Read Harder 2023 Task #1: Read a novel about a trans character written by a trans author.
I've read Nevada by Imogen Binnie https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58837536-nevada
"One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature"
I liked the content, I learned a lot, but got a bit tired with the style, lots of monologue going on. 🎲4 #amreading#bookstodon @bookstodon
The Way of Kings (Brandon Sanderson)
Extremely out of my comfort zone- took me three months to finish this. But the story is solid. Proper world building and thrilling climax. Plus, I always like it when a story throws in twists that I didn't see coming. 4 ⭐/ 5 (really should've been shorter, but can't fault it beyond that).
I saw some of his art online and thought it looked like “Invisible Hands” from Liquid Television, which I LOVED. Same artist! This didn’t have quite the same level of twisted, creepiness as that animated series, but I was so happy to find his work in comic form. There’s more too.
Always loved Parrish's art: painted panels, odd proportions and perspective. This was kind of a bummer for me, but their art makes me want to break more "rules" with mine.
Refreshingly simple premise about a dystopian future where people live inside a silo their entire lives. The author wasn’t up to writing the inevitable “action set piece” as compellingly as the quieter parts of the book, and the ending felt a tad rushed, but I enjoyed it. Will read the remaining books in the trilogy.
A gay Latino returns home to the suburbs for a high school reunion and encounters key people from his past. Narrator alternates between 1st person to describe scenes and 3rd person to analyze social inequities. After a while, it feels a little like the kind of defensive writing people do on social media: it’s not enough to tell a story; you have to demonstrate your grasp of the conditions that led to it.
I'm moving my 2023 book thread to #Bookwyrm, the Fediverse equivalent of Goodreads. Apparently, you can see/interact with Bookwyrm posts from Mastodon and vice versa but it took me awhile to figure out how:
I had to follow my Bookwyrm account from here + (optionally?) vice versa. Now I can Boost my Bookwyrm posts into Mastodon for you to see. Gonna try it in a few...
Reporting back on cross-posting from #Bookwyrm to Mastodon: it works! And without the expected delay of the post appearing in my Mastodon feed.
However, it doesn't pull the body of the post over, just the headline of my review (rating and image too). Which makes you have to click through, and removes discoverability since the hashtags are in the body post as well as my tag for the #Bookstodon group. Also! No way to enter ALT text for the image. 😕
Conclusion: at the moment, cross-posting from #BookWyrm doesn't meet all of my needs (ALT text for book cover image, hashtags for Mastodon discoverability, no importing of full Bookwyrm post text, adding additional images since I read comics too, no tagging Mastodon accounts).
I'll keep posting separately on each platform since I want to contribute to both. So resuming my 2023 reading thread here. Eh heh heh. 😬
I love Katchor's line work and style. The observations and point of view in each comic strip are always interesting, but there's a density to them (visually and conceptually) that require a lot of effort from me to parse: architecture, history, urbanity, narrative.
I think I used to read them in an alternative weekly a while ago, and that's the kind of reading pace that worked for me: one per week.
I wanted to read more mysteries. Slowly making my way through The Inspector Armand Gamache series, mostly in winter. This one strengthens a sense of continuity between the books and offers history lessons on Quebec; the long-standing tensions between French & English Canadians. If it wasn’t clear before, Gamache isn’t infallible, and we see the large-scale and deeply personal effects this has on him and those around him.
By the end, I really liked this. Up until then, it felt a bit YA in how it treated the leads’ feelings for each other. Why draw things out with the whole “not talking to each other honestly” trope? I have nothing against prolonging things, but it needs to be deftly done to not feel cheap. This wasn’t cheap though! I loved these boys. Their marriage (not a spoiler) feels hard-won. Plus, look at that cover. SO gay.
Part of the SF Masterworks Collection. Despite being nearly 60 years old the narrative around the manipulation of the truth feels incredibly prescient. Wondering whether David Whitaker had read it before he came up with #DoctorWho story The Enemy of the World. #Books#Bookstodon#SciFi#PhilipKDick
A story of how giving up your morals may bring you success, but not happiness. Steinbeck’s final novel and one that showcases his ability to preach his view of the world while building a tight tense story around characters who feel incredibly real. Enjoyed it if that is the right word.
The fourth in Pryce’s Louie Knight series. Set at Christmas this is the darkest of the first four novels while still being very funny in places. There’s an awful lot of threads thrown at this one and I’m not sure they all stick quite as well as earlier entries, but it’s still very enjoyable and the noir Aberystwyth, Louie and his assistant Calamity are all terrific creations.
Despite seeing various different TV and film adaptations I’d never read the novel. As good as some of those are the novel outflanks them all. I can see why it’s regarded as one of the great sci-fi novels. Where Wyndham is so good is in creating a very real sense of a global disaster and building that world, but at the same time keeping it personal and making you care about the individuals. 5⭐️
Enjoyable comedy crime caper set around a Sci-Fi convention full of little in-jokes. It’s fairly light and very easy to read. Whizzed through it in a couple of days.
First Perry Mason novel I’ve read after many years of seeing the TV adaptations. Races along perfectly well with enough mystery involved to keep you wanting to turn the page. I’ll happily pick out some more in the future.
Wodehouse is by some distance my favourite author. The world he created is full of pure joy and I never bore of escaping into it. He’s one of the few authors who I can re-read over and over again. The Mating Season exhibits him at his absolute best with so many lines and turns of phrase that have you smiling ear to ear or chuckling. He was the master.
One of those books that always appears on must-read lists that has nonetheless sat unread on my pile of books for many a year. I regret now not getting round to it earlier. I found the storytelling to be incredibly vivid and though I’m not a great one for re-reading things I can imagine myself coming back to it at some point.
Not my first read of it, but my first for a very long time. Has its strengths as it adds more depth to the Holmes character and the mystery works well enough. On the negative side the Watson-Mary ‘romance’ is pretty weak and obviously there are elements that haven’t aged so well. Overall it’s enjoyable enough without being Holmes at its absolute best.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Peter Frankopan
Really effective. Manages to add context and a new perspective to the changing power dynamics of world history in a really entertaining way. I took a lot from it.
A find in a charity shop that I picked up largely as I had a vague memory of reading bits of it for my A-Level studies. It remains pretty readable and it’s a nice not too involved overview of the Stuart dynasty.
Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks
The Essential Alan Coren
I was a bit young at the time for Coren’s writing and so really knew him as the very funny man from Radio 4’s The News Quiz or Call My Bluff with Sandy Toksvig at the time. This collection shows why he was considered to be one of Britain’s great comic writers. Some of his early stuff has language that wouldn’t be used today, but it mostly stands up very well.