Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Spam poetry

I just got the following in a spam email. I don't know who sent it but the guy's a poet.


"calcify rejection tomorrow Amy perplexity narration pithes raucous hockey
withstands trowels repeat. verifiable Culbertson
Moslems eyeful rubbery intimating booths"

Monday, August 13, 2012

How do I blog about reading when I spend all my time reading?!

I'm way overdue for an update. I have been posting short reviews in a much more timely fashion on goodreads. You are welcome to follow me there but please send me a message telling me this is where you found me as I don't accept a lot of friend requests from people I don't know. http://www.goodreads.com/friend/i?i=LTM2MDY4MTA5NzQ6MzIx

I'm not going to cover everything I've read since my last post but I'll try to give you some highs and lows.

First off, there was Canada by Richard Ford. I've never read any of his work before so I was very curious about him. I love his style of narrative. It's beautiful and sweeping and grand while at the same time his story seemed so grounded. To be honest, I enjoyed his writing style more than the story itself but I liked that aspect of it so much I would still recommend him.

I really loved Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel by Carol Rifka Brunt. This book was almost like wandering into a time capsule for me since I was probably close to the same age as her main character at the time. Brunt is a wonderful storyteller and she's brought up an issue (AIDS) that doesn't seem to get much attention anymore. It really left me thinking and wondering why we've sidelined news about this disorder when it still hasn't been cured.

I forget which website I was on but I was reading someone's picks of best books of the century and I found out about Kindred by Octavia Butler. Several people recommended it and thought it was grossly overlooked as a modern classic. I agree. Just read it. Tell everyone else to read it. 'Nuff said.

Then there was The Pleasures of Men by Kate Williams. I really didn't care for this. It was trying to be some sort of twist on Jack the Ripper but it was predictable and difficult to follow. It was hard to tell what was real and what was imagined in the mind of the narrator. It's an interesting idea to have a crazy narrator but this just felt like a gimmick.

12.21: A Novel by Dustin Thomason was a fast paced read and if you're interested in the notion that the world will end in December or if you like zombies, you might like this one. Neither interest me but I still got a kick out of reading this. It was a nice twist on both.

One of the better books I've read recently was Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks. It's the story of an autistic boy who finds himself in a dangerous amount of trouble and it's told from the perspective of his imaginary friend. This book was wonderful!! So original and wonderfully told. Read it.

I had heard so much about The Age of Miracles: A Novel by Karen Thompson Walker, I'd really been looking forward to reading it. I devoured it in a day. Great end-of-days story. Well worth the wait.

I had heard a lot about A Discovery of Witches: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy) by Deborah Harkness. I do like stories about witches and supernatural themes so I think I was naturally drawn to this, even though one of my co-workers struggled to finish it. Harkness does a good job of making a scene come to life. The only real problem I had with this book was that it occasionally reminded me of Twilight. It would be going along very nicely and then a passage would come up that sounded like it was being narrated by Bella Swan and my mood instantly soured. Mostly, I liked it. The set up for book 2 sounded interesting and I look forward to getting around to reading that one.

And then there was Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn. What a wonderful and messed up story. I don't usually read mysteries but I'd heard so many great things about this that my interest was piqued. Wow. Just wow.

I was suffering from a supernatural hangover from Discovery of Witches so I decided to read Advent: A Novel by James Treadwell. This doesn't happen to me very often, I couldn't finish it. I was so ridiculously bored out of my mind. I keep trudging away at it, hoping it would get better but I finally gave up when I had 100 pages left. I felt like I was torturing myself.

After that, I needed some immediate and easy relief so I picked up Changeling (Order of Darkness) by Philippa Gregory. I have liked everything else I've read by her and this was not bad either. It's her first book targeted at the Young Adult audience. It was predictable but it was still fun and imaginative.

Right now, I am reading A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) by George R. R. Martin. I'm about a third through and I really like it so far. I'm a big fan of this series. I like the way Martin isn't afraid to sacrifice really great characters in order to make the story more real and interesting.

And that brings me up to date!! I will try to post more diligently. In the mean time, feel free to follow me on goodreads.com.