What are you reading? — Page 22

STILL MORE SCARY STORIES FOR STORMY NIGHTS – JIM CHARBONNEAU

I read this book back in the sixth grade, but remembered very little about it other than one story where a kid gets eaten by a sapient cloud monster, so I decided to revisit it.

Needless to say, the book didn’t age well. There were only two types of stories in this book: really stupid R. L. Stine-level stories and alright but unoriginal and none-too-interesting stories. The interior artwork, too, was bland; they should’ve commissioned the guy who did the cover art to do the interiors instead of the person they ended up going with.

5/10

CORALINE – NEIL GAIMAN

I watched the film adaptation a number of months ago, so I decided to read the novella itself. This is certainly one of those uncommon cases where the movie is better than the book it’s based on.

There’s nothing bad about the book, but there’s not a whole lot of meat to it, either. I may as well have read the transcript to a video game. Coraline herself is a flat character who has no serious inner doubts or struggles and doesn’t evolve over the course of the story; from start to finish she just goes through the motions, remaining the same character at the end of the book that she was at the beginning.

5/10

A WRINKLE IN TIME – MADELEINE L’ENGLE

PROS: The main characters are well-rounded and sympathetic; the story is solid; the book altogether is a quick and easy read.

CONS: The dialogue is stilted; the ending was too abrupt.

7/10

Malafrena by Ursula K. LeGuin. Unlike her more well-known fantasy and science fiction works, this is a sort of fake 19th century European novel set in a fictional country. It’s damned good, she really nails that Tolstoy tone.

I also just finished The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (nonfiction account of the production of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and H. H. Holmes’s concurrent murder spree) and The Girls by Emma Cline (new novel loosely based on/inspired by the Manson family). I thought both were very good, though the Larson dragged in places and the Cline wasn’t exactly a pleasant reading experience.

I’ve started reading this:

I haven’t gotten very far into it, but I’m already frustrated with it. Pena seems to think weighing the narrative down with references to obscure EU persons, places, and things makes for good storytelling; it doesn’t. I’m none too taken with the dialogue, either.

Pena should probably stick to articles and reference books and leave the prose up to people who are more than elevated fan-fic writers.

Why are you reading that

Research. I’d avoid it otherwise.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Research. I’d avoid it otherwise.

So that’s what “research” means!
Makes sense: I would expect a lot of misplaced colons (and other punctuation) in that type of source…

Darth Id said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Research. I’d avoid it otherwise.

So that’s what “research” means!
Makes sense: I would expect a lot of misplaced colons

Probably can find those in your local Vend-a-gut.

I read further into that story. Yeah – I’m quitting. Fifty pages of insipid dialogue, boring inner monologing, the worst reference to midi-chlorians I’ve ever come across, and callbacks to better EU stories than this one are more than enough for me.

No research is worth this.

Nothing beats a good PKD novel.

DominicCobb said:

I am reading Heir to the Empire right now but am only about a quarter of the way through and and will certainly not be done before TFA. But it’s great so far and I’ll definitely have it done at some point!

You know that feeling when you lose track of a TV show that you’ve been obsessed with, and then months later just don’t feel much of a desire to go back to it? I think this kind of happened to me with HTTE. I definitely liked it, and I won’t deny that the fact that TFA came out sort of derailed my EU novel marathon, which was done mainly as prep for TFA. I definitely needed to take a break from SW this summer, too, so that didn’t help.

But still, when I tried to read some more a few weeks ago, I just couldn’t really get into it. Anyone else not in love with the Thrawn books? It seems like everyone says their the best the old EU has to offer. And yet, nothing about them has particularly grabbed me yet (and I’s day I’ve made it about half way through HTTE). I’m a little worried it might just not be what I’m looking for in a SW story. Too much military stuff, too much sci-fi (ysalmiri - ugh). I don’t know. I’ll definitely finish at least the first book, but I don’t know if I’ll move on to the others. There are other SW books I want to read and I don’t want to waste too much time on a book that I rarely feel like reading.

I remember really enjoying them, but as Star Wars novels, not great pieces of literature. As far as most of the EU goes, the Thrawn trilogy is just about as good as it gets, but as far as books go, not even close.

Glad I’m not the only one. I think a big part of it too is that there are these important new characters that I just really don’t care about. I haven’t read a lot of the EU, but I’ve read quite a few books that grabbed me more than the Thrawn ones.

In regards to capturing the spirit of the films on the page, I’d argue it’s not possible. SW is a cinematic saga, through and through. But I would love to read something that gets close. So far the best SW books I’ve read have captured some (not all) aspects of what makes the series great.

suspiciouscoffee said:
Next I think I’ll read 1984, which I’ve been meaning to read for a year or so and haven’t ever gotten around to it.

Please do, it’s one of the most influential novel of my life, the other being The Count of Monte Cristo.

I’m about finished with Johnny Carson’s lawyer’s retrospective on Johnny Carson:

It’s been very entertaining and interesting, and I think the Huffington Post put it best with

"This is not a tawdry tell-all but rather, an insightful and sobering character study of a tortured man and failed husband and father, as told through the eyes and experiences of one of his closest confidantes.”

Forgive me as I don’t do analysis of literature often, if at all, so I can’t really say if it’s written well or not, all I know is I’ve been stuck in it.

Starting on Being Nixon. I consider him one of the most interesting figures in American history, and so far, not even 30 pages in, I’m enthralled.

So far I’m only posting biographies. The next book I read will thus consciously avoid biographies.

I’ve put my Dune reread on hiatus to devour John Darnielle’s (of The Mountain Goats) new novel Universal Harvester. I’m loving it, though Wolf in White Van was better. WIWV was better than most books I’ve read, though, so I can’t hold that against it.