Been meaning to do this for ages, try to keep track of the books I read, including the ones I don’t read all the way through. And maybe even reviews, or more probably review-lets. I don’t have the time or attention span to write more than a paragraph.
Okay, maybe not everything I read, just everything I have something to say about – which may mean some books from my recent past will find their way here, time permitting.
15 April-29 May 2009
Captain Alatriste, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Hm. Fascinating, in that they are set in Early Modern Spain, which is a subject dear to DrBob’s heart (and career), so I read a fair bit of nonfiction about it. The prose is a tad… stilted, I guess, probably because it’s in translation. I imagine the flow is better in the original Spanish. But I’ll probably read the next one, and the one after that.
12(?) March – 15 April 2009
Cuckoo’s Egg, by C.J. Cherryh
This is one of those authors (André Norton is another) who has fabulous brilliant ideas that make you think, but is not really… all that great a writer. She doesn’t really capture the excitement in her story, and a lot of the dialogue is annoyingly oblique, stuff like “He knows what I’ve done to him, and why…” without ever explaining the what or the why to the reader. I read the whole thing, but it was aggravating, because I never did figure out what was going on.
10 March – 10 April 2009
Superparenting for ADD, by Edward Hallowell
Not done with this one either, but it’s, um. I’ve read a fair few books about ADD and about raising boys, and they tend to be long on preaching and short on substantive advice. There’s a lot in here about how important it is to love your child (duh, if I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have bought the book), but very little concrete information about how to put this philosophy into action. What does love look like when he refuses to study for a test because he already knows the material, and then brings home a D? So far, the book doesn’t say.
I read up to the “What to tell your child’s school” section, and then lost interest, since that chapter is written for people in the American school system, and none of that information will help me here. I agree with Hallowell on a lot, but I don’t feel like I got any new information from this book.
7 – 11(?) March 2009
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
Also slightly creepy, but a charming children’s story. Not that I think it’s only for children, of course – a good book is a good book, no matter who its intended audience. But a kid could read this and enjoy it as much as I did, which is probably not true for some of the other books on this page.
15 February – 5 March 2009
I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
This was pretty. I kind of wish I’d read it in high school, or possibly junior high.
3 – 15 February 2009
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
I really enjoy his books while I’m reading them, but they are exactly what I would get from the library and then return them when I’m done – I don’t big-L-Love them enough to want a copy for my very own. And the minor creepy bits in this one were just a tad too horrible, putting images in my head that will linger for years, so I probably won’t read it again. But I really did enjoy it, except for the minor creepy bits.
1 – 3 February 2009
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, by Joshilyn Jackson
My third Joshilyn Jackson book, and the other two were treacherous – I had work to do, I couldn’t spend two days nose-down in a book! But I did. I had hoped to show a little more restraint this time, and I started well enough, limiting myself to one chapter before bed each night – though one could argue that on Sunday night, when I stayed up til 2:30 a.m. to watch the first half of the Super Bowl, skipping the reading would have been more restraintful. Monday, running on four hours’ sleep, I very responsibly went to bed at A Reasonable Hour, and then muffed it by reading 15 chapters and an epilogue. I swear, these books are like crack.
(Metaphorically speaking, of course. I have no actual experience with crack.)
17 – 31 January 2009
Turing’s Delirium, by Edmundo Paz Soldán
Interesting. Sort of cyberthriller hacker thing set in Bolivia, with the Cochabamba water wars as the backdrop, though names and some details are changed. Nothing jarring, which is an achievement because I am hugely picky. Believable dialog, decent pacing, though it did jump around in time a bit. It was a pretty good story, though it felt a bit… unfinished at the end, something that happens a lot in cyberpunk fiction, is my impression. That doesn’t stop me reading it. I like the genre, but the stories never quite live up to their premise.
