Colin Gooding

I started off liking this book well enough, the military training section held my attention and seemed to have an interesting take on the price and hardship of military service, plus with the unique wrinkle of this world only allowing the right to vote for those who have served a term of that service.

But then it took a nosedive for me. Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between the voice of a character and the voice of the author, but any scene where a professor or authority figure was monologuing to the main character in a class or where ever and convincing him of some shitty opinion on things like corporal punishment or inalienable rights it was just extremely preachy and pretty disgusting.

Aside from morally questionable content, I just got bored about halfway through as well. There are long drawn out sections where the chain of command and the general makeup of a platoon is discussed. I ended up skimming through a lot of the later parts of the book as I considered dropping it and I just couldn't be bothered to read through it closely.

Here's hoping I enjoy the movie more!

I cannot think of another book I've read with such a passive protagonist and relatively unremarkable narrative that I've enjoyed as much as this.

And I think that mostly comes down to the prose. I really love books in which the writing style matches the themes of the story and sets a tone through which to experience it.

William Stoner is almost just an observer to most of the events throughout his life and the sort of vague, disconnected narration emphasises this. Conversations are often described rather than transcribed. Stoner's actions and decisions are, besides a few key moments, just things he is resigned to by circumstance. Certain characters act antagonisticly towards him while he, and the reader, barely see any evidence of why they would behave that way.

Though that leads to why this wasn't quite a home run for me. It feels “true to life” to not completely understand the actions of some of the other characters, and the same can be said for events that cause a disruption in Stoner's life and are then quickly moved on from, but that isn't the most satisfying story to read (though that could certainly be the intent of the author).

This was a great book club pick though because I can see from our Goodreads reviews that opinions of it are all over the place, haha.

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. I picked it up mostly just because I was curious what Rowling would do under a pseudonym and without the shackling of Harry Potter.

I think the writing here is terrific. There's a rather large cast of characters that come into the story at different points, and each one of them had a distinct personalities and backgrounds. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Robert Glenister and he does such a great job with voicing the characters that I don't know if I would have loved the characters as much had I just been reading it. I loved hearing all the slightly different London accents and the way he captured the emotional state of all these people.

Giving the main character, Strike, an estranged father who was a famous rock star is a stroke of genius. It makes sense of the way all these rich socialites deal with him and gives him ins to certain situations that he shouldn't be in otherwise. I think there are a few little nice touches like this throughout the book.

I also kind of just love this type of hard-boiled detective story. There isn't really even a lot that happens throughout the actual events of the novel, it's a lot of interrogating and recounting of events, but I found it gripping my attention the entire time.

I was really close to giving this 5 stars, but ultimately the story isn't super unique or daring, even though I think it's quite excellent for what it is. And the central mystery, while things are teased out a bit and there are threads left out there for you to connect before the big reveal, results in a scene that really dumps everything on you at once. I liked it, but I think it could have been handled a bit more gracefully.

I didn't realize there were three more books in this series when I started it, I'm excited to check them out at some point now!

I had fun reading this book, but it ultimately wasn't as satisfying for me as Ready Player One.

A lot of the geeky references that I thought worked in RPO felt far more forced here and just the main thrust of the story was less inventive.

I checked this out because the upcoming Hawkeye Disney+ series is supposed to be based on it. It's really good, kind of a gumshoe detective feel if that detective was also an expert marksman Avenger. The art and page layouts are great. I'm not really sure how that will translate to an MCU show, but the stories themselves are pretty fun too, so I'm excited.

I'm still re-reading through these books with my daughter, Dot, almost every night.

This book is still great, but just isn't quite as “magical” as the first book for me (pardon the pun). Gilderoy Lockhart though is a great comic relief character and Dot loved him too.

I asked Dot if she thought this book or the first one was better. She said she looked them both the same amount. Her review of The Chamber of Secrets: “It's good and I liked it.”

This is the second book of Saunders's that I've read now, or more accurately, listened to. And I have similar feelings to it as I did the other (Lincoln In The Bardo), I think Saunders is a really interesting writer... I just can't quite get into his work for some reason.

This short story collection has a couple tales that I liked, in particular one about a prisoner in an experimental facility forced into radical behavior testing. A lot of them kind of just washed over me though, or were a bit aimless and never really hit me in the right way.

Maybe if I read Saunders again I'll try to skip the audiobook and just read him. I'm not sure if it's just an attention thing.

Also, I really want to read a good short story collection this year, so if you read this and have a suggestion, please let me know!

Fun read, does a good job of subverting expectations at key moments.

Fast paced read, with a neat hook that goes places I didn't really expect. Some of the characterization is a bit eye-rolley, but the nature of the story kind of makes that necessary I suppose?

I thought the plot was interesting and ambitious, and the dialogue was mostly really sharp, but a lot of the rest of the writing was pretty uninspired. There were pages of conversations where every line would be ‘“blah blah”Dahl said' and then ‘“Yada yada” Duvall said'. I found it very distracting.

This was a bit different than I expected. I had seen the movie years ago and had kind of assumed that the book was a bit more analytical and the movie had just expanded upon slight narrative threads that may have existed in it, but actually the book is very invested in Billy Beane as a character and spends a lot of time on small vignettes of many players. A lot of the stories are nice little land-of-misfits success stories that can sometimes be a bit cheesey and seem a bit overindulgent, but I still enjoyed quite a bit.

I listened to this as an audiobook from the library. Scott Brick does an excellent job narrating and I can't even really putting my finger on why. He just has a nice, engaging voice that adds to the material.

This is a beautiful, meditative sorry of Western epic fit into a short novella. I enjoyed just being taken along for the journey.

The audiobook was expertly narrated by Will Patton and definitely added to the tone and feel of the writing.

A great expression of a kind of pitiful despair and rage. I really need to see this performed as the staging sounds really interesting and I can imagine how the language would sound coming from good actors.

China Miéville is one of my favorite authors even though I find a lot of his books to be pretty hot and miss, just because he swings for the fences a lot and has a wonderful imagination.

Unfortunately, this one was not a hit. I probably would have stopped reading it had I not been listening to it via audiobook, instead I just listened passively as I did other things. The concept and characters just didn't grab me (though there are some interesting ideas) and I never really ended up paying close attention to the rest of it. I might give it another chance sometime with more focus.

This is an extremely well written and poignant story about a tough subject. This is a great book club pick, there will be a lot to discuss both technically and societally. This was the first Wagamese novel I've ever read, and definitely will not be the last.

** Minor spoilers for the structure of the story to follow **

I always find it fascinating when the conclusion of a book can recontextualize the entire story, especially when it's not a big mystery solved and the story already worked as it was. The middle section of this book, while certainly still a well told tale, felt slight and seemed like an odd story for Wagamese to tell, but by the time the book was over the realization of why it was told that way was very impactful.

From a technical perspective, the prose is really free-flowing and easy to read, and I love how it's divided into very short chapters, often 2-3 minutes long only. I was able to tear through this book and it always kept me wanting to just read over more chapter before putting it down.

In the version of the audiobook that I listened to, there is a retrospective forward by King that mentions that the pseudonym Richard Bachman could serve as a vector for his angry and aggressive tendencies. While I generally like King, this side of him is not my favourite.

I have read plenty of unpleasant bleak dystopian novels that I have enjoyed, but basically every moment of this one is full of rage and there is very little time for anything else. There is a lot of aggressive language even just in the description of characters, though some of that maybe also is just a reflection of the time in which it is written, and even just the "victories" present throughout the book are just sort of nihilistic.

I feel like I never really got a good sense of the world, and there are a lot of ideas that are brought up briefly and discarded. Maybe it would have worked better if I was into the book more, because I do think its interesting to come into this story without a bunch of leadup into how The Running Man came about, but it still just felt pretty thin to me.

King is unquestionably a gifted thriller writer though, so there are many scenes of action or suspense that had my full engagement moment to moment, I just don't think it worked as a whole for me.

Whenever I read a Stephen King book I am almost already enthralled by it, and I try to look at what makes it so compelling. Is it the prose? It's usually solid enough, but there aren't any specific passages or turns of phrase that jump to mind. Is it the characters? Again, solid. Serviceable. They are sympathetic or despicable or whatever else they need to be and often pretty archetypical, they serve the story well. Is it the plot/ideas? This is probably a bit stronger than the other areas as his books generally have pretty interesting premises, but I'd argue that is mostly his later books that have the more clear elevator pitch high concept plots.

So then I think what really works for me is the pacing and execution. The tension builds and the story unfolds with nary a wasted scene. Information is doled out to the reader and held back in equal measure to keep the pages turning. It's just really fun to read (or in my case, listen to, as I think his style is perfect for audiobooks).

It's hard not to think about this book outside the context of the movie. Reading it, I pictured the hotel from the movie, but I didn't really picture the characters the same way. I remember reading that King was upset with Kubrick's take on The Shining, and one of the reasons is that from frame one Jack Nicholson looks mentally unhinged. I thought that was fine in the movie, but having read the book I totally understand. Jack Torrance in the book is sympathetic, he's had some struggles and is trying to piece his life back together and be a better person. As we spend more time with him we realize that maybe he is an unreliable narrator and maybe his motives aren't as clear as he would like us to think they are, but perhaps he's still a redeemable hero? Anyways, the character is much more complex in the book than in the movie certainly, so the book feels familiar but fresh at the same time. I'm glad I read it!

A final note: King's weird adolescent obsession with sex so strangely stands out to me in this book and others of his. He'll just describe things in a suggestive way or have explicit sexual references as kind of window dressing that feels so out of place. I'll give him a little bit of credit and say it does add to the unsettling feeling of a lot of his stories, but I think that's a bit of a stretch in a lot of cases.

This thing read almost like a cheesey crime tv drama. The amount of different and creative ways that Mitnick found to get information out of computer systems, and actually more often, the people using them, is fascinating.

He talks about little things like telling people incorrect information and having them correct you, rather than suspiciously asking directly for it. There's another story where he talks to a developer and asks to be sent something confidential, but the developer informs him that for security reasons it can only be delivered in person, so instead he tells the developer he won't be in the office anytime soon and convinces him to leave the package with the secretary instead. He is then able to convince the secretary to send it to him.

There are a ton of little things like this and the book actually moves along at a pretty brisk pace. Mitnick is almost insufferably egotistical while kind of writing as if he is being humble throughout the story, but it actually kind of humanizes him a bit.

I think I'll try reading another one of his books later on.

I read my first Murakami novel, Norwegian Wood, probably 15 years ago and I absolutely loved it. I think it just captured a sort of uncertain adolescent perspective that really resonated with me as a young college kid at the time. I've since read more from him trying to chase that feeling again, but so far nothing has come even close.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was one that I've heard mentioned a lot as being a favorite of many people, so I was excited to check it out. Sadly, this is yet another of his that just doesn't work for me.

There is still some great stuff here. There's some quality to Murakami's writing, and Jay Rubin's translation work, that is very pleasing to me. It's a bit dreamlike, a bit of a steam of conscience, and it just flows in a way that I feel along for the ride. There are a few sections of this book where a character tells stories of his time in the second World War that are gripping and harrowing. There are some scenes of genuine emotion and confusion from the narrator that I found to be very effective.

But generally I just found myself lost and disinterested. Much of the narrative seems to be just on the border of reality, it plays out as if in a dream. The way Murakami writes about sex is awkward and off-putting. Characters behave in difficult to understand ways and it's hard to put any stake into their actions. I'm just not sure what to takeaway from this book.

I think I'll take a bit of a break from Murakami for a bit. Maybe I'll try to read Norwegian Wood again to see if it is actually as good as my memory of it.

I really love Miller's writing style. She manages to make things feel epic, but still focuses on small moments. There's a distant detachment at the description of certain scenes, and then very personal, emotional stories.

The characters are well known and play towards their archetypes, but she adds in little twists and depths to them that make them come to life. I particularly love the way that she depicts Odysseus both here and in Circe.

Reading this after Circe though, I did not find it quite as compelling. While the central romance is certainly core to the story, it's not really engaging during the middle section, though it is well paid off in the end.

At certain points I just couldn't put it down though, the urgency of the battle scenes and the desperation of the characters really come though. I'm excited to see what Miller decides to do next.

I would have absolutely loved this book if it was a little more focused, but it ended up pursing a lot of ultimately unsatisfying tangents, especially in the second act. Still glad I read it though.

I remember a few summers as a kid when I was obsessed with Greek mythology. I had one of those Complete Idiot's Guide books about it that I loved that covered a lot in an interesting way.

This book seems extremely comprehensive, but isn't nearly as interesting. It's pretty studious in the way it presents the tales, often just laying out the “facts” of the story with very little insight added (though I did like how the beginning of a section often outlined the source poems/writings from which the author pulled). I thought this worked really well in some cases, but it made certain sections feel like more of a chore as it read as of some uninteresting stories were just bullet pointed in in order to not be missed.

I bought this on sale for Kindle, but I know there is a beautiful illustrated anniversary edition and I kind of wish I bought that as a coffee table book to occasionally browse instead of reading through this entire thing at once.

I like a lot of little ideas in this book, and like most Stephen King I have read it is well written and easy to consume, but it just felt like it wanted to go in so many directions at once.

The setup is interesting, but the mid section of the book is a bit meandering and drags. I think I understand what King was going for here, though ultimately for me the ending didn't land enough to justify all of it. It was a nice little idea that just missed the mark for me.

I listened to this via audiobook from the library, and while it as pretty long at ~31 hours, Craig Wasson's narration was really good.

This book occupies a kind of strange place for me in that I found myself thinking of it as sort of a pulpy horror, but King's writing is great and elevates it beyond that, yet I think I'm willing to overlook some flaws because of that initial label I put on it going in.

Anyways, I just think this is a great little single-location thriller/character piece. I have not seen the movie version, but I'm familiar enough with it that I was expecting to just picture Kathy Bates and James Caan the entire time I was reading it, but I found my imagination creating completely different images for some reason. Annie is so interesting because her madness is a strange perversion of logic and justice. Paul's overactive imagination as a writer adds a lot to the narration.

I listened to this via audiobook from the library and I really enjoyed Lindsay Crouse's reading of it. She puts on a voice for Annie with an appropriate amount of subtlety, as I think it would be easy to play her as way over the top.

I read this because I've been enjoying the WandaVision tv show and I wanted to see what influence this book has/will have on it. I'm guessing not too much?

Was fun overall with a few big moments, but didn't feel like a must read or anything to me. Does make me want to get back into super hero comics though.

Not my favorite King, but still good. Certainly has its moments, most of which are ingrained into the popular culture via the movie (which I still haven't seen), but the structure of the story and some of the characters were a bit messy for me.

Listening to the audiobook narrated by Sissy Spacek was a nice touch.