while she knits - summer's end
Aug. 21st, 2009 09:21 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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queensthiefIt's hard to imagine summer ending soon--what with the nasty 86% humidity and all--but vacations are over, kids are starting back to school, and folks are returning to college.
How about a Reading Recap? What's the best book you read this summer? What's one that just didn't work for you?
How about a Reading Recap? What's the best book you read this summer? What's one that just didn't work for you?
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Date: 8/22/09 02:02 am (UTC)Summer... over? *cannot compute*
Reading recap. I postively loved Howl's Moving Castle, of course. That takes the #1 spot. The Hunger Games was pretty fantastic as well - can't wait for Catching Fire to come out. And, although I'm not sure if this counts, I read a bunch of Phillipa Gregory, which are historical fiction about the Tudors, and those were a lot of fun.
...Books I didn't like? it's summer, I'm allowed to have a short attention span. Pretty much if I wasn't into a book by halfway through, I stopped... so I don't really remember many. But it just goes to show how many wonderful books there are in the world that I only did that once or twice in the whole summer. :-)
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Date: 8/22/09 02:15 am (UTC)ALthough, I absolutely love Howls Moving Castle as well! :)
[It's still actually Winter here in NZ though, so I'm going by best books in the last three months.]
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Date: 8/22/09 02:28 am (UTC)I'm trying to remember if there were books that didn't really work for me. I finally read the Twilight books. I didn't hate them...but neither did I love them. That's as close as I can come right now...
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Date: 8/22/09 02:55 am (UTC)Also read Howl's Moving Castle, but it wasn't the first time so it doesn't count for this question.
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Date: 8/22/09 03:08 am (UTC)The book I gave the highest star rating to was "Mara, Daughter of the Nile". Very good book that gave Egypt a "real" quality.
Book with the lowest star rating? "Troy" by Adele Geras. Although this book gets good reviews from everyone else, I couldn't get through it. It really seemed to drag......starting out several years into the war, it skips all of the interesting things about the war beginning. So basically we're just reading the boring stuff in the middle, and then presumably the book wraps up with the destruction of Troy. For this book to work, the author would need to make the story telling interesting in order to keep me intrigued, since we all already know how it ends, it being a pre-existing mythology. Alas, nothing about the story telling felt original, despite it jumping from person to person in the viewpoint. In two weeks I read maybe half of the book.....which made all of my other library books wait until they were almost overdue. Two weeks for half a book is SLOW beyond belief. I finally gave up and moved on to better things. For me to quit a book is extremely rare.
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Date: 8/22/09 03:12 am (UTC)http://psa.blastmagazine.com/2008/08/23/twilight-a-follow-up-and-a-promise/
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Date: 8/22/09 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 03:36 am (UTC)I enjoyed Troy - I think the author totally deserves a thumbs-up, UNLESS she wasn't trying to write a comedic Mary Sue fanfic. XD
I loved how the heros of the war were all so taken with the weird, insane chilluns that had been found in the woods. And that the weird chilluns kept seeing GODS, who pretty much didn't show themselves to anyone else. And that one of the author's characters had guessed that Cassandra could see the future. And that they ALL SURVIVED THE SACK OF TROY. But I think the best was that all the heros were always CONFIDING in our favorite crazy chilluns. Like, "hello strange witch-child that I took into my household to weave with me, for no apparent reason besides how totally fantastic she is, did you know that I'm aware that my husband cheats on me at least three times a day? I just had to tell someone and, since you're so fantastic, I thought it might as well be you."
I don't know where all those awards came from, actually. Most awards commitees don't like fanfiction that much.
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Date: 8/22/09 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 04:21 am (UTC)I re-read To Say Nothing of the Dog and it was AWESOME. Again. Read (well, listened to a recording of) Three Men in a Boat. Hilarious.
Re-read 1st and 3rd Volumes of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci. Conrad's Fate is a very close second for my Favorite DWJ.
Little Dorrit. Charles Dickens was a Very Funny Guy. Gotta read (listen to) more of his stuff.
Lets see, what else... The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Sherwood Ring, Jane Eyre, more Miles (I WILL finish the Miles Books eventually)
Yes, my friends, this was a Very Good summer for reading.
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Date: 8/22/09 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 04:37 am (UTC)Other than that, I really enjoyed The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan, and The Changeling Sea by Patricia McKillip. I fell in love with Nikolai Gogol's short stories too, as well as Jim Harrison's poetry. Also, I read a buttload of great history books. Because history texts are made of win. :D
I can't think of a book I read this summer that I didn't like. But I generally don't read new things now unless I get a strong recommendation, or I've read the author before.
SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC
Date: 8/22/09 04:54 am (UTC)So my brother has been asking me for books to read. Of course I told him to read Thief, Queen and King but he wants other books as well. Books he says I've given him that he's actually liked are Enders Game, The Blue Sword and the Temeraire Books. He liked The Scarlet Pimpernel except for Margurite Being Annoying. He really did not like Howl's Moving Castle at all (I wouldn't have expected him to--I didn't actually give it to him, he just picked it up and read it because me and my mom and sisters all liked it). HELP PLEEZE.
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Date: 8/22/09 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 05:00 am (UTC)Off Topic
Date: 8/22/09 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 05:08 am (UTC)Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede. Interesting and fun.
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. Also read his juvenile poetry books and enjoyed them a lot. Rex is amazing. He's an artist, a poet, and a writer. And he does them all well!!
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. It made me nostalgic for the gold old days The kids were unbelievably well behaved (no fighting, no arguing, no whining???) but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Currently listening to KoA (4th time) and enjoying it as much as ever. The reader is excellent.
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Date: 8/22/09 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 05:40 am (UTC)Let's see...
I read King of Attolia for the first time ever in May, so I count that as a best book of the summer since I was already out of school at the end of April.
I also read and really enjoyed my first two Discworld novels: The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic. They were so funny and delightful and I'm so glad to have so many great novels ahead of me that I'll put these here too.
I also have to give props to The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. There were some things I didn't necessarily like, but there was much more that really got me thinking about grace.
And one more fave (I promise, this is the last): Titus Groan by Mervin Peake. I'm glad I gave this one a second chance (after trying to read it when I was around 13 or so). Very long, very slow, very...interesting. Peake is just a genius! I don't think many people know the English language better than him. I think he even rivals Tolkien as a wordsmith. Seriously, Peake is a master. There's no other way to put it. Not to mention his imagination must have been quite a crazy place to live. Wow.
Now for something I didn't like: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I'm only about 100 and some odd pages into it, but I just don't think I can go any farther. I don't care about the main character--I think that I may not even like him, I see too many cliches that aren't being given a fresh twist, and something about Rothfuss's writing just really gets under my skin. I just don't think I can finish it. I hate to not finish a book, but...eh. No.
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Date: 8/22/09 05:42 am (UTC)I reread about half of it, loved it, and then just kind of let it go. Whoops. I think I got into the whole St. John thing and just missed Mr. Rochester too much to continue. Or maybe I didn't even get that far. I can't remember. XD
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Date: 8/22/09 05:44 am (UTC)I also love Fahrenheit 451, which I always associate with 1984 Both of them are great stories, and it's crazy how you start to see parallels in "the real world" after reading them.
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Date: 8/22/09 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/09 06:01 am (UTC)I just noticed that wikipedia and 1984 are related. Because facts are totally changeable on both. WHOA, SCARY!!!
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Date: 8/22/09 06:07 am (UTC)So I know I'm a little behind the times, but I *finally* read Howl's Moving Castle and it's probably one of my favorite books I've read in quite a while. I can't believe I waited so long to read it.
I also loved Demon's Lexicon (like viviolo! :-D) and the other two Diana Wynne Jones books I have now read: The Game and Charmed Life.
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Date: 8/22/09 06:46 am (UTC)I also adored Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. However, although I more or less enjoyed his American Gods while reading it, ultimately it left me fairly unengaged. I certainly didn't dislike it, but given that it won about a million major prizes, I'd expected more. I can't call it Worst Book, or even Least Favourite Book... but it probably ranks as Greatest Disappointment, given my very high expectations.
As for other books, I mostly liked The Demon's Lexicon, though not as much as many others seemed to have liked it. I really liked Knife by RJ Anderson, and also Lament: the Faerie's Queen's Deception, which, although not a Tam Lin retelling itself, led me to do a re-read of various favourite novels that are: Fire and Hemlock, Tam Lin (Pamela Dean) and Perilous Gard, which also led me to re-read The Sherwood Ring. I'm currently re-reading Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy, and have also re-read pretty much everything by Hilary McKay and Jacqueline Moriarty. I really need to read some new books, but I'm in the process of Librarythinging my stuff, so keep coming across old favourites and thinking, "ooh, I must read that again"...