Books I've Rated 3 / 5
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Bone, Vol. 5: Rock Jaw Master of the Eastern Border
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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Soccernomics Why 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.
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The Stonekeeper's Curse
Finished
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Serbs and Croats The Struggle in Yugoslavia
Finished
I knew that this account was written with an eye on defending Serbia, and I think that in some ways Dragnich did an admirable job discussing the motives of most parties. Unfortunately, what he most neglected was Serbia itself: despite his attempts to sound even-handed and fairly analyze actions of which he clearly disapproved from Croatia and Slovenia, he gave no thought to Serbia’s own actions. When I looked up major players mentioned in the book, I found accusations (real or not) that were not even addressed by Dragnich.
Basically, this book helped to give me a good idea of how many Serbians may see their recent history, and to develop some impression of what actually happened. And while I believe that Dragnich has an agenda, I don’t believe that he intended simply to force it upon people with this book. He obviously has a level of dissatisfaction with much of the recent history of the area and its leaders - Serb, Croat, and otherwise. But whatever the facts, he does Serbia a disservice in ignoring the larger issues and accusations against the country. It denies him the opportunity to properly address those accusations, and lends the whole book an air (hopefully undeserved) of propaganda.
I am looking for another book at this point that will address the issue with a more historical and detached approach. Open to suggestions.
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The Titan's Curse
Finished
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Tales of H. P. Lovecraft
Finished
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The Sea of Monsters
Finished
Better than the first one, at least. We’ll see if it continues to improve.
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The Crying of Lot 49
Finished
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Over Sea, Under Stone
Finished