franlin Bardin); the second in my trilogy. Not quite as good as The Deadly Percheron, but still really good.
19- Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly (John Frankling Bardin); a spectacular descent into madness and murder. Again, not quite as good as The Deadly Percheron, but pretty amazing still.
20- Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen); a re-read, inspired by Stephanie Barron's book. Still genius, not that you needed to be told that.
21- Masks of the Illuminati (Roert Anton Wilson); technically I shouldn't include it as I haven't quite finished it, but I don't know when I'll get back to this journal, and I know I'll have it finished by tomorrow at latest. It's another mystery (although I didn't know that when I started it), and the two amateur detectives this time are James Joyce and Albert Einstein, shortly before they're to become famous. I'll admit to being perplexed by the plot so far, which seems to be mixing in a whole lot of the Lovecraftian Cthulhu mythos in there along with a number of other occult themes and tends to jump around wildly.
:::addendum::: I got discouraged with that one and abandoned it. It just kept getting worse and worse and more and more improbable (not in a good way) and I gave up on it.
22- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (J.K. Rowling)
23- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)
24- Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
25- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)
Harry Potter has become comfort reading for me, and I can read all four books in about two days now. I kind of feel awkward including them here, but they are reading nonetheless.
26- Love Shook My Heart (varied authors); a collection of short stories about lesbian relationships. Not fantastic, but some of the stories had some interesting insights.
27- The Lady of the Sorrows (Cecilia Dart–Thornton); what a disappointment this second book of hers was for me. The writing improved, but the storytelling (for which I had liked the first book) went way downhill. I read the entire book at the Chapters bookstore so I wouldn't have to buy it (it's still in hardcover) because it really wasn't worth the money, but perversely I wanted to know the end. I won't be reading the third book in the trilogy if it ever comes out, because I honestly don't want to know what new monstrosities this author is going to come up with.
28- The Names of the Moons of Mars (Patricia Roth Schwartz); another book of short stories revolving around female relationships: mother-daughter, lesbian, friendship, what have you. Thoughtful and insightful at times, a wee bit boring and/or heavy–handed at others. Not a bad read.
29- The Black Dudley Murder (Margery Allingham); put a bunch of English people in a remote manor in the countryside, introduce an elaborately-decorated antique and exotic knife with a suitably gory myth surrounding it, then make them all play a game of "murder in the dark." There you go. Standard English murder-mystery fare, but entertaining nonetheless.
30- No Fat Chicks (Terry Poulton); non-fiction; a cogently-argued book whose basic premise is that America's current preoccupation (not to say obsession) with weight is due to what she terms the "billion-dollar brainwash" orchestrated by the dieting and food industries (owned by the same people). The book loses some of its punch due to a bit of sensationalised writing and some pet statistics that Poulton feels the need to bring up again and again and again, but it does stop to make you think, so I'd recommend it.
31- Orlando (Virginia Woolfe); brilliant stuff, not like I need to tell you. A young man grows up to the age of thirty in the middle ages, then overnight becomes a woman (no, not voluntarily). He/She then ceases to age, and lives throughout history until the 1920s. Fantastic writing, and a beautiful story about the nature of authorship.
32- Feeling Good (David D. Burns); the Founding Father of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The basic premise of CBT is that our thoughts are primarily responsible for our feelings, not the other way around, and thus by changing our "automatic," negative ways of thinking we can counterbalance many of the effects of depression. Interesting stuff, and he makes a number of very valid points. This is also a re-read.
33- The Fur Person (May Sarton); a Bildungsroman about a Cat-About-Town who finds a home with two spinsters (or lovers? it was never very clear, probably because it was written in the 60s), a name (Tom Jones), and transitions to Gentleman Cat and, finally, becomes a Fur Person. Lovely book, a quick and endearing read.
34- Traitor's Purse (Margery Allingham); another group of British nobles caught in a manor in the remote English countryside: you do the math. In true Allingham style, complete with Albert Campion to save the day when he's needed. A fun read, but not her best.
35- Game of Thrones (George R. Martin); not finished yet, but so far it's blowing my mind.
50bookchallenge which I've been neglecting of late, but first I'm going to post it here so I'll be able to find my list on short notice next time instead of rooting through the community's calendar.1- Deathscent (Robin Jarvis); a well-written novel in the fantasy genre, with a well-conceived background, finely crafted plotlines and likeable characters. Can't say much as I highly recommend it as an afternoon read and there would be major spoilers involved.
2- The Ill-Made Mute (Cecilia Dart-Thornton); a book which made me want to scream in frustration, because everything was excellent except for the writing, which ruined the whole thing. It's a fantasy novel, and the setting obviously had a lot of thought put into it and was incredibly elaborate and consistent (which is difficult). The characters were credible and three-dimensional, and the plot had a lot of merit. The author just seemed to feel compelled to write in that horrid pseudo-middle-English which just makes me cringe. It was also grammatically incorrect, although not many people short of English scholars would be able to tell, for what that's worth.
3- Sir À Propos of Nothing (Peter David); (can we tell I was doing holiday reading?) This was a fun romp, again in a fantasy setting, starring an unlikely hero named Apropos, son of a whore in the kingdom of good king Runcible.
4- La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes (Gaétan Soucy); roughly translated: The Little Girl Who Loved Matches too much. A bizarre, slightly twisted tale of a little girl who's convinced she's a boy. The language is exquisite, sometimes too much so the way French novels can be, the characterisation subtle, at once punitive and gentle with the two main characters. It's just a few shades short of genius, IMNSHO.
5- One Good Story, That One (Thomas King); one of my favourite collections of short stories: subtle, ironic, sarcastic, yet gentle and probing at the same time. A thoughtful yet not abusive look at how Native Americans are perceived by white people, and what has become of the tradition of oral storytelling.
6- Traitor's Purse (Margery Allingham); an Albert Campion mystery, which I always enjoy no matter how silly they are. This one reads much like any other Campion, and I can heartily recommend it to any fancier of British Detective novels.
7- The Bone Doll's Twin (Lynn Flewelling); the first in what promises to be a truly excellent fantasy series. The writing is a tad uneven, but it has moments of chilling intensity. It's the story of a kingdom condemned to plague and famine and drought as long as a man rules, but the current king is intent on having the male line inherit the throne. In a terrifying biblical parallel, he has all the daughters born into his house and the rest of the families in his line put to death. Only one wizard and her apprentice decide to seal the fate of the kingdom by saving one girl, but at a price they aren't sure they can ever fully accept.
8- Why Cats Paint (I don't remember the author offhand); people with nothing better to do than give their cats some watercolour gouache paint to play with noticed that their cats actually were capable of representational art. I found myself unable to take it entirely seriously, but at the same time had to fight the urge to head off to my local art supply shop and see if my George and my Pan-Pan could do the same thing. The last thing I need is coloured paw prints in my apartment!
9- City Magick (Christopher Penczak); recommended by a friend, it's a look at how practisers of the modern pagan/wiccan faiths which are closely in tune with nature can coexist with the urban landscape. Not for everyone, obviously, but it has some points of interest.
10- The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E. Baring-Gould); I'm hesitant about putting that as a reading, as it's more a re-reading. I go back to old books like comfort food.
11- The Life of Pi (Yann Martel); an extraordinary allegory about religion and love of life, and winner of the Man Booker Prize 2002. Highly recommend it, as it reads beautifully and on so many levels.
12- Post Captain (Patrick O'Brian); I struggled through this one. Apart from the naval battle scenes, which sprang to life under O'Brian's pen, I found the writing stilted, the characters' motivations always unclear, and the sentence structure sometimes baffling. There were leaps in logic, tremendous holes in the plot, no resolution anywhere to be seen, and events that I would classify as red herrings would it not be an injustice to the herrings to do so. In other words, it wasn't bad enough that I didn't finish it, but I wasn't impressed either.
13- A Test of Wills (Charles Todd); a masterfully crafted mystery, set in the English countryside after the end of the First World War. Apart from an ever so slightly Agatha Christie-esque ending, the book proved to show great insight into the workings of the human mind, and drew a detailed and sensitive portrait of its subject matter.
14- Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk); read it against my better judgement as I found the movie to be pretty pointless and predictable. The book wasn't much better, except that I loved the ending: the movie copped out, while the book didn't. Thus, my theory of "the book is always better than the movie" still stands.
15- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey); a re-read, and still as good as ever.
16- "Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor" (Stephanie Barron); take Jane Austen and turn her into a Victorian Miss Marple, and there you go. It works surprisingly well for such an odd premise. The author decided that Jane Austen, with her uncanny insight into human nature, would make a great amateur detective, and she does. The voice of the books, written in the first person, is dry, witty, and utterly believable. Not a very serious read, but a good one nonetheless.
17- The Deadly Percheron (John Franklin Bardin); this book begins with the lines: "Jacob Blunt was my last patient. He came into my office wearing a scarlet hibiscus in his curly blond hair. He sat down in an easy chair across from my desk, and said, 'Doctor, I think I'm losing my mind.'" Need I say more? It's an old murder mystery, but it is sheer brilliance and I will never ever stop recommending it.
18- The Last of Phillip Banter (John Franlin Bardin); the second in my trilogy. Not quite as good as The Deadly Percheron, but still really good.
19- Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly (John Frankling Bardin); a spectacular descent into madness and murder. Again, not quite as good as The Deadly Percheron, but pretty amazing still.
20- Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen); a re-read, inspired by Stephanie Barron's book. Still genius, not that you needed to be told that.
21- Masks of the Illuminati (Roert Anton Wilson); technically I shouldn't include it as I haven't quite finished it, but I don't know when I'll get back to this journal, and I know I'll have it finished by tomorrow at latest. It's another mystery (although I didn't know that when I started it), and the two amateur detectives this time are James Joyce and Albert Einstein, shortly before they're to become famous. I'll admit to being perplexed by the plot so far, which seems to be mixing in a whole lot of the Lovecraftian Cthulhu mythos in there along with a number of other occult themes and tends to jump around wildly.
:::addendum::: I got discouraged with that one and abandoned it. It just kept getting worse and worse and more and more improbable (not in a good way) and I gave up on it.
22- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (J.K. Rowling)
23- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)
24- Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
25- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)
Harry Potter has become comfort reading for me, and I can read all four books in about two days now. I kind of feel awkward including them here, but they are reading nonetheless.
26- Love Shook My Heart (varied authors); a collection of short stories about lesbian relationships. Not fantastic, but some of the stories had some interesting insights.
27- The Lady of the Sorrows (Cecilia Dart–Thornton); what a disappointment this second book of hers was for me. The writing improved, but the storytelling (for which I had liked the first book) went way downhill. I read the entire book at the Chapters bookstore so I wouldn't have to buy it (it's still in hardcover) because it really wasn't worth the money, but perversely I wanted to know the end. I won't be reading the third book in the trilogy if it ever comes out, because I honestly don't want to know what new monstrosities this author is going to come up with.
28- The Names of the Moons of Mars (Patricia Roth Schwartz); another book of short stories revolving around female relationships: mother-daughter, lesbian, friendship, what have you. Thoughtful and insightful at times, a wee bit boring and/or heavy–handed at others. Not a bad read.
29- The Black Dudley Murder (Margery Allingham); put a bunch of English people in a remote manor in the countryside, introduce an elaborately-decorated antique and exotic knife with a suitably gory myth surrounding it, then make them all play a game of "murder in the dark." There you go. Standard English murder-mystery fare, but entertaining nonetheless.
30- No Fat Chicks (Terry Poulton); non-fiction; a cogently-argued book whose basic premise is that America's current preoccupation (not to say obsession) with weight is due to what she terms the "billion-dollar brainwash" orchestrated by the dieting and food industries (owned by the same people). The book loses some of its punch due to a bit of sensationalised writing and some pet statistics that Poulton feels the need to bring up again and again and again, but it does stop to make you think, so I'd recommend it.
31- Orlando (Virginia Woolfe); brilliant stuff, not like I need to tell you. A young man grows up to the age of thirty in the middle ages, then overnight becomes a woman (no, not voluntarily). He/She then ceases to age, and lives throughout history until the 1920s. Fantastic writing, and a beautiful story about the nature of authorship.
32- Feeling Good (David D. Burns); the Founding Father of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The basic premise of CBT is that our thoughts are primarily responsible for our feelings, not the other way around, and thus by changing our "automatic," negative ways of thinking we can counterbalance many of the effects of depression. Interesting stuff, and he makes a number of very valid points. This is also a re-read.
33- The Fur Person (May Sarton); a Bildungsroman about a Cat-About-Town who finds a home with two spinsters (or lovers? it was never very clear, probably because it was written in the 60s), a name (Tom Jones), and transitions to Gentleman Cat and, finally, becomes a Fur Person. Lovely book, a quick and endearing read.
34- Traitor's Purse (Margery Allingham); another group of British nobles caught in a manor in the remote English countryside: you do the math. In true Allingham style, complete with Albert Campion to save the day when he's needed. A fun read, but not her best.
35- Game of Thrones (George R. Martin); not finished yet, but so far it's blowing my mind.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 01:18 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-04-12 01:20 pm (UTC)Maybe because I'm a big fan of Joyce (and can't help but respect Einstein obviously), and so having them portrayed as amateur detectives ended up getting on my nerves. ;)
Thanks for the recommendation!
no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 01:27 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-04-12 01:29 pm (UTC)It's pretty dark stuff, though (weirdness and murder and incest). You were warned. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 01:40 pm (UTC)Yes, I am weird.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 09:33 pm (UTC)Now, I've got a couple more to look for though. Thanks for the list!
Harry Potter rocks my world. Can't wait till June!
Re:
Date: 2003-04-13 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-13 08:28 am (UTC)