RIP III Wrap Up

I signed up to do Peril the Third which was only one book. I in fact read four - Out, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Heart Shaped Box and Haunting of Hill House and enjoyed them all. Only one of them was in my original book pool - Tales of Moonlight and Rain. I still want to read all of the ones in my pool but I was especially disappointed that I didn't get to reread House of Leaves, especially since of the 473 RIP III reviews to date, not a single one was for that book.

Here are some of the books that I discovered from other RIP participants that I would like to read:

The Book of Lost Things-
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
The Thirteenth Tale -

I haven't managed to read all of the reviews yet, no power for two weeks with Hurricane Omar visiting put a crimp in that, but I will eventually work my way through and keep adding to this list.

I thoroughly enjoyed RIP III and especially liked the challenge being pressure free. Thanks Carl for hosting a great challenge!

The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

This book was not on my original pool of books for the RIP challenge but I read so many great things about it that I ordered it when I ordered a new copy of House of Leaves, another haunted house type book that I read years ago and really want to reread. I had to do some traveling and House of Leaves was simply too big to haul around so I took Hill House instead and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story line is simple. A professor studying the paranormal, Dr. Montigue, rents Hill House, a known haunted house, for the summer and invites some people who have had paranormal experiences before to join him. Two people accept his invitation, Eleanor who has spent her quiet isolated life caring for her ailing mother who has recently passed away and Theodora who is vibrant, self assured and used to being the center of attention. They are also accompanied by Luke, the future heir to the house. As soon as they move into the house strange things start to happen.

The book was beautifully written. I especially enjoyed Eleanor’s fantasies on her drive to Hill House about living a simple life in the picturesque and idyllic houses that she passes which are so greatly contrasted with the descriptions of Hill House. I had a bunch of passages marked to share here but in the aftermath of Hurricane Omar I checked a chain saw as my luggage instead of my clothes and book so you will just have to read it for yourself. I remember that the house itself was described as “not sane” and even all the characters are slightly off kilter, especially Eleanor. I loved that the house itself was a main character and its evil manifested itself in its physical presentation. I also really enjoyed that the story was primarily told from the point of view of Eleanor and you are never sure whether or not she is a reliable narrator.

I can see why this book is a classic of the haunted house genre and would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a well written atmospheric psychological thriller. I am certainly going to read Shirley Jackson’s other popular book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Heart Shaped Box

by Joe Hill

Apparently this book has been quite a sensation but I had never heard of it, or Stephen King’s son, until I starting poking around the RIP challenge reviews from last year and peoples book lists for this year. As I was looking for something light and fun in audio to take with me on a trip, I thought this would be perfect and it certainly fit the bill. It is the story of an aging Rock Star, Jude Coyne who buys a ghost on the internet for his macabre collection. Needless to say the dead man’s suit that arrives actually does bring with it a ghost and Jude gets a lot more than he bargained for.

I was pleasantly surprised that this was not just the run of the mill ghost story. What I liked most about the story was that it was so character driven. When the story opens Jude and his much younger girl friend of the moment, whom he calls Georgia, seem unappealing and one dimensional. Jude seems to be the stereotype of the self absorbed aging retired rock star and Georgia seems to be a Goth bimbo rock band groupy. As the book develops however these two characters emerge as interesting and complex characters as do the ghost himself and his step daughter, a deceased former girlfriend of Jude’s that he called Florida.

I also really liked the fact that while the ghost himself was scary the truly horrific acts of the book were committed by ordinary living people. You cannot say, this is just a ghost story and could never happen in real life because it could be happening in your neighbor’s family right now and you not even know it. (I know that is cryptic if you haven’t read the book but I don’t want to give away to much.)

Essentially, what the book is really about is relationships. Relationships between Jude and his girlfriends, between Jude and his father, between Jude and his dogs and within the ghost’s family. I don’t mean to imply that this is not a page turning horror story with lots of action, suspense and plot twists, because it is, but I was pleasantly surprised that it had a whole other dimension to it as well.

On the negative side, I thought the book could have ended after the climax instead of doing a rather long rap up to let you know what happened to everyone, but that is a common complaint I have with many books. I don’t mind a book not tying up every single loose end. When the plot reaches its natural conclusion I think it should end and let the reader use their imagination as to the aftermath, but that is just me. I know that many people like to know what happened to all the characters.

The other negative was the dogs. I liked the portrayal of the dogs and the important role that they played in the book but (I don’t want to spoil anything) suffice it to say I found a few of the dog scenes disturbing to read. I can read anything about humans but for some reason I am not willing to read about bad things happening to animals and to be honest if I had known that would be in there I probably would not have chosen to read the book. Ever since a child I have refused to even watch movies that involve animals (Bambi’s mom dies!).

Overall, it was an enjoyable page turner with more substance than I expected and I would read more of Joe Hill in the future.

Confession: I downloaded this book as audio and since mine didn’t have an actual cover and I loved the cover that Bride of the Book God had on her review, I decided to use that cover. Much more interesting than the standard mass market cover. Check out the other interesting covers.

Bookmarks Magazine

Theory of Clouds by Stephane Audeguy
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Bejing Coma by Flora Drew
Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
The Escapement by Jake Lake but start with Mainspring SF
The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace NF
Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham (wrote Catfish and Mandala) NF
The Forgers Spell by Edward Dolnick NF

Tales of Moonlight and Rain

by Ueda Akinari

“First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this collection are Japan’s finest and most celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period’s fascination with the strange and the grotesque.” Quote from the front flap of the book.

I read this book for the Japanese Literature Challenge and will also post it for the RIP III challenge as it certainly fits. These nine tales of ghosts, demons and spirits range from the mild ghost stories involving civil conversations with entities that just happen to be ghosts to the truly horrific involving tenacious demons and cannibalism. In general my favorite stories in this collection were the more sensational ones but I also really enjoyed one that wasn’t scary at all.

The Carp of My Dreams was simply a lovely story with a hint of the supernatural. A monk likes to paint carp and spends many hours studying them in the lake and painting them. He becomes ill and in his delirium dreams that he is a carp swimming in the lake, or is it a dream? He recovers from that illness and lives a full life. When he knows the end is near he takes all the carp paintings to the lake and releases the carp which swim off the paper and into the lake. It reminded me of something Borges could have written. I didn’t find anything gothic about it but I certainly enjoyed it.

I also really enjoyed the Reed-Choked House about a peasant that goes off to the capital to attempt to become a merchant but cannot return home because of civil unrest. Six years later he finally returns home and finds his home unchanged and his wife dutifully waiting for him. He awakes the next morning. “Feeling something cold dripping on his face, he opened his eyes, thinking that rain was seeping in: the roof had been torn off by the wind, and he could see the waning moon lingering dimly in the sky. The house had lost its shutters. Reeds and plumed grasses grew tall through gaps in the decaying floorboards, and the morning dew dripped from them, saturating his sleeves. The walls were draped with ivy and arrowroot; the garden buried in creepers - even though fall had not come yet, the house was a wild autumn moor.” He finally realizes that his wife is long dead.

In two other stories the women are not such benign ghosts. In the Kibitsu Cauldron a husband runs off with a prostitute. Instead of waiting for him to return the wife becomes an angry spirit, kills the prostitute and gets revenge on her husband. In A Serpent’s Lust a handsome young man is seduced by a beautiful serpent demon. Although he eventually catches on that she is not a young lady all his attempts to escape her and live a normal life are to no avail. These are two of my favorite stories in the collection but make me wonder a little about the author’s relationship with women.

In the Blue Hood an abbot at a monastery becomes infatuated with a beautiful young servant boy. When the boy becomes ill and dies the abbot is driven mad, becomes a demon and terrorizes the nearby village by digging up graves and eating the corpses. A traveling priest is able to help the village and the abbot attain peace. These are just my favorite tales but I did enjoy all of the them.

The book itself has a lengthy introduction and each story has its own introduction and contains numerous footnotes and endnotes. I found that what worked best for me was to read each story straight through without all the additional material as a simple gothic tale. I don’t think it is necessary to read anything but the tales themselves to enjoy them as stories. Simply because I was interested, I then went back and read it again with all the supplemental information which certainly added another dimension to the work. The supplemental information was exhaustive and while much of it was way more information then a casual reader would need, much of it was really fascinating. For example, the homosexual overtones of the Chrysanthemum Vow totally escaped me until I read the supplemental material. As it has been a long time since I took Japanese history classes in college I had forgotten how important a role Chinese culture played in the development of Japanese culture. I found the comparisons to No theater interesting. I enjoyed the supplemental material but if you want to simply read it as a collection of gothic tales that works too.

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

While surfing for scary books I stumbled across a reference to On the Beach by Nevil Shute which, in the serendipitous way of internet surfing that I love, resulted in a list of post-apocalyptic novels that I would like to read.

On the Beach - Nevil Shute
Earth Abides - George R. Stewart
Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
The Stand - Stephen King
Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven
Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller.

I purchased Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse based upon Carl V's rave review but haven't had a chance to read it yet. My favorite post-apocalyptic novels off the top of my head are Handmaid's Tale, Cloud Atlas and the Road.

So much to read, so little time!

Out

by Natsuo Kirino

Although this book has been on my wish list for some time I specifically read it for the Japanese Literature Challenge. I have also seen this book on people’s lists for the RIP III challenge so I am going to link it there as well.

This story opens with four women working the night shift in a factory making boxed lunches. When one of them murders her abusive husband the others assist with the disposal of the body. In typical noir fashion, things go from bad to worse as these four desperate and broken women try to cope with the police investigation, a loan shark and another murderer. I don’t normally read crime fiction but I generally like dark stories and boy is this dark, sadistic, brutal and shocking. Although I enjoyed it, it is not for the faint of heart.

I thought it was very well written (and translated) and that the author really captured both her characters and settings very well. It really transported me to the outskirts of Tokyo to the lunch box factory, the night club or the characters' homes. Even though not a single one of the characters is likeable and all have committed despicable acts they were so incredibly real that I cared about them and wanted to find out what happened in their story. You could really feel the desperation that each of these characters experienced. There is certainly an undercurrent of gender conflict in the novel but it never becomes preachy or obtrusive.

The only criticism I have is that the ending was a little odd. The ultimate showdown is told twice from two different perspectives. Although it was interesting to get the two perspectives of the same battle, I think this could have been achieved a little more artfully without a complete second retelling which I felt disrupted the flow of the story. I would also warn that the ending was incredibly brutal and disturbing and I can think of many friends that would not be comfortable reading it.

RIP III

Carl V has just announced his Rip III challenge which aims to "share the love of eerie, creepy, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night literature". As I love classic horror I cannot resist. I really appreciate that fact that Carl provides the option of only reading one book (Peril the Third) so that I can join in the fun without over committing myself. Hopefully I will have time for more than one. We will see. I also like the idea of a pool of books to chose from because even if I don't read more than one now, it will be a great resource when I am in the mood for something that goes bump in the night. Here is my pool of possible reads which I fully expect will increase as time goes by.

Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Akinari Ueda
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood
Three Impostors and Other Stories by Arthur Machen
Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James

I will definitely read Tales of Moonlight and Rain as it is sitting enticingly on my coffee table for the Japanese Literature Challenge and I am really looking forward to it. House of Leaves I read when if first came out and I have been meaning to re-read it as the creepy House keeps poping into my head. Machen and Blackwood both influenced Lovecraft, one of my favorites, and I have been meaning to read more of them. M.R. James is one of my favorite ghost story writers and I still haven't read all of his work. I am sure that I will think of or find more to add to this list. I am really looking forward to reading other participants' pools and reviews!

Reading slumps

So, what do YOU do when you find yourself in a reading slump? How do you get out of it? Do you keep trying different books until you find one that draws you in? Do you just give in to the slump until it passes, and do something other than reading for a time? Do you ask for help? And, if you ask for help, what great (or, not so great) advice have you been given on how to get out of the slump?

Thank goodness I rarely get in a reading slump but I know exactly what you mean when you finish a book and don’t know what your in the mood to pick up next. When I do get in a slump I try one of the following: read a magazine (usually Bookmarks); surf the internet (usually book blogs); read a short story or two by some of my favorite authors such as Borges or Lovecraft or Poe; or read a really trashy page turner. If I am not in the mood to read at all, I don’t read. Reading is what I do for fun and if it isn’t fun then I have plenty other hobbies to keep me occupied.

Libraries

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

As a child I don’t remember using a library. The school library was a place for classes and meetings but the actual books were quite limited and I don’t ever remember checking any out. The public library was very limited and I only recall going once with a school trip. As a child my source for books were mainly book fairs plus my dad bought me series that I liked such as Nancy Drew and Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite source for books were “borrowing” or swiping those belonging to my older sister such as all the Ian Fleming books, Coffee, Tea or Me (a wildly trashy and inappropriate book for a young child about airline stewardess), Shirley McClain books and books about aliens and the lost city of Atlantis. My taste in books have radically changed since then but the sense that reading was exciting and sort of illicit has stuck with me.

I didn’t really discover libraries until I was an adult living in the states and now I am back in a location with no real libraries. Thank god for internet shopping! I do love reading about libraries. A very interesting read is Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. One of my favorite stories about a library is by Borges called the Library of Babel which is here. Although not a warm and cozy sort of library that you would want to spend time in, it is certainly memorable.

Books about Books

I love books about books and found these good suggestions to add to my wish list:

Speaking of Books and A Passion for Books by Harold Rabinowitz.

Favorite Bookstores

What's your favorite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favorite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favorite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?

Well Marie at the Boston Bibliophile sure brings back memories with this question and her response! I spent many years living in Boston and enjoyed the Harvard Coop but my favorite book store was Waterstones in a fabulous Romanesque Revival building on the corner of Newbury Street and Exeter which originally was built as a Spiritualist Church. It was everything a book store should be, great selection in a beautiful setting and a wonderful place to spend the day. Unfortunately it is long gone. I also enjoyed the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore which is also now gone although it retains an online presence. (Check out its bitter but interesting, “Twelve reasons for the death of small and independent book stores”, scroll down the page a bit). Boston was a great city for antiquarian book stores which were fun to poke around in but I must admit I rarely purchased anything. Boston is also home to my all time favorite book event, the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair where I would drool over not only the interesting and rare books but the amazing fore-edge painting and extravagant book bindings. Once again, never bought anything but I loved looking.

The bookstore that I am most fond of however is the Barnes & Noble in Walpole, MA because I was part of the management team that opened that store. It was quite an experience. Whenever I am back in the area I always go and visit. It is looking older and tired and everyone that I knew is long gone but it still holds a special place in my heart.

Now I live in a location that has no bookstores and no useful library so all of my shopping is online. I use aubible.com for audio books, ebooks.com and others for ebooks and Barnes & Noble.com for paper books. I must admit that I use Amazon to look for books and read all the reviews but I actually purchase the books from B&N because the shipping works much better for me than with Amazon, the price is great since I am a member, plus I get airline miles. I guess I am in the process of selecting books almost everyday that I surf the internet but I don’t actually place an order more than a couple times a month. I haven’t found LT very helpful for finding book stores or book events.

BTT - Other Worlds

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?
Or where you certainly would NOT want to live? What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?

I cannot think of any books I would like to live in but I certainly would like to visit some for a short while. The Groan castle in Gormenghast from Titus Groan by Meryvn Peake as long as I was a member of the Groan family. In fact I would like to stay in the twin sisters’ rooms so I have access to the Room of Roots and can have tea parties on the giant tree that grows horizontally out of the side of castle. Macondo from 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The New York of Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. Any of Tom Robbins books.

I certainly would not want to live at the Colorado horse ranch from God of Animals or the world of I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Some of the places that I definitely don’t want to live would be absolutely fascinating for really really short visits such as the House from the House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, the ruins in Antarctica from the Mouth of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft.

I would trust Gabriele Garcia Marquez to write my life because it would be beautifully written with a hint of magic and wonder. I would be very tempted to see what my life would be like written by Franz Kafka or Luis Borges, two of my favorite authors. It would be filed with the unexpected but I am afraid that it would not turn out well for me and while I don’t generally read happy ending books, if its my life I want it to be happy.

Musing Mondays #3: Why Join Reading Challenges?

I just discovered Musing Mondays through Tuesday Thingers so while I am obviously a day late, I loved the topic so wanted to add my two cents worth. The question is: Why do people join in on reading challenges… what’s so appealing about them?

I was asking myself that very same question back in April and as a result decided to try Carl V’s Once Upon a Time II as my first challenge. I enjoyed many aspects of it. I enjoyed reading everybody else’s reviews although I never did get through them all as there were a total of 476 reviews posted. It was good for me to have some incentive to go ahead and post reviews and make comment’s on other people’s blogs as I have a tendency to lurk. I discovered lots of interesting blogs with similar interests and found some books to add to my wish list.

What I didn’t like was that I found it stressful and I resented the fact that I needed to read the next book for the challenge instead of reading whatever struck my fancy. I was also surprised by how many young adult books were included in the reviews. While I can appreciate that young adult books may be well written and other adults enjoy them, they are simply something that doesn’t interest me.

I concluded that I don’t read fast enough to do a challenge consisting of five books in two months and still leave myself time to read my book club books as well as a few simply for fun. I also concluded that I needed to be more discerning when picking the topic of the challenge. Fantasy is not an area that I normally read and I thought it would be good to branch out and indeed I found some great books that I had never thought of as fantasy that I loved. But I think that if it was a topic that really interested me I would have enjoyed it more.

With the end of that challenge in June I said that I was not going to start any other challenge anytime soon. See Once Upon A Time wrap up post. But then I discovered Belleza’s second Japanese Literature Challenge. That is a topic that really interests me and it only requires three books over a six month time period so I gave in a joined up and am really looking forward to it. The review site is here.

I note that many others have commented that they enjoy challenges because it reduces their TBR piles. It certainly does not reduce mine. For the last challenge I intended to read three books that I already owned but ended up only reading one that I had and buying five new ones. For the Japanese challenge I intend to read one that I own but all of the others that are on my list as possible reads I would have to buy. If I am going to commit to the challenge I want to be reading the best books that I can find for it and besides, what a great excuse for buying books - I simply had to!!

I also noted that others mentioned that they enjoyed the challenge aspect of it. My work is all about meeting rigid deadlines and I don’t have any desire to try and push myself to read more in my leisure time. My natural inclination is to read as much as I can in the time I have available and adding stress to it just takes the pleasure out of it.

I am in awe of people that participate in multiple challenges at a time as well as people that read a huge number of books but that is something that I simply cannot do. The verdict on reading challenges is still out for me but I will give an update when I finish the Japanese Reading Challenge after January 30, 2009.

God of Animals

by Aryn Kyle

Set on a broken down horse farm in Colorado, this is a coming of age story of a twelve year old girl, Alice, and her very dysfunctional family. I cannot say that I enjoyed reading this book but I still thought is was very well done. I didn’t enjoy it simply because of the cruelty to the horses that was portrayed. As a young child I discovered that stories with animals often involved the death of an animal and I refused to read animal stories or watch animal movies. I generally still adhere to that policy. I read this book because it was the selection for my book group. One of the reasons that I enjoy my book group is that it gets me to read things that I wouldn’t ordinarily read on my own which I believe is a good thing. This book certainly was reading outside of my comfort zone.

Despite my discomfort, I found the characters very engaging and I was anxious to see how their stories played out. There is the mother that never comes down from her bedroom. The handsome but distant father who is chasing after his dreams and trying to keep the ranch afloat. The missing older sister who always won all the blue ribbons in the horse shows and attracted lucrative clients to the stable who ran off with a rodeo cowboy. The grandparents that show up in their RV and in a whirlwind of activity get things going in the right direction for the family and then just as suddenly depart. The catfish, the wealthy ladies who board their extremely expensive horses at the stable, who mostly sip cocktails and gossip instead of actually ride. Patty Jo who tries to distance herself from the catfish and is more interested in the handsome father. And last but not least, Polly a drowned girl from Alice’s class and the English teacher that becomes Alice’s confidant in late night phone marathons. With this odd cast of characters Alice is trying to do the best she can to grow up and take care of her family with absolutely no help or guidance from any adults in her life.

While some in my book group found the story depressing and didn’t like any of the characters, I thought the author’s portrayal of the characters, while not sympathetic, rang true. It is not a happily every after story but I suspect that it is more true to life than we would like to think. I enjoyed the author’s use of language and found the plot and characters extremely well done. This was the author’s first novel and I would be interested to read her future works if she doesn’t include any animals.

Tuesday Thingers

What other weekly memes or round robins do you participate in? Is this the only one? Why Tuesday Thingers and not some other weekly Tuesday meme? Or do you do more than one?

In addition to Tuesday Thingers I sometimes participate in Booking Through Thursday and Weekly Geeks although I am not very consistent. I only participate if I have the time and find the question interesting. I like Booking Through Thursday and Tuesday Thingers because they are book focused and in addition to the interesting questions it is a good way to find other bloggers that have similar interests. I occasionally participate in Weekly Geeks because I am new to blogging and I am trying to be more of a participant than a lurker, which is my natural tendency.

I recently discovered a new one, It’s Tuesday, Where are You, which asks where is reading taking you today? The question is always the same but the answers are always different. Reading is such a great way to experience something different without even leaving your home be it inside a virtual reality game, in outer space, in Antarctica, in Cromwell’s England, in the Emperor of China’s Court or in Colorado on a horse ranch. I really enjoy seeing where reading has taken other readers.

Halting State

by Charles Stross

After the Once Upon a Time II challenge I was in the mood for some sci fi. I had read such great things about this book (like Carl V's review) that I had to check it out. This thriller takes place in 2018 in the independent republic of Scotland where a bank robbery by a band of orcs with a dragon for backup has taken place inside of Avalon Four, a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). It is told in the 2nd person through the narratives of Sue, a police officer, Elaine, a forensic accountant and Jack, a game programmer that just happens to have the exact skill set as Avalon Four's missing programmer.

While I have never played computer games and could not follow all the lingo, I found the whole premise very interesting. The technology seemed to be a reasonable extrapolation of where we might be in ten years and the pervasiveness of information technology in everyday life seemed dead on. I found myself caught up in the plot and having to remind myself that the portrayal of the police’s big brother ability to track a person’s every movement was really very scary. I also found the idea interesting that innocent games, Spooks in the book, could be used by intelligence agencies or others to have the participants unwittingly involved in far more than a game without them even suspecting.

While I know that some who have read the book did not like the second person style, I had no issue with it. While I didn’t find that the second person was essential to the book, as in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, once I read that it was the narrative used in most role playing games, I thought it was a fun touch.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is when you first meet Elaine, the forensic accountant, who on her time off is involved in sword fighting but enhanced with virtual reality to add elaborate costumes and an appropriate setting. Through out the book I was hoping that Elaine was going to have the opportunity to really wield that sword and cause some havoc. While she did get to use it at a pivotal point in the book, it was very anticlimactic and disappointing. Of course I was happy that two of the three main characters were strong women so it was just a minor quibble. Over all though I enjoyed the book and will definitely check out some others by Charles Stross.

Tuesday Thingers

Recommendations. Do you use LT's recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the "special sauce" recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read?

I don’t find Library Thing’s recommendations very helpful and do not use them. It comes up with such obvious recommendations: I have some Jose Saramago in my library so I would like other books that he has written or I have some Franz Kafka in my library so I would enjoy reading a biography about him. I am not saying these recommendations are wrong, just obvious. The unsuggester recommendations seem to all be books about Christianity which apparently is a typical response judging from other posts. The member recommendations seem way off base to me. I liked Good Omen’s so I should like the Eyre Affair and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff? I loved Good Omen’s but wasn’t thrilled with either the Eyre Affair or Lamb, both of which I thought were good concepts that didn’t live up to their potential.

I have no problems finding lots of books that I would like to read. I subscribed to Book magazine before it went out of business and now to Bookmarks magazine and always find interesting suggestions there. The best source are friends who share your reading tastes but unfortunately that is not as common as I would like which is why I have turned to the internet. I get so many ideas from both web sites and emailed newsletters such as the New York Times Book Review as well as numerous bookish blogs. Some books just grab me after just reading one review and I know I have to have it like Carl V’s review of Wastelands. Most books I will read one review and then if I start reading about it on the blogs I will really consider it. At the moment the Lace Reader and Gargoyle both seem hot books that I will keep in mind as I read more about them. I also tend to get interested in a subject or genre and follow that path for a while. Recently I was in the mood for science fiction and came across Tor's new web site that is currently giving away free ebooks many of which were already on my wish lists. There are far more books in the world then I will ever have time for and I have at least a couple of years worth of books to be read in my house so I never really need to search for books. Books just seem to find me and I cannot resist them.

It's Tuesday, Where Are You.

Where is reading taking you today?

Today I just started to visit a broken down horse ranch in Desert Valley Colorado. (God of Animals by Aryn Kyle)

July/August Bookmarks

Here are the books that looked interesting in the July/August Bookmarks magazine.

Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere by Gabrielle Walker - NF
The Boat by Nam Le - S, Short Stories
Olive Kitterage by Elizabeth Srout
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson - SF

It also had a article on Great Science Fiction
Cyberpunk:
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr.
Philip K. Dick
Peace War by Vernor Vinge
Pat Cadigan
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Alfred Bester

Time Travel:
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
John Crowley - AegyptCycle or Lord Byron's Novel

Space Opera:
Poul Anderson
Polity series (Gridlinked) by Neal Asher
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds