Books Read
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Holidays on Ice
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris Published: 1998 Length: 176 pages I’ve had this book for a few years now, but I kept forgetting about it during the holidays. I can’t bring myself to read anything related to silver bells or reindeer outside of December, so it kept getting moved to the dark corner of the shelf. I finally remembered it this year and read it as the holidays ramped up (hint as to how far behind I am on my posts). I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas at all this year, so I thought Sedaris’ cynical (I assumed) take on the season would be perfect for me. This is…
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More Baths, Less Talking
More Baths, Less Talking by Nick Hornby Published: 2012 Length: 135 pages Yet another collection of the monthly Stuff I’ve Been Reading column that Nick Hornby writes for the Believer magazine. I like to think I read a wide variety of books, yet somehow my reading choices never seem to overlap with Hornby’s. This is the fourth collection I’ve read over the years, and this is the first time I’ve ever read a book listed in his column, which was Sum: 40 Tales From The Afterlives. He reads a lot of non-fiction, which I tend to have very specific taste in, contemporary literary fiction, which I’m not all that up…
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The Stranger
The Stranger by Albert Camus Published: 1942 Narrated by: Jonathan Davis Translated by: Matthew Ward (from French) Length: 03:27 So this is apparently not about sitting on your hand until it loses feeling, although funnily enough it is about a man who cannot bring himself to feel anything for what’s happening in his life. It begins with Meursault, a French Algerian, attending his mother’s funeral. He feels nothing for the loss, and the next day meets someone and begins a relationship with her as if nothing is out of the ordinary. He appears to be completely detached from the world, observing what’s happening to him as if he’s watching his…
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Lock In
Lock In by John Scalzi Published: 2014 Narrated by: Wil Wheaton Length: 10:00 This is John Scalzi’s latest novel, and it is once again narrated by Wil Wheaton. At this point I’m wondering if Scalzi has him chained to a radiator in the basement with just a microphone and a bowl of bread crusts, but thankfully the combination of these two really works for me, so I’m not going to ask any questions. There is also a version of the audiobook narrated by Amber Benson, most well known for her role as Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the near future, a virus spreads across the world. For a…
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The Gun Seller
The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie Published: 1996 Pages: 340 Reading Stephen Fry’s most recent biography, More Fool Me, finally prompted me to pick this up after having it loom over me from the shelf for years. I wasn’t avoiding it, but my interest just kept getting pulled elsewhere. It came up in the autobiography because Laurie was working on the novel during the period of Fry’s journal that was included. He mentioned how funny it was, and while I know his opinion is biased, it finally made me pick it up. For some reason I thought he’d take a straighter edge with the novel, but it’s incredibly funny. I…
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Cannery Row
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck Published: 1945 Pages: 181 I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this one. It’s set in the south during the Great Depression, which isn’t a setting that really excites me, although I think I’m coming around on that. Each chapter reads like its own story, and I sometimes have a hard time keeping interest in fiction that doesn’t have a strong central plot. Despite these concerns, I ended up loving this novel. I actually started reading the first couple of pages absentmindedly while figuring out what to read next, and I just couldn’t stop. I can’t really put my finger on what it was that…