Books Read
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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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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…
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The Serpent of Venice: A Novel
The Serpent of Venice: A Novel by Christopher Moore Published: 2014 This is the sequel to Moore’s 2009 novel Fool, but only loosely so. The jester Pocket, with his monkey Jeff and his virile giant of an apprentice Drool, land in Venice on a mission for his queen. He is to try and stop the merchants of the city from orchestrating a new crusade in an attempt to profit from it. The mission goes wrong almost immediately, and it then turns into a tale of revenge and intrigue. Fool was a comedic retelling of King Lear, and this novel takes on The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Poe’s The Cask…
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Knots and Crosses (Inspector Rebus, #1)
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin Published: 1987 Ian Rankin is one of those authors that I’ve always known about but never had any desire to read. It’s too overwhelming to start on something that’s already nineteen novels in, and it’s hard not to see the writing as a case of quantity over quality when confronted with a back catalogue of that size. I should know, being a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (forty books in and still going strong), that this line of thinking is complete nonsense, but that’s what comes to mind. I don’t think it helps that these books fall into the crime genre, which can…
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The Martian
The Martian by Andy Weir Published: 2011 Narrated by: R. C. Bray On a manned mission to Mars, a NASA crew left their mechanical engineer for dead on the planet’s surface as they lifted off to return home. Now Mark Watney must find a way to survive with limited supplies, and broken equipment, until he can find a way back to Earth, where no one realizes he’s alive. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command” of the mission if I were the only remaining person. What do you…
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The Shipping News
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Published: 1993 The first 30 pages of this book are bloody depressing. The protagonist, Quoyle, has a miserable childhood, his parents kill themselves, he marries a horrible woman who openly cheats on him, and then his wife eventually leaves him and sells their two young daughters to sex traffickers (Happy Mother’s Day, by the way). This is the introduction to the book. The story then follows him as he leaves New York and returns to his father’s hometown in Newfoundland to begin a new life with his daughters and aunt. While the beginning is incredible important, since this is about a man trying to…
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Agent to the Stars
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi Published: 2005 Narrated by: Wil Wheaton Accodording to Wikipedia, Scalzi first published this in 1999 on his website for free, asking for a $1 donation from those who enjoyed the book. This was his first attempt at a novel. I’m not sure if the current edition has changed much since that initial self-publishing, but as it’s written now this is a fantastic debut. I wonder if he started with the title and worked back from there? It feels a bit that way, but it worked if that’s the case, so no complaints here. The premise is goofy, but Scalzi doesn’t try to take…
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Under a Mackerel Sky
Under a Mackerel Sky by Rick Stein Published: 2013 Narrated by: Rick Stein I came across Rick Stein a few years back. From what I understand, he was one of the early television chefs in Britain, but I don’t think his shows were ever broadcasted in Canada. His latest food programmes are based around travel, taking a barge through France or searching for his favourite curry in India for example, and he’s a bit of a book nerd. He’ll read passages from travelogues, poetry, and related literature for the camera when he arrives somewhere new. It’s a book-worm, foodie, and traveler’s delight. So imagine my surprise when the majority of…