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The Last Unicorn
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle Published: 1968 Series: The Last Unicorn, #1 Length: 294 pages I loved the animated version of The Last Unicorn when I was a kid. All of the films from that studio fascinated me. They also did The Flight of Dragons (my favourite) and the most frightening version of The Hobbit you’ll ever watch. They were all a bit eerie and off-putting, as the motion, the character designs, and the adult voices always felt a bit wrong to me as a kid. That was part of what made them different and interesting, though. I’m not sure how I didn’t know this, but it wasn’t…
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July in Review
Books Acquired: None. Books Read: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle Get Jiro! by Anthony Bourdain Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee I’m in a bit of a reading slump right now, so I didn’t get through a lot this month. It’s fallen down in priority, but it’s temporary. That’s just how it goes sometimes. I did finally read The Last Unicorn, which I had been meaning to get to for quite some time now, so that was great. Anthony Bourdain’s comic was on the list for years too, so that’s another one crossed off. Movies watched: Sing Street (2016) –…
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A Man Called Ove
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman Published: 2012 Narrated by: George Newbern Translated By: Henning Koch (from Swedish in 2013) Length: 09:09 (368 pages) Ove is a fifty-nine-year-old grump. He’s stubborn, angry, rude, a stickler for the rules, and someone who can become infuriated by the simplest of things. In some ways, I can related to Ove a little too well, so I found his cynical inner dialogue to be hilarious right through the novel. Through flashbacks, we learn his life story and slowly start to understand why he is the way he is. It begins with him meeting his new neighbours and immediately hating them, but as the…
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Saga, Volume 7
Saga, Vol. 7 by Brian K. Vaughan Illustrated by: Fiona Staples Published: 2017 Publisher: Image Comics Length: 152 pages Collects: issues #37–42 I had no idea the new volume of Saga was out until I saw it on the shelf, so that was a nice surprise. This series has had some ups and downs, as most do I suppose, but overall it’s still been fantastic. And honestly, even the downs haven’t been that bad, forgettable but still enjoyable to read. In this volume the group is forced to land on a war-torn comet to gather fuel. They end up staying longer than expected and allowing a local family of native…
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Authority
Authority by Jeff VanderMeer Published: 2014 Series: Southern Reach #2 Length: 341 pages The events from the first book have finished, and now the team outside of Area X are struggling to understand what happened on this last expedition. Southern Reach has appointed a new head to the department, John Rodrigues, and we follow him as he takes the job, learns about the building, the staff, and the secretive history of the Area X research. In the first book, we get to see inside Area X and the regular world outside almost seems like a mystery. In this, we’re back on the outside looking in and we get to watch…
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June in Review
Books Acquired: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry The Lady In The Van by Alan Bennett Saga, Volume 7 by Brian K. Vaughan The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller Books Read: The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope Authority by Jeff VanderMeer Saga, Volume 7 by Brian K. Vaughan A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman This was a nice, relaxing month. I probably shouldn’t have bought any books, considering the used book sale last month, but I have no regrets! The Essex Serpent is a novel that I have been hearing quite a bit about from UK bloggers and booktubers,…
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The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope Published: 1894 Narrated by: James Wilby Series: The Ruritania Trilogy #2 Length: 05:31 (208 pages) Rudolph Rassendyll is a distant cousin of the royal family of Ruritania, a fictional German-speaking country in the centre of Europe. His sister-in-law, who considers him a complete waste of space, can’t stand his resemblance to those royals because it reminds her of a century-old scandal. An illegitimate child was born in England while a prince of Ruritania was visiting, and now every second generation or so a Rassendyll child is born with their trademark red hair and a long straight nose. This doesn’t bother Rudolph the way…
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The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Published: 1959 Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne Length: 07:31 (246 pages) I am physically unable to say the title of this novel without the words twisting themselves into House on Haunted Hill. It just won’t work. Dr. John Montague is a paranormal researcher, like a ghost hunter without his own scripted television show, and he has heard many tales of Hill House. In order to find and document the existence of supernatural phenomenon, Montague decides to invite a group of people to spend the summer in the house with him. He is joined by a relative of the owner and the only two…
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I Was the Cat
I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin Format: Original Graphic Novel Illustrated by: Benjamin Dewey Publisher: Oni Press Published: 2014 Length: 144 pages This is one of the books we bought from the Oni Press booth at Pax West last year. It’s the story of a cat writing the memoirs of his previous eight lives, most of which involved him trying to take over the world. It’s a great looking little hardcover and was on sale, so how could we resist? A rich stranger invites an American journalist (or, blogger, I guess?) to London under much secrecy in order to write his memoirs. The stranger, it turns out, is a…
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The White Tiger
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Published: 2008 Length: 276 pages I picked this up on a whim at the used book sale last month. I hadn’t really heard anything about it, but it did win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, so I thought I’d take a chance on it. I’m glad I did, because this was a great little book. Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh. Adiga’s debut novel follows a young Indian boy named Balram Halwai, born the son of a rickshaw puller in Laxmangarh, as he sheds his caste and life of servitude to eventually become a Bangalore entrepreneur. He…