Seriously giving thought, as a way of motivating myself, now that I have a bit of "free time," to make some interesting posts about books rather than authors or other people. Since I read about a book or two a day (sometimes more, sometimes less), thought perhaps I might try to write seven reviews over the next seven days of books currently not finished or waiting to be read for the first time. Here's what I'm considering:
1. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago - finishing this up today for an online book club discussion.
2. José Saramago, Cain - just arrived in the mail today.
3. Mizuki Nomura, Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime - coming out in English translation in July.
4. Blake Charlton, Spellwright - first of two recent epic fantasies that I'll read.
5. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon - to break up the possible monotony of epic fantasies.
6. Alexy Pehov, Shadow Prowler - the other epic fantasy release, this time translated from Russian.
7. John F. Williams, Hating Perfection: A Subtle Search for the Best Possible World - non-fiction book that sounds promising.
Oh, and I still might write reviews of Gail Carriger's second novel, Changeless (which was mostly excellent), and Karin Lowachee's The Gaslight Dogs, her first non-space SF novel (mostly good).
Of course, this is probably suicidal, but hey, motivations can help lead to some interesting results. Will be interested to see if my review style suffers or not. Will write at least 750 and probably 900-1100 words per review. Wish me luck?
The Empirical Approach to Learning
1 day ago
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6 comments:
That's ambitious, to say the least. I am interested on your takes on the epic fantasy fiction titles, though.
Good luck!
Oh, excellent. As I said before, I'd love to hear your take on Shadow Prowler - not that the rest of your week's reading doesn't sound like it won't make for a few interesting articles.
Wait, no, too many negatives in that sentence. I'm lost.
Good luck! Honestly, Larry, if I could match you a book for every three you manage to read, I'd be doing well.
Ugh, are you mad :P ? I'll be very impressed if you manage it.
And was changeless as good as soulless? Not the sort of thing I usually read but I absolutely loved it.
Well, I finished the Pasternak book already and I'll be writing the review in about 2-3 hours, then I'll start and probably finish the Saramago. Thankfully, none of the books are longer than 400 pages, so it'd be 1.5-3 hours to read (going very slow for me) and then 30-60 minutes to write the review. Should be manageable.
As for Changeless, it's about the same level of prose and characterization, just with more obvious steampunk elements to it. I enjoyed it greatly.
It makes my head hurt to even think about reading a Toni Morrison book in a day. To say nothing of the writing, it takes me some serious effort to get through her stuff.
That said, Song of Solomon is in my TBR stack somewhere.
Well, I unfortunately have an extra 9 hours a day now while I go through a few hoops and see if I can add more endorsements to my teaching license in hopes of getting to teach other subjects next school year. That means I could read a 350 page novel like the Morrison one in a few hours, depending on how much time I wanted to spend on it at any single time (I rarely read more than an hour straight).
Finished the Pasternak and the review is now up. About to start the Saramago, which is only 190 pages and is in Spanish translation (his wife translated it from Portuguese and it was released simultaneous to the Portuguese release). That review will be shorter, since I doubt I'll translate many, or any, passages.
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