Stephen finished reading The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Story of Holden Caufield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. Holden, knowing …
Given up
Reviews and Comments
I read when I can't sleep, so yes there's a lot of books here. Nearly all SF.
he/him
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Stephen reviewed Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. …
Sorry, too weird
1 star
Got 10% in and this doesn't feel like a story, just paragraph after paragraph of farce. I can't take a whole book of that.
Stephen reviewed Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames (The Band, #2)
"A standalone adventure featuring a band of female mercenaries in the world of Kings of …
Cheese
4 stars
I struggle with my opinion of Eames' books; like Orkonomics, it's sort-of comic fantasy. Well, I really like Discworld books, so this should be an easy fit? Except for me I don't always gel well with the humour for reasons I can't quite explain.
Re-reading Hearts of the Wyld helped before starting Bloody Rose. This one feels more serious. Again, harkening to Discworld, like some of Pterry's later work where he corrects injustices. I wonder if it's inspiration. The world is getting a bit more fleshed out, with some people from the first book returning as secondary characters. Towards the end everything feels quite blurry though - a Marvel-style everyone fighting and dying and surviving all at once.
I'm also missing a lot of jokes again, I'm sure. It took me a while to realise why red hair die came from hucknall beans.
Getting four stars for being an enjoyable …
I struggle with my opinion of Eames' books; like Orkonomics, it's sort-of comic fantasy. Well, I really like Discworld books, so this should be an easy fit? Except for me I don't always gel well with the humour for reasons I can't quite explain.
Re-reading Hearts of the Wyld helped before starting Bloody Rose. This one feels more serious. Again, harkening to Discworld, like some of Pterry's later work where he corrects injustices. I wonder if it's inspiration. The world is getting a bit more fleshed out, with some people from the first book returning as secondary characters. Towards the end everything feels quite blurry though - a Marvel-style everyone fighting and dying and surviving all at once.
I'm also missing a lot of jokes again, I'm sure. It took me a while to realise why red hair die came from hucknall beans.
Getting four stars for being an enjoyable romp that I read quickly. Recommended to others if you e.g. really enjoy Soul Music, but aren't expecting high literature.
Stephen finished reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. …
Can't stand it...
Stephen finished reading Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames (The Band, #2)
"A standalone adventure featuring a band of female mercenaries in the world of Kings of …
Guilty pleasure
Stephen reviewed Road Brothers by Mark Lawrence
Perfectly fine
3 stars
I think I've read this too far apart from the actual trilogy, so even with the notes from the author after each short story on how it ties in, I can't really remember. However it was an easy read. Most injuries seem barely survivable but I'm pretty sure the Thorns books are exactly the same.
Generally I've enjoyed all of these but they're so bleak I don't think I'll rush to read them again.
Stephen reviewed Paul à Québec by Michel Rabagliati
Sweet but sad
4 stars
I asked for a comic by a Quebecois author in Montreal, and eventually (very grateful to the staff in Librarie BD for staying in French to help me practice) picked this one as it looked a bit easier and prettier than other offerings.
It's not easier! A lot of Quebecois sacrés and petits sacrés (e.g. caline is the "shoot" to calisse) and elisions ("chui" -> "je suis") but the overall story is fine to follow.
It is of a family's grandfather as he ages and enters respite care. Starting with big family sleepovers, having him tell the story of his youth (bad). The shots of Québec that I recognise (bits of Montréal and Québec City) are good enough for me as a tourist to recognise.
Stephen reviewed Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (The Band, #1)
"Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best -- the meanest, …
A grower
3 stars
Didn't like it much the first time, it's grown on me. Pretty sure I'm missing all the song and singer references. There's some actual heart to it though.
Stephen rated Paul à Québec: 4 stars
Stephen finished reading Paul à Québec by Michel Rabagliati
Challenging Québécois slang in this one
Stephen finished reading Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (The Band, #1)
"Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best -- the meanest, …
Silly but not too silly
Stephen reviewed A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Highly unusual After the Holocaust novel. In the far future, 20th century texts are preserved …
Three interesting post-apocalyptic stories
5 stars
I originally read this just before Anathem was released as Neal Stephenson's book was going to have a similar idea. Which is sort of true, and sort of not. It's set in three eras after a nuclear war in the 1960s, the first in a barely-subsistence age, secondly in a medieval time, and thirdly with a tech level greater than our own..but still with nuclear weapons and tension.
The focus point of all three is the abbey, and none of the stories are cheerful. Re-reading it, the third one was a particularly hard read. The monks are Catholic and the third story deals a lot with the ethics of euthanasia. Speaking of Catholicism, there's more Latin in the book than you might originally expect.
The moral of the book is as unsurprising as it is heavy.
Stephen started reading A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Highly unusual After the Holocaust novel. In the far future, 20th century texts are preserved …
On sale on Kindle, and my physical copy is in storage in the wrong country so why not...
Very engaging
5 stars
Second book I've read by the author and it's very readable. Strong narrative and suspenseful in places. Some jokes but not silly.
Stephen reviewed The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver …
Mindless fun
5 stars
This is written and set in late 2020. Much like Netflix' Glass Onion, it uses COVID in the backdrop, and then gets onto its main bit. This is about as much COVID as I want in a book.
Equally you get the feeling that Scalzi has a lot to say about US politics and is resisting only dropping a few things before getting back to his main hobby of dropping his favourite nerds in as backing mentions (or ship names in Old Man's War).
This was exactly the right amount of silly for me, I didn't quite get into Redshirts. It gets a bit close when they discuss how kaiju are tropes but then follows with a Peter-Hamilton-level exposition dump about how the pretend science works.
Who cares, there are kaiju, and also a bunch of characters who respect others' chosen pronouns. It's like a much snarkier Becky Chambers book.