Where I am
Nov. 4th, 2009 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
technocracygirlI am three pages into P. Craig Russell's Sigfried. Sigfried is a teenage jock who deserved a spot in the Hall of Fame for jerks.
I am about seventy or eighty pages into Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. It is not as zombie-filled as I feared and I am enjoying it. I also like the brown ink. It sets the book apart.
I am one reading into Jeff Vandermeer's Finch. This is a book forwanderingfey, I think. Guys being eaten to death by fungi kind of trips me out in a not-good way.
I am one reading into Cat Rambo's Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. I am not sure how much I will like *reading* her stuff, as opposed to *hearing* it. When she read, her prose was poetry, and I have a horrible tendency not to appreciate poetry on the page. Too much reading for the story, I suppose.
I am more than halfway through Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime. It is fluffy and insubstantial, and showcases much of what is really wretched about Christie's plotting. But it's Tommy and Tuppence, whom I love. And somewhere, there is a web page that has all of the famous-at-the-time detectives that Tommy and Tuppence attempt to emulate that I don't know. (Except for Holmes and Watson, of course.) Why, look! It's the Wikipedia entry!
I am on the Eastern Front at the beginning of the War in John Keegan's aptly named The First World War. So far, it's quite good, if incredibly depressing. And it was made even more depressing by the note I heard today in Hardcore History, "Ghosts of the Ostfront I." Namely, more people were killed on the Eastern Front of WWII than died in battle in all of WWI. That's...a lot of people.
I am five chapters or so into Stefan Fatsis's A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays for the NFL. It's very well written, very crisp and concise. I was with Fatsis through trying to find a team that would let him be a paper placekicker, with him through his own training attempts. But then he got to the Broncos training camp, and I don't care anymore. I think, for me, having him be there is the peak. If I cared at all about football, I can see how my intrest would be much more rivited by what's going on behind the scenes. But I'm not, and so I don't think I'll be finishing this.
I am some pages into Age of Misrule: World's End. Like A few Seconds of Panic, I think that this one needs to go back to the library. Premise: The Age of Science is over, the Age of Magic and random crap happening to you because a god says so is back. I am a Technocrat; I like gravity. A lot. Gods and the fey coming back and f'ing over everything just because? Not so much. The universe suddenly being...other? No thank you. And England is the epicenter of it all because... No, I'm a little tired of the Anglocentric viewpoint. (Shocking, I know.) Please note that Ilona Andrews has a similar premise, and I love it. A) The characters are well-written and sympathetic, and B) The world still has rules. Humans are not playtoys or chewy snacks if they want to be other. Maybe I'm not giving this one a fair shake, but it's doing nothing for me.
I am finished with David Plotz's The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. And it is exactly as he promises. It is a breeze through the entire Tanakah, from someone who wasn't connected to G-d or his Jewish faith. And now he's still not connected to G-d, but he's a lot more connected to his faith. Maybe it wouldn't be as funny if I were a Christian, or if I was an Orthodox Jew. But I loved his whimsy, his sense of the absurd, and his awe. It's kind of like the fantastic "God Said, Huh?" which is an excerpt from Julia Sweeney's piece, Letting Go of God.
I am 600+ words into my NaNo, which is probably not going to happen. I don't really want to write stories, I want to read them. However, I may try to do more of these "book reviews as they happen" posts, because I'd like to write more about books, but I never seem to get anything written after I finish them. So, I just need to sit down and write regardless of finishing.
I am about seventy or eighty pages into Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. It is not as zombie-filled as I feared and I am enjoying it. I also like the brown ink. It sets the book apart.
I am one reading into Jeff Vandermeer's Finch. This is a book for
wanderingfey, I think. Guys being eaten to death by fungi kind of trips me out in a not-good way.I am one reading into Cat Rambo's Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. I am not sure how much I will like *reading* her stuff, as opposed to *hearing* it. When she read, her prose was poetry, and I have a horrible tendency not to appreciate poetry on the page. Too much reading for the story, I suppose.
I am more than halfway through Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime. It is fluffy and insubstantial, and showcases much of what is really wretched about Christie's plotting. But it's Tommy and Tuppence, whom I love. And somewhere, there is a web page that has all of the famous-at-the-time detectives that Tommy and Tuppence attempt to emulate that I don't know. (Except for Holmes and Watson, of course.) Why, look! It's the Wikipedia entry!
I am on the Eastern Front at the beginning of the War in John Keegan's aptly named The First World War. So far, it's quite good, if incredibly depressing. And it was made even more depressing by the note I heard today in Hardcore History, "Ghosts of the Ostfront I." Namely, more people were killed on the Eastern Front of WWII than died in battle in all of WWI. That's...a lot of people.
I am five chapters or so into Stefan Fatsis's A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays for the NFL. It's very well written, very crisp and concise. I was with Fatsis through trying to find a team that would let him be a paper placekicker, with him through his own training attempts. But then he got to the Broncos training camp, and I don't care anymore. I think, for me, having him be there is the peak. If I cared at all about football, I can see how my intrest would be much more rivited by what's going on behind the scenes. But I'm not, and so I don't think I'll be finishing this.
I am some pages into Age of Misrule: World's End. Like A few Seconds of Panic, I think that this one needs to go back to the library. Premise: The Age of Science is over, the Age of Magic and random crap happening to you because a god says so is back. I am a Technocrat; I like gravity. A lot. Gods and the fey coming back and f'ing over everything just because? Not so much. The universe suddenly being...other? No thank you. And England is the epicenter of it all because... No, I'm a little tired of the Anglocentric viewpoint. (Shocking, I know.) Please note that Ilona Andrews has a similar premise, and I love it. A) The characters are well-written and sympathetic, and B) The world still has rules. Humans are not playtoys or chewy snacks if they want to be other. Maybe I'm not giving this one a fair shake, but it's doing nothing for me.
I am finished with David Plotz's The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. And it is exactly as he promises. It is a breeze through the entire Tanakah, from someone who wasn't connected to G-d or his Jewish faith. And now he's still not connected to G-d, but he's a lot more connected to his faith. Maybe it wouldn't be as funny if I were a Christian, or if I was an Orthodox Jew. But I loved his whimsy, his sense of the absurd, and his awe. It's kind of like the fantastic "God Said, Huh?" which is an excerpt from Julia Sweeney's piece, Letting Go of God.
I am 600+ words into my NaNo, which is probably not going to happen. I don't really want to write stories, I want to read them. However, I may try to do more of these "book reviews as they happen" posts, because I'd like to write more about books, but I never seem to get anything written after I finish them. So, I just need to sit down and write regardless of finishing.
