November 2011
1 post
5 tags
Book 3.8: Bossypants
Author: Tina Fey
Dates read: September 7, 2011 - September 12, 2011 (6 days)
Pages: 275
Genre: Non-fiction, memoir, humor
This book was a quick read that I would’ve gotten through much quicker if I wasn’t constantly stopping to tell a friend about whatever hilarious thing I had just read in this book. I picked it up because I’ve always liked Tina Fey’s sense of...
October 2011
9 posts
2 tags
2 tags
“The seconds pass. I know what’s going on because it’s the same thing...”
– Jennifer Egan, The Keep
3 tags
Book 3.7: The Keep
Author: Jennifer Egan
Dates read: August 28, 2011 - September 6, 2011 (10 days)
Pages: 240
Genre: Fiction
Yikes, I just can’t seem to get back on schedule. I thought this book would be a quicker read than it turned out to be, but it took a little while for it to really hook me due to a slow starting pace. But I’ll get into that in a bit. I picked this book because I’d...
4 tags
Book 3.6: The Magician King
Author: Lev Grossman
Dates read: August 21, 2011 - August 27, 2011 (7 days)
Pages: 400
Genre: Fiction, fantasy
This novel is a sequel to one of my favorite books of the past few years, The Magicians. Given how much I loved the first book, the sequel moved immediately to the top of my reading list and I bought it the day it came out.
Since I don’t want to potentially spoil aspects...
2 tags
“A town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but...”
– Neil Gaiman, American Gods
4 tags
Book 3.5: American Gods
Author: Neil Gaiman
Dates read: August 4, 2011 - August 20, 2011 (17 days)
Pages: 461
Genre: Fiction, fantasy
I ended up a couple weeks behind schedule with this book, again wishing I wasn’t quite so busy so I would’ve been able to get through it more quickly. I picked this book because I’ve read a handful of things by Neil Gaiman but somehow never this particular novel,...
2 tags
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“It’s strange the times people choose to be generous.”
– Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
3 tags
Book 3.4: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Dates read: July 30, 2011 - August 3, 2011 (5 days)
Pages: 213
Genre: Fiction
This was a much quicker read than my last, and had I not been pretty busy while I was reading it, I probably would’ve been done with it even quicker. My roommate loaned it to me a while back when I was about to travel because she thought it might be a good read for the plane, but...
September 2011
8 posts
4 tags
Book 3.3: Soon I Will Be Invincible
Author: Austin Grossman
Dates read: July 21, 2011 - July 29, 2011 (9 days)
Pages: 287
Genre: Fiction, fantasy
This book isn’t very long, but I got a little mired in it because it was a much slower read than I’d anticipated. I was drawn to it because of the downtrodden supervillain narrator.
This novel follows a supervillain, Dr. Impossible, as he breaks out of a prison...
2 tags
“I hate time. It never does what you want it to.”
– Nick Hornby, Slam
2 tags
“Seeing as he wasn’t very bright, I was pretty sure that he was going to be...”
– Nick Hornby, Slam
2 tags
“I couldn’t bear to think about the proper future, so I just tried to make...”
– Nick Hornby, Slam
4 tags
Book 3.2: Slam
Author: Nick Hornby
Dates read: July 17, 2011 - July 20, 2011 (4 days)
Pages: 309
Genre: Fiction, young adult
A quick read that nearly put me back on track after a long one, I picked this novel up because Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers and oddly I hadn’t yet read it. Actually, it’s not that odd I hadn’t read it as it’s a young adult novel and I suppose...
2 tags
“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my...”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
2 tags
“Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to...”
– Graham Moore, The Sherlockian
6 tags
Book 3.1: The Sherlockian
Author: Graham Moore
Dates read: July 5, 2011 - July 16, 2011 (12 days)
Pages: 346
Genre: Fiction, historical fiction, mystery
All right, diving in on attempt number 3. Not off to a fantastic start with a 12 day read, but as attempt number 2 showed, it could be worse. I picked this novel up because I’ve become increasingly interested in Sherlock Holmes over the years, and a book...
August 2011
1 post
1 tag
Round 3
All right, so as anyone that’s been following this blog since January 2011 (or earlier) may already have noticed, I didn’t exactly do a stellar job of keeping up to date with my second attempt at my self-created 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. I blame this on having been exceptionally busy at the beginning of the year, and on my general lack of ability to do anything by convention...
July 2011
12 posts
2 tags
“nostalgia, underlying cosmological explanation for
Weak but detectable...”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
2 tags
“It’s a staircase in a house built by the construction firm of Escher and...”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
2 tags
“All of her heart, a meaningless phrase, but correct and precise, too. She used...”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
2 tags
“theorems, miscellaneous
At some point in your life, this statement will be...”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
2 tags
“My thoughts, normally bunched together, wrapped in gauze, insistent, urgent,...”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
2 tags
“It was almost reckless how vulnerable she allowed herself to be.”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
2 tags
“The sneaky heftiness of the book being the aggregate cumulative effect of...”
– Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
4 tags
Book 2.6: How to Live Safely in a Science...
Author: Charles Yu
Dates read: ?
Pages: 234
Genre: Science fiction
Again, no comment on schedule with this book, and again, a post concerning that coming later. I picked this novel up for two reasons: 1) The cool ray guns on the jacket drew my eye in the store and 2) Reading the insert, it sounded so amazing that I even bumped this up over a book by one of my favorite authors.
This...
1 tag
Concerning one of my other blogs...
Since I’ve just noticed that a good percentage of the people following this tumblr and/or liking/reblogging from it appear to be Doctor Who fans, I figured I’d do a quick plug for my Doctor Who tumblr. I don’t update it terribly often, but the stuff I put up is often cool Who products I find and haven’t seen all over Tumblr already or photo/still stuff I put together...
2 tags
“Suspense comes, not from knowing almost nothing, but from knowing almost...”
– Orson Scott Card, from the afterword of The Lost Gate
2 tags
“He knew he could always be smart later, if that turned out to be a better...”
– Orson Scott Card, The Lost Gate
4 tags
Book 2.5: The Lost Gate
Author: Orson Scott Card
Dates read: ?
Pages: 378
Genre: Fantasy
I’m not even going to bother getting into my scheduling at this point (though a post on that subject alone is forthcoming), suffice it to simply say, I’m way behind. Nonetheless, I was very excited to read this Orson Scott Card book as he’s the author of my favorite book (Ender’s Game), and this...
February 2011
6 posts
2 tags
“Never mock a tender heart.”
– Orson Scott Card, The Lost Gate
3 tags
Book 2.4: All the Sad Young Literary Men
Author: Keith Gessen
Dates read: January 24, 2011 - February 23, 2011 (a depressing 31 days)
Pages: 242
Genre: Fiction
Well, I’m woefully behind schedule now (but with hope of catching up a bit since I just bought new books by two of my favorite authors, which is a subject for another time, but promising at least for the present!). I picked this book because it seemed to promise a...
2 tags
3 tags
Book 2.3: When We Were Bad
Author: Charlotte Mendelson
Dates read: January 13, 2011 - January 23, 2011 (11 days)
Pages: 321 pages
Genre: Fiction
I picked this novel as my next read because I’ve had it for quite a while without making it around to it, and I wanted another humorous read before going back to the much larger stack of somber reads on my bookshelf.
This novel follows a Jewish family in England in...
2 tags
“He glances again at the door. Would a taste of the outside world be so unwise?”
– Charlotte Mendelson, When We Were Bad
4 tags
Book 2.2: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
Author: George Saunders
Dates read: January 12, 2011 (20 minutes)
Pages: 84
Genre: Children’s book (or as like a children’s book as George Saunders would write)
Well, I’m painfully behind schedule with both reading and posting. But on the subject of posting, this particular entry is so painfully behind because it was actually written and queued, then tumblr ate the entry...
January 2011
7 posts
2 tags
“A train will bring you back to the place you came from, but it will not return...”
– Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
2 tags
“He was the only person awake, but he might as well have been alone and dreaming.”
– Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
2 tags
“On Memory: Imagine a desk covered with papers. That is everything you are...”
– Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
1 tag
What's new in round 2?
I’ve made a few small changes for my second stab at this reading challenge.
First, since this is my second try at this challenge, I’m number the books 2.x in order to distinguish book 1 of the first try from book 1 of the second try and so on as I go forward. Hopefully I’ll actually get to 2.52!
Second, I’ve added a genre field to the top of the book entries to make it...
5 tags
Book 2.1: The Manual of Detection
Author: Jedediah Berry
Dates read: January 1, 2011 - January 11, 2011 (11 days)
Pages: 278
Genre: Magical realism, mystery
I’m back! New year, new attempt at this challenge. I’ll admit that I’m not starting off great since I’m already behind schedule, but I hope to slip into the groove again quickly. This book was the first on my list for my new crack at this...
2 tags
“A blatant falsification, brought to dwell perpetually in the Agency archives, a...”
– Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
1 tag
June 2010
2 posts
2 tags
“Write down everything you remember. You’ll want to have it written down to...”
– Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion
4 tags
Book 32: The Dream of Perpetural Motion
Author: Dexter Palmer
Dates read: April 27, 2010 - June 5, 2010 (40 days)
Pages: 338
Well, I’m now woefully behind schedule since I’ve been very busy and I was also very wrong about my guess as to how long this novel would take me to read. The steampunk nature of the novel combined with the bizarre concept intrigued me enough to put it at the top of my reading list.
Harold...
April 2010
7 posts
4 tags
Book 31: The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
Author: Mathias Malzieu
Dates read: April 21, 2010 - April 26, 2010 (6 days)
Pages: 172
Still behind schedule, but at least I finished this one in under seven days! This strange title caught my eye on a display table and the concept was so unique that I moved it to the top of my reading list.
This novel follows a boy named Jack who is saved at birth in Edinburgh in 1874 when the witch...
3 tags
Book 30: Adverbs
Author: Daniel Handler
Dates read: April 12, 2010 - April 20, 2010 (9 days)
Pages: 272
I picked up this book expecting it to be another short read to help put me back on schedule, though I turned out to be wrong in my estimate as to how long it would take me to get through it. I saw this book on the sale rack at Skylight and was intrigued by the praise on the back cover from other impressive...
5 tags
Book 29: The Final Solution
Author: Michael Chabon
Dates read: April 8, 2010 - April 11, 2010 (4 days)
Pages: 131
Still behind, but made progress with another short read. When I was looking for another short book to read, this one interested me because I’d never read anything by Michael Chabon and was curious to since several of my friends love his writing.
This novella is a tiny mystery that takes place in...
4 tags
Book 28: The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had...
Author: DC Pierson
Dates read: April 2, 2010 - April 7, 2010 (6 days)
Pages: 226
Picked up a day with this book on my way back toward my schedule. I chose this one because I’ve seen the author perform at Upright Citizen’s Brigade and know that he’s fantastically funny and smart, so I figured this book was sure to be one I’d like. I was right.
This novel is about a...