Read
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The Wise Man's Fear
Finished
Enjoyed the hell out of this one, like the last. Ate it right up. That said, a few concerns:
• First, if one more person’s mouth makes a line (grim or otherwise) I’m going to lose it.
• Second, Kvothe is what, 17 now? Maybe 18? By the end of the book? Two books in and like two years have passed? It’s a trilogy. I’m enjoying this long adventure but I’m wondering what’s going to happen to get everything into the third book. It sounds like, maybe, there will be another trilogy after this, that’s … maybe AFTER the story is told? I’m alright with that. But I’m still kind of wondering how we get there.
• And yeah, I’m still a little let down by the fact that neither book has had an arc, really. It’s all leading to something, hopefully in book three (book six?), which is cool, but I’d like a sub-arc. Something to tie the book together, while the overarching narrative continues on its long, long way.
• There isn’t even a release date for book 3 yet? When you’ve got a story like this that is really one big book in three parts, not three books, you’ve got to get it out there!
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The Machine Stops
Finished
Surprisingly futuristic for something written in 1909. Its themes have been heard before, time and time again - humankind versus a machine of their own creation, I guess - but 100+ years later the details remain fascinating. I also love the constant talk of “ideas” without any real ideas in sight. “Oh stop this talk, it gives me no ideas.”
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Born Standing UpA Comic's Life
Finished
Kind of wooden. Some interesting stories, intermittent funny and smart bits, but even at a short 200 pages, those bits seemed to be pretty sparse. Felt like he was trying to be serious or touching at times. Not sure. I get the feeling I might’ve loved this if it were on tape.
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The Name of the Wind
Finished
Doesn’t feel like a full book – feels like the first book of a book. Not so much of a climax, denouement in this one. Just setting the groundwork for future books. Lots of questions that were set up, I hoped, to be answered, are still unanswered. I think of multi-book plots as still having individual subplots in each book, which this one didn’t really. It was just Day One of the story, as I suppose was promised. Which has me a little annoyed and impatient. That said, I enjoyed it cover-to-cover, and I’ve started the second (which is even longer, at 1000 pages) already. I think, though, if he doesn’t give me something to hold onto in this one, I’m not going to get the third (when it comes out? is it out?).
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The Magicians
Finished
I don’t have much to say about this other than that I really enjoyed it. At times Grossman’s style of writing and especially the way he discusses magic, its effects, and the various denizens of the magical world reminded me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which is (in my eyes) a very positive comparison.
It was a lot of fun to read, but also… I’m not an expert on books or literature, but it wasn’t beach reading. It wasn’t a challenge to get through like so much esteemed “literature,” but it is all the same very well-written and thought-provoking. I’m pretty excited to pick up The Magician King.
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Bone, Vol. 8: Treasure Hunters
Finished
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Bone, Vol. 7: Ghost Circles
Finished
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Finished
Solid. Second half much more interesting than the first half. A lot of tangential information seemed to slow the book down at times. And I hate, hate, hate, reading, seeing, thinking about crimes of the sort that were committed in this book. So… I’m glad I’m done with it.
That said, I’m going to have to see the movie. I can probably get through the awful parts. And if so, I bet the rest will be a hell of a lot of fun. The book at least lays the groundwork for that.
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What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Finished
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Bone, Vol. 5: Rock Jaw Master of the Eastern Border
Finished
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Bone, Vol. 4: The Dragonslayer
Finished
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The Last Council
Finished
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The Stonekeeper
Finished
Having looked through some of the other Amulet books, I feel like this series gets much better. I like this one, but it’s clearly just a start, just getting its footing. It seems a little simple right now. It starts out beautifully (and tragically), but then moves to the pretty clichéd, “We have to move into this broken-down house in the middle of nowhere, kids,” thing (à la Spiderwick, Coraline, um … lots of horror movies), and then just as it starts to pick up again, it ends.
I was also disappointed because I love Kibuishi’s environments - his cities and backgrounds and such - and this book was almost entirely devoid of them. I felt like the characters were interacting in a vacuum too often.
The house robot at the end, though, is just more proof that my faith in Kibuishi is justified, and I’m going to buy book 2 very, very soon.
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A Game of Thrones
Finished
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SoccernomicsWhy England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World''s Most Popular Sport'
Finished
Not a bad book, but it’s got a lot of problems. I’m not an economist (/econometrician) or anything, but I would be reading and see a flaw in the logic that, sure, it was probably fine to overlook, but it would make me wonder more and more what other flaws the book had, that I had missed. I took it all with a grain of salt: many of its analyses declare positively that such-and-such a country is the best, or worst, or biggest overachiever, but the methods getting there take small liberties at every step, which seems like it would produce cascading inaccuracies (remember the movie Multiplicity?).
The reason I kept reading, after a certain point, was that it offered me a lot of interesting historical information - about soccer, and sometimes just about the progress of smaller nations that you don’t hear much about in American high school history classes.
So it’s absolutely worth reading, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously.