-
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin Published: 1825–1832 (serialized), 1833 (single volume) Translated by: James E. Falen (from Russian, 1990) Narrated by: Stephen Fry Length: 04:21 I can’t remember where I found the link, but I came across Fry Reads Onegin a while back and knew I had to download it. Stephen Fry narrates the 1990 translation of Eugene Onegin, and it’s available to download for free. I didn’t know anything about the poem, but I will listen to anything narrated by Fry, so I decided to give it a try. I read after listening to this that it’s the origin of the Onegin stanza (aBaBccDDeFFeGG), which did jostle some distant…
-
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Published: 2012 Length: 304 pages Clay Jannon is a recent college graduate in San Francisco. He worked for a short time as a web designer at a start-up that unfortunately went under. He wanders into a dark and dusty bookshop on a whim one day and lands a job on the night shift. The bookstore turns out to be even stranger than it looks. The owner is very secretive, there’s a whole section of books that Jannon’s not allowed to read, and most of the clientele seem mildly insane. His curiosity soon gets the better of him, however, and he finds himself very…
-
Dracula
Dracula by Bram Stoker Published: 1897 Narrated by: Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren, Susan Duerden, John Lee, Graeme Malcolm, Steven Crossley Length: 15:28 Told entirely through written correspondence and journals, the story first follows Jonathan Harker as he visits Count Dracula in Transylvania to assist him in a real estate purchase in England. The first third of the book is him slowly learning more and more about what Dracula is, and I absolutely loved this section. Both the initial feeling of Harker being in a foreign land at the beginning and the pacing of how Dracula’s true being was revealed were both perfect. I was hooked from…
-
Top Ten Most Read Authors
If you click on ‘My Books’ in Goodreads and have a look at the bottom of the left hand menu, you can see a link to your most read authors. I thought instead of listing the top 10, I’d break it down by number of books read. I excluded comics for this, as they tend to skew the numbers. 23 – Terry Pratchett 14 – Robert Lynn Asprin, Christopher Moore 9 – Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Robert Jordan 8 – Robin Hobb 6 – Chuck Palahniuk 5 – William Shakespeare, John Scalzi, George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, John Wyndham 4 – Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Coupland, Stephen Fry, Margaret Weis 3…
-
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield Published: 2013 Length: 304 pages When Chris Hadfield was commander of the International Space Station, he managed to bring back that childhood fascination of space that some people forget as they grow older. He was the first astronaut to really make use of social media to show the amazing sights of space travel – he took beautiful photos of the earth from orbit, he made HD videos to show the trials and wonders of living with no gravity, he held live Q&A sessions with elementary schools (it would have blown my mind as a kid, and still would, to video…
-
The People Look Like Flowers at Last
The People Look Like Flowers at Last by Charles Bukowski Published: 2007 Length: 320 pages This is one of Bukowski’s posthumously published poetry collections, and I always feel odd reading something that an author wasn’t alive to see published. Where were these found? Why were they previously unpublished, and what if he didn’t want these released? He mentions in a couple of his poems that he wrote multiple a night and then tossed the ones that didn’t work. Are some of these those failures? Were any editorial changes made? I’d even hate the idea of someone publishing a silly blog post without my consent, and this is a book of…
-
The Minute by Charles Bukowski
“I am always fighting for the next minute,” I tell my wife. then she begins to tell me how mistaken I am. wives have a way of not believing what their husbands tell them. the minute is a very sacred thing. I have fought for each one since my childhood. I continue to fight for each one. I have never been bored or at a loss what to do next. even when I do nothing, I am utilizing my time. why people must go to amusement parks or movies or sit in front of tv sets or work crossword puzzles or go to picnics or visit relatives or travel or…
-
January in Review
Books Acquired: Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Saga, Volume 4 by Brian K. Vaughan Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund Books Read: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield Dracula by Bram Stoker Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin This was a quality reading month. I really enjoyed every book, and it was an interesting mix as well – Astronaut memoir, classic horror, contemporary mystery (ish), and a classic Russian novel in verse. The more I read about reading, the fewer disappointments…