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August in Review
Books Acquired: Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley Chew: The Omnivore Edition, Volume 4 by John Layman Books Read: Slam by Nick Hornby Saga, Volume 3 by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley My two purchases this month were comics despite having told myself I wasn’t going to buy any more until I finished the ones I already own, as I really have to start conserving shelf space. I had to order the new Bryan Lee O’Malley book, however, almost purely out of curiosity to see what he’d come up with now that the Scott Pilgrim madness has died down. The other…
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Slam
Slam by Nick Hornby Published: 2007 Length: 309 pages I’ve really grown to love Nick Hornby books over the past few years, but this wasn’t one of his best. I believe this was his first attempt at a young adult novel, and while I enjoyed it overall, it felt a little trite. It still has some of Hornby’s hilarious dialogue, and there were a couple of moments that made me laugh out loud, but those moments were spread apart quite a bit. The story is centred around a couple of teenagers who accidentally become pregnant and choose to keep the child. Sam Jones, the male teen and viewpoint character of…
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The Magicians
The Magicians by Lev Grossman Published: 2009 Length: 402 pages Hopefully this is not becoming a theme, but this is another book that I really wanted to love and just couldn’t. People seem to be describing this as ‘Harry Potter for adults’, and I don’t know if I agree. I suppose I took that to imply more depth than Harry Potter, but it seems it’s just labelled as such because there’s some swearing and sex. This is a tricky book to boil down to a basic synopsis, because for the first half of the book there’s very little conflict, and then the second half of the book could essentially be…
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Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Published: 1865 Narrated By: Jim Dale Audio Length: 02:57 I picked this up partly because I wanted something quick and light after The Windup Girl and partly because I was reading The Magicians and had C. S. Lewis on the mind. And until this very day, thirty-two years into my life, I thought it was C.S. Lewis who wrote this book. Wrong Lewis, it turns out. And wrong century. Audiobook fatigue and a case of mistaken identity may not be the best reasons to pick up a book, but I guess that doesn’t really matter in the end. I also picked this up because…
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The Wasp Factory
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks Published: 1984 Narrated By: Peter Kenny Audio Length: 06:11 I’ve been making a point to read more Scottish authors in the last couple of years but hadn’t yet gotten to Iain Banks. He’s been on my mind since he sadly passed away last year from cancer. I knew him as a science fiction author, but it turns out he has many mainstream fiction books as well. He publishes his mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and his science fiction as Iain M. Banks, so it makes his bibliography easy to navigate. This is his fist novel, a novel as Iain Banks, and it was a…
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The Windup Girl
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Published: 2009 Narrated by: Jonathan Davis Audio length: 19:34 I feel like I should have enjoyed this more than I did. Normally I would say to take my opinions to heart, because I have fantastic taste, but this time it feels like my lukewarm feelings about this may be my own fault. Firstly, I love the setting and the atmosphere. It takes place in a dystopian Thailand, in a future where fuel sources have run out and food has become scarce. Calorie companies control the production of genetically modified food, crops that have been designed to not produce seeds, and this has caused plague…
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July in Review
Books Acquired: Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration by Nigella Lawson The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks Alice in Wonderland (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland #1) by Lewis Carroll Books Read: Saga, Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks Alice in Wonderland (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland #1) by Lewis Carroll The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) by Lev Grossman I managed to only buy one physical book this month (the other three are audiobooks), and that was a cookbook. I’m not sure how to deal with cookbooks in my obsessive online tracking. I add them to Goodreads,…
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Saga, Volume 2
Saga, Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan Illustrated by: Fiona Staples Published: 2013 Publisher: Image Comics Collects: issues #7-12 There’s always a bit of a worry when picking up the second volume of a comic, particularly when the first was such a nice surprise. Crushing disappointment is always a potential, but I’m happy to report that this was as good, possibly even better, than the first. Alana and Marko are still running from…everyone, really, but the story is also interlaced with flashbacks showing how the two met. This is more about fleshing out the story and building on relationships rather than shocking us with more insane aspects of the universe.…
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The Time Machine
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells Published: 1895 I finally got around to reading some H.G. Wells, and I was not at all disappointed. The Time Machine is so imaginative that it’s difficult to wrap my head around it being written nearly 120 years ago. I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but I thought the plot would seem primitive in comparison to all of the great stories this has inspired throughout the years, but somehow it manages to have more substance than a lot of the derivative works of the last century. This overview will contain spoilers, so skip to the last paragraph if that’s an issue. The story…
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The Uncommon Reader
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett Published: 2007 This is an odd little novel. Queen Elizabeth II stumbles upon a mobile library that has been put in place for the workers in the castle and becomes obsessed with reading. She has never read for pleasure in her life, but to avoid offense she decides to leave with a book. She quickly realizes what she’s been missing and sets out to make up for lost time by reading as much as she possibly can. Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If…