December 2010

Here’s the last “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” post of the year. I didn’t do too badly this month, considering the end of the semester and whatnot, though I didn’t best last year’s eighteen books in December.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. Companion to the excellent Oryx and Crake, this book was, unfortunately, the extact same story from a different character’s point of view.
Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts by Julie Jung. For my pedagogy class.
All Clear by Connie Willis. The second half of the Blackout/All Clear narrative had me on the verge of tearing up. The question is, Is life a comedy or a tragedy?
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. It had been on my shelf for more than two years, and I read it in an afternoon; fortunately, it made an enjoyable afternoon.
Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon by Larry Millett (60%). See previous post on too much historical detail.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Stephenson is the direct heir of William Gibson’s cyberpunk genre. I am formulating a book list called “Brilliant Weird Stuff” and Snow Crash is on it.
The Blue Hawk by Peter Dickinson. I read this book courtesy of Scotland; it is a fantasy culture based on Egypt. Quite solid.
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. To continue my crush on stage magicians.
The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar. See previous post on not enough Sherlock Holmes.
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. Thursday Next, book three.
The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett. A lovely illustrated copy, which I got for Christmas and positively devoured.
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. More Christmas profits–it is a Regency fantasy, also quite solid.
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann. A collection of essays.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. We read it in the car.
Company by Max Barry. We read this one in the car too, though we lost interest in August because it wasn’t as good as Jennifer Government, soI had the presence of mind to finish reading it to myself.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. One of my favorite books to finish out the year.

The total books read for this year comes to 176. I am determined to reach 200 next year; I have only to read one more book each month than this year, and I should be almost there. I also want to have my first 20-book month, and I hope that once my graduate degree is completed, I will have much more time for leisure reading.

Yes, I did cheat by counting each half of The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye as one book each. But since it was my first-ever thousand-page read, no, I’m not very sorry. 😛

December 30

Official Christmas Loot

(in order of appearance)

Books

The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (a gift card purchase)
Of Other Worlds by C.S. Lewis
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

Notebooks

New York City blank notebook
Moleskine lined notebook

DVDs

Castle season one
Castle season two
Sherlock (BBC) season one

Thanks, everyone! So I’ve already read Pride and Prejudice again, because I couldn’t help myself; I also read The Last Hero and admired all the lovely illustrations; and I sped through Shades of Milk and Honey. I’ve also watched Sherlock, and liked it up until the last half hour of the third show.

Christmas Books

Thanks to everyone who has made my Christmas a literary one. Among many excellent gifts, I also received several exciting books, including some by Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, Doris Lessing, and Mary Robinette Kowal. I will have lots of promising reads for 2011, and I hope to be more diligent about reviewing them…as soon as I get back to my regular Internet.

Until then, happy early new year!

December 18

I’ve recently read two books involving Sherlock Holmes, each in their own unusual way.

The first was Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon by Larry Millett, a Sherlock Holmes in North America adventure. While the style and tone was, for the most part, spot on, it was evident that Millett was strongly invested in communicating the local history of the town which was the site of an actual great fire. While I have no doubt that his extensive description of the town architecture, countryside, and inhabitants was brimming with historical accuracy, I wasn’t particularly interested. In fact, I skimmed the middle part of the book to get to the final confrontation. It was…all right, but I’m glad I saved a bit of time.

The second was The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar, and it is not a Sherlock Holmes book at all. It is a steampunk novel that interprets the word “Victorian” loosely, throwing in anyone and everyone from Shakespeare onwards. Mycroft Holmes makes an appearance as a clue-giver to the protagonist, and his brother, the world’s foremost consulting detective, has a sly role as a resurrected automaton, though if you weren’t clever enough to interpret the initials S.H., you might not know he was even in the book. The book makes no pretense to loyalty to the original Holmes because it has none. Nevertheless, despite the overall strangeness of the circumstances, I liked Tidhar’s shadowy Holmes a bit better than Millett’s more accurate rendition.

…And the book I’m reading now, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, is a collection of essays by David Grann, the title essay of which tells the story of the mysterious death of a real-life Conan Doyle expert. While that essay was the only one concerning Holmes directly, Grann writes that the mystery behind each of the essays was what first drew him to the widely disparate subjects. I’ve only read two so far, but I understand that there’s a squid coming up. Excited? Yes.

December 16

I have just submitted my 8,000-word paper about Continental Drift by Russell Banks. (Many thanks to those of you who read an early draft.)

Here is a list of things with which I plan to reward myself:

Chick-fil-a for lunch
A cup of hot chocolate
Watching as much TV as I want
The purchase of a new book
Writing creatively
Sleep

Because, frankly, bribing myself has been one of the main strategies for getting me through this semester. But my schoolwork is all done, and I have just over an hour left of grading, which I intend to put off for the entire day. I am, as of now, 99% done with the semester and 75% done with my Master’s degree.

You may begin celebrating.

December 15

Hello, friends.

I bet you’re wondering what I’ve been up to. Well, this semester I’ve

compiled an 80-page fiction portfolio (excerpt upon request),
written a 45-page pedagogy final,
composed ten drafts and counting of a 24-page paper due tomorrow,
read fifteen novels and five nonfiction books for class,
and graded over a thousand pages of freshman student writing.

Is that the unique smell of burnout filling the air? Very nearly.

To reward myself for my perseverance, I’ve just finished reading a book that I’ve owned for at least two years: Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. (If one of my readers remembers buying it for me, then please identify yourself so I can thank you again.) Set in San Francisco in the 1920s, the novel follows Carter the Great, a stage magician whom Agent Griffin suspects of causing the death of President Harding. As historically accurate as it is spectacular, the story asks one very serious question: Can there be an illusion without an audience? Elephants, tigers, card tricks, pirates, motorcycles, blackmail, underwater escapes, and something strange called television–this book has it all. It also boasts the single most awesome illustration ever to be printed, on page 470 of my copy. But you have to read the entire novel to appreciate it. Fortunately, it’s a novel well worth reading.