2014 Book #9: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
An official challenge does so much for my determination! This is at least the third time I’ve tried to get into Susanna Clarke‘s post-Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu. I’m not sure why, as I loved that novel so much, and these stories revisit that world. I think my […]
2014 Book #8: Andrew’s Brain
Judging from the reviews I skimmed through even before I read (okay, listened to) Andrew’s Brain, I expected to be disappointed. In that case, why did I read it? I really like E.L. Doctorow. I’d only read two of his novels, World’s Fair, which I loved, and Loon Lake, which was also pretty good. Ragtime is his best known, and […]
2014 Book #7: The Goldfinch
I didn’t know what to expect when I finally picked up The Goldfinch – except a good novel. Every review I’ve read has been good. It’s been on my list for several months, ever since it was published, but it was languishing on my tl;dr list: it’s almost 800 pages long. That said, I’ve enjoyed long novels more […]
2014 Book #6: Under the Net
I wanted so badly to like Under the Net, but until I hit about the 80% mark, I didn’t. Not at all. It’s another case of inability to like a novel if I don’t like the protagonist, as in Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. If I can’t relate, I’m not interested. Which was entirely the case here. Under […]
2014 Book #5: Wolves of the Calla
Once you get to the fifth book in a series, there’s no good way to talk about it without at least spoiling the fact that the main characters are still alive (as in Game of Thrones), so I’ll go ahead and declare a massive spoiler alert right now. The only reason I’m bothering is that I’ve […]
2014 Book #4: Pedro Páramo
After a series of long books, I decided to read a short one, though I didn’t think I’d get through it this quickly. Once I picked up Pedro Páramo, I had a hard time putting it down. I read it in two sittings: most of it last night and the remainder this morning. It had […]
2014 Book #3: A Bloodsmoor Romance
Here’s how I ended up reading A Bloodsmoor Romance: I was browsing through Amazon’s Kindle deals, saw this book, and clicked on it because I’d never read any Joyce Carol Oates, and I figured that I should have by now. The Accursed came out fairly recently, so her name has been floating around. Speaking of floating, it’s […]
2014 Book #2: The Master and Margarita
I don’t even know where to begin with this one, except that, strangely, The Master and Margarita is what I expected The Magus to be, and vice versa. I hadn’t read anything by (or even heard of) Mikhail Bulgakov before The Master and Margarita, which I think might have been another Goodreads recommendation. I think the devil-causing-mischief idea […]
What I *might* read in 2014
The holidays are over, our ginormous Christmas tree is no more, and my life is settling down into its more normal patterns. Shortly before the new year, I wrote my grand post about what I’d read in 2013, and I thought it might be fun to continue that with what I might read in 2014. I […]
2014 Book #1: Snow Crash
I hate to start 2014 on a negative note, but MEH. It’s not even that Snow Crash is a terrible novel (though it’s not an especially good one); it’s that it’s not my kind of novel. In some ways, it’s like a Dan Brown novel, and in others, it’s like I imagine a Clive Cussler or […]