Tag Archives: books

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Posted by melydia on October 18, 2009 None comments

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman (unabridged audiobook read by the author): Haunting and atmospheric as usual; whenever I read any of Gaiman’s stories I immediately wish I could visit whatever location he describes. No matter how desolate or bland, he always manages to fill it with a sense of wonder and beauty. I wasn’t, however, quite so impressed with the story-poems, which struck me more like prose with awkwardly placed line breaks. I also wish I’d known so many of the stories would be from collections devoted to authors I’ve never read, such as H.P. Lovecraft. But that’s okay. Maybe someday, after I’ve read some of those stories, I’ll come back and reread these. Speaking of rereading, the final two stories, “Murder Mysteries” and “Snow, Glass, Apples”, I’d heard before on Two Plays for Voices. They’re much easier to follow in prose form. All in all, I think I prefer the other Gaiman I’ve read.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Booking Through Thursday

Posted by melydia on October 17, 2009 None comments

So I’ve decided to start taking part, at least occasionally, in another weekly book-related meme, Booking Through Thursday. (And yes, I’m well aware that it’s not Thursday.) This week’s topic is on weeding your book collection. More specifically:

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain?

Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all?

The fact of the matter is that I don’t need to weed my books. I almost never reread books, and for a lot of years, most of the books I read went straight into my mother’s annual garage sale. These days they all get BookCrossed. The only time I’ve ever done any actual weeding was once when I pulled out all the Dan Brown, Dean Koontz, Robin Cook, and any other generic thrillers I knew it would be no problem to find again someday if I really wanted to read them. And in that case, it was just a matter of reclaiming some shelf space. BookCrossing may be about releasing books, but I’ve sure ended up with a whole lot more than I ever had before joining!

I keep the few favorites that I do like to read again from time to time, but otherwise my personal library consists mainly of to-be-read books. Which is part of the reason why I don’t understand judging someone by the books they own. Most of my books aren’t ones I’ve been able to form an opinion about yet.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Posted by melydia on October 13, 2009 None comments

The Stranger by Albert Camus: This is not a good choice for audio. First off, it was four discs but only took up about two and a half (the rest was some talk on existentialism I didn’t listen to), meaning that George Guidall said “the end” almost two hours before I was expecting him to. Luckily, I had a paper copy so I reread the last few pivotal pages of the story. I could sum up the story but that’s not really the point. There’s a guy and a murder and lots of absurdity. By and large I think I enjoyed it, though it was quite slow to start. I probably would have appreciated it more as a student, with a teacher there to tell me when to pay attention. Perhaps I’ll read it again someday.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Weekly Geeks

Posted by melydia on October 12, 2009 5 comments

WG 2009-39 is about book recommendations. To be perfectly honest, most of the book recommendations I follow come in the form of books literally shoved into my hands by fellow BC in DC members. We get passionate sometimes, and more than once I’ve shown passing interest in a book, only to get a glowing “OMG you must read this”-style exclamation from whoever brought it. More often than not, I give it a try. And am rarely disappointed. I’ve come across several great authors this way, including Simon Singh, Neil Gaiman, and Catherine M. Petrini. Basically if a book looks interesting, regardless of genre, I’ll give it a shot.

Sometimes the books I read are a random find, such as the infrequent occasion when I catch a BookCrossing book in the wild, or if I happen to win it in a contest. I usually have a large number of to-be-read (TBR) books on my shelves, so it is rare indeed for me to finish my current book and have to go searching for something else to read. If I do, though, there’s always The Book Seer, Literature-Map, and Debbie’s Idea, all of which are fine tools for discovering new books and authors.

The official assignment this week involves reader participation. Since the vast majority of my readership exists solely in my head, I may have to play music to drown out the crickets, but hey, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But anyway. The assignment is to ask for recommendations, and give my own, both within a single genre. So I’m going to choose science fiction/fantasy (SFF) as my genre. Some people may protest and tell me that’s two genres, but I beg to differ. First, several popular authors write books that are difficult to categorize as one or the other (e.g., Anne McCaffrey and Christopher Stasheff), and as Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

First off, I’d love to hear your recommendations. I don’t mean stuff that necessarily aligns with my established tastes, I mean great SFF books in general. What are some titles/authors I simply should not miss?

And now for my recommendations, again in SFF. The WG page suggests I start with something like “If you’re looking for…” which could just mean narrowing it down by genre, but I’m going to narrow it down a little further. So here goes:

If you’re looking for a rowdy yarn set in the far future… Mike Resnick is your man. Most of his books are set within the future chronology laid out in Birthright: The Book of Man, but my personal favorites are Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future and the Penelope Bailey trilogy.

If you’re looking for a beautiful fairy tale… then march right up to Neil Gaiman and Stardust. This is one of the few books I’ve kept and intend to reread. I hear Neverwhere is his best novel, but I haven’t read it yet (though I do have a copy on my shelf).

If you’re looking for a powerful tale of children in an adult world… I cannot recommend Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card highly enough.

If you’re looking for hilarious satire in the guise of SFF… then you want definitely to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

If you’re looking for time travel… The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is your best bet. There are other notables in this sub-genre, but Wells tops them all IMHO.

If you’re looking for good YA SFF… I really enjoyed the Borderlands books, especially Elsewhere and its sequel Never Never by Will Shetterly.

If you’re looking for great concept stories… Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov are all excellent choices for expanding your horizons.

And finally, if you’re looking for mythology in the modern world… you’re sure to get a kick out of Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips.

So there you have it.  I’m sure I’ll missed a bunch, but this is a good start.  What glaring omissions do you spot on this page? Have you read any of these?  What did you think of them?

Most importantly: enjoy! :)

Ten Best Books Adapted to Film

Posted by melydia on October 10, 2009 None comments

Super Tremendous has rated the 10 Greatest Books Adapted into Movies. It’s hard to tell whether this is based on the greatness of the movie, the book, or the adaptation (that is, how faithful the movie is to the book). I personally love to see movie adaptations of the books I read, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy the book, so this list is right up my alley.

Caveat: I have not read/watched all of these listed, but that’s never stopped me from offering my opinion in the past.

#10 Jurassic Park: I enjoyed the movie but have not read the book. From what I hear, most of Crichton’s books read like movies anyway. (And this has been true with ones I have read: Timeline and Airframe.)

#9 Forrest Gump: Loved the movie, haven’t read the book. Heard the book was a real disappointment, actually.

#8 Breakfast At Tiffany’s: Neither read nor seen.

#7 One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: Ditto.

#6 Schindler’s List (Based On The Novel Schindler’s Ark): Great movie. Haven’t read the book.

#5 Apocalypse Now (Based On The Novle Heart Of Darkness): Thought the movie was mind-numbingly boring, and considering my dislike for maritime fiction, I don’t see myself reading the book any time soon.

#4 Goodfellas: Neither seen nor read.

#3 Jaws: Ditto.

#2 The Godfather: Finally one where I can weigh in completely! The movie was pretty good (though I hear the second one is better – one of these days I’ll get around to watching it) but the book was complete pulp.

#1 Gone With The Wind: I read this around the same time as The Godfather, during a “reading books that have been made into movies I haven’t seen” kick in early college, after which I proceeded to watch all the movies. (Another selection from this time period was Silence of the Lambs.) I actually rather enjoyed the book. Yes, Scarlet is terribly unlikeable and the African-American characters are all offensive stereotypes, but I still liked it for what it was. The movie was okay, even if they cut out most of Scarlet’s husbands and children. Not something I’d read (or watch) over and over again, but it was fun the first time around.

And there you have it. Some I’m surprised were left out: The Princess Bride (GREAT movie, kind of meh book), Lord of the Rings (great movies, reportedly great books, though I haven’t read them), Silence of the Lambs (both were excellent), the Harry Potter series (some good, some not, but decent overall), etc. What are some favorites you’d like to see on this list?

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Posted by melydia on October 9, 2009 None comments

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides: I picked this one up because I loved Eugenides’s other book, Middlesex. It certainly doesn’t have the scope of its successor, but it was a decent read nonetheless. The story takes place in 1970s Detroit. Though its focus is the five teenage Lisbon sisters who all commit suicide in the span of one year, the actual subjects are the teenage boys in the neighborhood who are obsessed with them. The narrative is in the unexpected first person plural, which actually works quite well in this instance. I’m having trouble summing up my thoughts; the story was interesting but didn’t really go anywhere. You only get to know the characters – even the boys – on the surface, never delving more deeply into motivation or real emotion. It’s a sad tale, and I enjoyed it on that level, but at the end I felt the same as at the beginning: a little puzzled, a little sad, a little apathetic.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Posted by melydia on October 4, 2009 None comments

The Hours by Michael Cunningham: Sometimes I wish books came with reading prerequisites listed on the cover. There are very few novels with which one can assume the average person will be familiar. In The Hours, I suspect it would have been rather helpful to have first read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Or be, you know, at all familiar with Woolf in the first place. Not that a quick skim of the Wikipedia plot summary wasn’t enough for me to understand the story, but I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it were I able to pick up on the subtle references to Woolf’s characters. All in all, I wasn’t too impressed with this one. It wasn’t bad; it just didn’t really pull me in at all. I didn’t care much about the characters, the depressing bits felt meaningless, and the introspection was nothing I hadn’t heard before. I suspect I might enjoy a Cunningham novel not based on another book. I’m just not sure I’ll ever get around to picking one up.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Code Book by Simon Singh

Posted by melydia on September 30, 2009 None comments

The Code Book by Simon Singh: A history of cryptography from ancient Egypt through quantum computing. My favorite parts were about WWII, with Turing and the Navajo Codetalkers. Some parts were a touch slow – cryptography isn’t nearly as thrilling as the activities associated with it – but by and large it was an informative read. My only real complaint was how long it took me to read. Though Singh’s text was thorough and readable as ever, it took me nearly a month to finish. I think I just wasn’t in the right mood for a math book.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Posted by melydia on September 29, 2009 1 comments

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: A book that appears to have been part of everyone’s childhood except mine. We had a lovely hardbound copy as long as I can remember, but I never read it until now. And it doesn’t translate well to adults. Having been written a century ago, I expected it to be dated, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so…odd. Each chapter is more or less a separate story about the same group of characters: poetic Rat, generous Mole, selfish Toad, gruff Badger, and friendly Otter. Toad has by far the most personality, what with his utter conceit and his obsession with motorcars, but he’s less entertaining than tiresome. I don’t have any issues with the idea of talking animals in general, but when they begin interacting with humans it can get a little strange. For example, the illustrations in this book show Toad at roughly half the height of an adult human – which he would have to be, given part of the storyline. Maybe I would like this book more had I grown up with it, but as it stands I just see it as a really bizarre little tale that I will most likely never read again.

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

Posted by melydia on September 26, 2009 1 comments

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card: The League Wars are over, but the struggle continues between various world powers. Someone kidnaps all the Battle School kids who served under Ender during the Bugger War. Bean alone escapes this fate. Though he must go into hiding, he seeks out the only person who can help him free the others: Peter Wiggin. Most of the story revolves around Bean and Petra, but I didn’t feel like I got to know her any better than I did in Ender’s Game. Of course, I’ve noticed Card’s difficulty with writing realistic female characters before. The continuation of Achilles’s tale was kind of interesting but not especially believable. I hear the series improves as you go along. Not that this is such a bad book – it just didn’t do much for me.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

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