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Goodreads Reading Challenge/General Bookery


Liam

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Dark Matter is actually a Canadian show, aired on SyFy in the U.S., as were Bitten and Lost Girl.

I've never watched The Expanse. 

My favorite show on SyFy was Eureka.

I'd rather see a Vampire Files show on HBO or STARZ.

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I read Mr Mercedes by Stephen King which was cool enough for me to be interested in reading the sequel. I didn't love it but I guess the completist in me wanted to. I figured I'd space it out though so I read Underground Airlines, which was a cool premise: slavery still exists in four states in the modern USA and a former slave works as a bounty hunter that track escaped slaves. While the premise was cool, the story wasn't that amazing. Still a fun simple read though. P

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finished the Death of WCW: 10th Anniversary edition and eh. It was a bit of a slog to get through, though amusing at times to read about all the things that happened in one go. Some of the stuff I take with a grain of salt as I've never taken guys like Melzer and Alvarez at their word... and I most CERTAINLY have questions about RD Reynolds. Still.. not terrible, I'll look at the bookcase tonight and choose something.

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I read a memoir called Gamelife thinking that it was going to be about a guy's career in the 80s making those nostalgic PC games but it was about his experiences growing up, relating things in life to numbers in games, etc.

Eh. Wasn't all that great.

Moved on to book one of the Wheel of Time series. About 11 chapters in and loving it so far.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just finished 'Saturday' by Ian McEwan. It was a book given to me by a friend-of-a-friend because I joined a Whatsapp group where everyone gets randomly assigned someone else to send a book to, and I got this.

...It's really not my sort of book. At all. I think maybe 25% (at best 33%?) of it actually contained something that I would call worthwhile. It's critically-acclaimed, so after finishing it I went onto the book's wiki page to find out why, and found a lot of talk about the 'themes' etc. in the book. Fuck themes - I don't want to have to wait until page 80 of a 279 page book for anything resembling drama/threat/the main character facing a choice/anything compelling to happen. I don't want to read through six pages of what random cases this guy (a neurosurgeon) dealt with at the hospital in the prior week in the driest matter-of-fact prose without any obvious purpose. I don't want four pages in the middle of the book providing a detailed account of him going out to buy some fish. I don't want to be thinking "WHY SHOULD I CARE?" over and over again as I'm reading.

This is one of those times where I wonder if I'm just uncultured, but whatever. 

Edit: Since at least some people who actually write reviews on Goodreads appear to agree with me, below is the first few paragraphs of someone else's review that I might have written if I were better at this.

Spoiler

Short version: GOD IT WAS BORING.

Long version: You know the anecdote that a successful novelist could publish his shopping list and people would buy it? That's the case with Saturday. A chronicle of 24 hours from the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, the novel is full of his ruminations, reminiscences, all described in painful, tedious detail. McEwan fails to build an actual plot; instead you'll be sure to hear every single event, no matter how irrelevant and drawn out (there's an 18 page description of a squash game that's boring to death!). If you liked Remembrance of Things Past this book might appeal to you; Henry takes 60 pages to get out of the sheets.

The characters are all disgustingly one-dimensional; starting with Henry Perowne, the most gifted brain surgeon of his generation who plays squash and owns an awesome ride, Mercedes of course; his wife, Rosalind, the beautiful lawyer who seems to possess no negative attributes whatsoever; the hipster son, a handsome, talented blues musician; beautiful daughter who's a published poet; Henry's father who bears the incredibly pretentious surname of "Grammaticus" (he's a poet too, of course) and Henry's mom, an acclaimed swimmer (she's the most likable character in the book - maybe because she's suffering from dementia).

McEwan is not in any way gentle or subtle in presenting his own beliefs, and as he is an atheist then so is his hero. Henry doesn't believe in any supreme force, doesn't like writers who employ the supernatural, is bored with literature in general - much like the reader is bored with his ramblings. McEwan blandly uses his characters as mouthpieces, and the road to individual insight is forced and devoid of any nuance - he'll spend 20 pages describing a squash game, then go onto his rant about science or the war in Iraq, then go and describe some mundane activities again, return to rants about cultural differences and religion, break it, rinse and repeat. It's clumsy, irritating and becomes unbearable pretty quick.
Did I mention hundreds of pages about neurosurgery? Well, maybe not hundreds - it feels more like thousands. 

 

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15 hours ago, stokeriño said:

Just finished 'Saturday' by Ian McEwan. It was a book given to me by a friend-of-a-friend because I joined a Whatsapp group where everyone gets randomly assigned someone else to send a book to, and I got this.

...It's really not my sort of book. At all. I think maybe 25% (at best 33%?) of it actually contained something that I would call worthwhile. It's critically-acclaimed, so after finishing it I went onto the book's wiki page to find out why, and found a lot of talk about the 'themes' etc. in the book. Fuck themes - I don't want to have to wait until page 80 of a 279 page book for anything resembling drama/threat/the main character facing a choice/anything compelling to happen. I don't want to read through six pages of what random cases this guy (a neurosurgeon) dealt with at the hospital in the prior week in the driest matter-of-fact prose without any obvious purpose. I don't want four pages in the middle of the book providing a detailed account of him going out to buy some fish. I don't want to be thinking "WHY SHOULD I CARE?" over and over again as I'm reading.

This is one of those times where I wonder if I'm just uncultured, but whatever. 

Edit: Since at least some people who actually write reviews on Goodreads appear to agree with me, below is the first few paragraphs of someone else's review that I might have written if I were better at this.

  Hide contents

Short version: GOD IT WAS BORING.

Long version: You know the anecdote that a successful novelist could publish his shopping list and people would buy it? That's the case with Saturday. A chronicle of 24 hours from the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, the novel is full of his ruminations, reminiscences, all described in painful, tedious detail. McEwan fails to build an actual plot; instead you'll be sure to hear every single event, no matter how irrelevant and drawn out (there's an 18 page description of a squash game that's boring to death!). If you liked Remembrance of Things Past this book might appeal to you; Henry takes 60 pages to get out of the sheets.

The characters are all disgustingly one-dimensional; starting with Henry Perowne, the most gifted brain surgeon of his generation who plays squash and owns an awesome ride, Mercedes of course; his wife, Rosalind, the beautiful lawyer who seems to possess no negative attributes whatsoever; the hipster son, a handsome, talented blues musician; beautiful daughter who's a published poet; Henry's father who bears the incredibly pretentious surname of "Grammaticus" (he's a poet too, of course) and Henry's mom, an acclaimed swimmer (she's the most likable character in the book - maybe because she's suffering from dementia).

McEwan is not in any way gentle or subtle in presenting his own beliefs, and as he is an atheist then so is his hero. Henry doesn't believe in any supreme force, doesn't like writers who employ the supernatural, is bored with literature in general - much like the reader is bored with his ramblings. McEwan blandly uses his characters as mouthpieces, and the road to individual insight is forced and devoid of any nuance - he'll spend 20 pages describing a squash game, then go onto his rant about science or the war in Iraq, then go and describe some mundane activities again, return to rants about cultural differences and religion, break it, rinse and repeat. It's clumsy, irritating and becomes unbearable pretty quick.
Did I mention hundreds of pages about neurosurgery? Well, maybe not hundreds - it feels more like thousands. 

 

I feel that with McEwan's work. I know he is a good writer, I appreciate the craft of what he does, I just don't care whether I read another book of his ever again.

I did quite like On Chesil Beach, if only because of the bizarre decision to have the story's narrative driving force be the premature ejaculation of one of its characters >_>

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I'm stalled on the book I'm currently reading. I started it about 3 weeks ago, and am only slightly over halfway through. I've not been in much of a reading mood, plus I'm getting burned out on the series. Its the fourth book, I've read them all in a row, and there are three more to go. Suffice it to say, when I do finish, I'm going to move on to something else rather than read book five. And it probably won't be a mystery, unless its a short one. 

But I'm still two books ahead of schedule. 

 

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On ‎09‎/‎02‎/‎2017 at 19:54, Liam said:

@Skummy good China Mieville book?

Sorry, I only just picked up on this. Assuming this related to the short story book - it was good, but nothing mindblowing. I tend to use short stories as a bit of an intro to sci-fi/fantasy writers as they're a good way of exploring ideas without getting too bogged down in detail but, other than a few great passages, didn't find the format suited Mieville all that much.

I'm currently approaching the end of Perdido Street Station though, and it's one of the best fantasy books I've read in years. A staggering work of imagination - just one of those books that makes you take a step back and ask how someone even begins to construct such a thing. The only thing that could let it down is an unsatisfying ending - I'm a little under 100 pages from the end, and can't really fathom how it could end satisfactorily, but we shall see.

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I lied and I did a quick read of Foley Is Good because of the wrestling books discussion we had a week or so back - not as good as I remember it really but not terrible. I started on The Light Fantastic last night and I think I'll try to do a few more Discworld books in a row instead of jumping between series... they're easy reads and short enough as well.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I lied! I finished The Light Fantastic and then instantly went into The Gunslinger because apparently I can't just read through a series and need to jump around a lot. I finished Gunslinger in 2 days and have moved onto The Shadow of the Torturer which is one of the books I picked up when I was looking around for things with a Dark Souls vibe and it's also my first Gene Wolfe novel..

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been entering drawings for books ever since I opened my account, and never won anything. Heidi started an account about 2 and a half to 3 weeks after me, and won a book within 2 weeks of registering. 

I logged into my e-mail today, and found out that I won a drawing for an Advanced Reader Copy of this:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33024860-arrowood

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm finding that the books I read this year are all ok, but lacking something extra. Very few have grabbed me and kept me completely hooked outside of 'TheTruth about the Harry Quebert Affair' and 'Born To Run'. Everything else has been ok or worse.

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One thing  I don't like about Goodreads. The recommendations can sometimes be way off, or just plain `why the hell would I want to read this?' junk.

I marked a couple of cookbooks as want to reads. One was a barbecue cookbook, and the other was slow cooker recipes. So I got cookbook recommendations from both....and they were all vegetarian cookbooks. I am by no means a vegetarian. I'll occasionally eat something without meat - I'm eating a bean and jalapeno chimichanga that I microwaved as I'm typing this - but if I'm cooking lunch or dinner, the only way it has no meat is if there's none in the fridge or freezer. Or cans, since I do buy SPAM and we usually have canned chicken on hand. (I do eat home made potato soup occasionally, but rarely make it myself. And if I do, it usually has bacon in it.)

 

 

 

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