Wants to read Last Night in Nuuk
book
Rated Ghostwritten 10/10
If I had a different life and was an MFA student, I'd be tempted to make my thesis studying David Mitchell's work. This made me want to reread everything, closely, making notes.
Rated Ghost Wall 10/10
<div>I generally enjoy what I pick to read, very rarely dnf, prob just a handful of clunkers read each year, but every once in awhile, I feel like that Gordon Ramsey meme: Finally, some great fucking art. <br><br>Ghost Wall is about a teenage girl dragged along by her family on a two week "vacation" to live as people did during the Iron Age, alongside some local university students and a professor. Her dad is... think the British Isles Iron Age-obsessed version of a North Idaho homesteader. You know the type.<br><br>But this is also a book about nature, queer awakening, and about the pernicious way certain living conditions seem normal from the inside. It's also got what I'm referring to as Chekov's bog. You'll see what I mean. </div>
Rated Lawnboy 6/10
Is it fair to compare one writer to another? Is the comparison ever quite right? Blurbs for <i>Lawnboy</i> compared Paul Lisicky to [a:Michael Cunningham|1432|Michael Cunningham|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1198584594p2/1432.jpg] (<i>The Hours, A Home at The End of the World</i>, etc.), and the cover even boasted a blurb from Cunningham himself. While certainly flattering, how does Lawnboy compare?<br><br>Non-straight characters? Check.<br>Coming of age/awakening type plot? Check.<br>Complicated romance? Checkity-check-check.<br><br>But couldn’t one say this about plenty of other books? Francesca Lia Block also had these things, but <i>Wheetzie Bat</i> and <i>Lawnboy</i> and <i>The Hours</i> are three entirely different books. Then again, it’s been a little while since I’ve read Cunningham’s work. Still, there is one clear way that Lisicky and Cunningham reminded me of each other: It took me the first third of the book to really get into it. That’s not to say I spent the first third uninterested; I just questioned how much I would enjoy the whole thing. Lawnboy is divided into three parts, and by Part 2, I became much more engaged in how things turned out.<br><br>I enjoyed <i>Lawnboy</i> well enough that I will keep an eye out for Lisicky’s other work. The lingering, awestruck descriptions of physicality, and the unabashed searches for affection were enough to make me want more. It doesn’t matter whether Paul Lisicky writes anything like Michael Cunningham — Let the man stand on his own.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/07/lawnboy-by-paul-lisicky.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)
Rated Night of the Living Rez 10/10
<div>I really loved this collection of stories that revolve around one family and their surrounding community. It's grim at times, but also funny and always interesting. It was an excellent book to read after having recently finished an Alice Munro story collection.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: Something Inside 8/10
Another "amnesia" story. Man, that whole "regenerating under anesthetic" thing is rough on a Time Lord! The brain worm seems like a precursor to the memory worm used on the show, and it's a little bit funny to hear things like, "It's the brain worm!" and take it seriously, but this is a pretty good story all the same.
Rated Doctor Who: The Deviant Strain 8/10
This was an excellent story that would have been great on screen too (though with later series' budgets), but the sentence fragments during moments of action were frustratingly bad.
Rated The Worlds of Big Finish 9/10
<div>I do like a Big Finish crossover and this one is better than most.</div>
Wants to read Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream
Rated The Trees 9/10
<div>A near-perfect collection of short stories in a pleasingly compact package. There were so many instances where I thought, "Wow, what a sentence!" that I'm glad that the translator, Robin Myers, also gets proper billing on the cover. I have not seen this work in its original Spanish, nor is my Spanish good enough to where I could fluently read it, but I know that translation is its own work of art.<br><br>These short stories are full of beautiful descriptions, human difficulty, and a different way of looking at the stories of the natural world. I definitely recommend it.</div>
Rated The Zero 10/10
Not in recent memory have I read a book so enthralling, heartbreaking and with such deadpan humor. In what he calls his "9/12" novel, Jess Walter’s <i>The Zero</i> follows "hero cop" Brian Remy, who is trying to make sense of the world while also suffering from memory lapses. His journey is at once bewildering and mournful, and though I’m not one to go on about perfect first lines, Walter had me at the outset:<br><br><blockquote>They burst into the sky, every bird in creation, angry and agitated, awakened by the same primary thought, erupting in a white feathered cloudburst, anxious and graceful, angling in ever-tightening circles toward the ground, drifting close enough to touch, and then close enough to see that it wasn’t a flock of birds at all — it was paper.</blockquote><br><br><br>Is it a long first sentence? Yes. Does it matter? Absolutely not.<br><br>Part existential crisis, part satire, <i>The Zero</i> also presents some of the ridiculousness of government during this time. There’s talk of “evildoers” and an entire agency dedicated to collecting all those scraps of paper, The Department of Documentation. “Things will be better when all the paper has been cleaned up.” Cops and firefighters are getting agents and their faces on cereal boxes; tourists pose for photos by the wreckage. Even in the event of a national tragedy, capitalism and consumerism worm their way into the larger discussion.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://therumpus.net/2010/07/sara-habein-the-last-book-i-loved-the-zero/">The Rumpus.</a>)
Rated Wuthering Heights 6/10
<div>Audible threw me another free month, and I saw this available to stream, so I thought I'd finally give it a go. I've previously had luck with finally getting around to various classics via audiobooks, but I think maybe I would've found reading this a bit easier in print because of all the similar names. This is no slight on Joanne Froggatt, who narrates it very well. I was just having my own moments of "Wait, now WHO are we talking about?" so I had to consult the Wikipedia page to refresh my memory. Ymmv!<br><br>That said, this is a grim tale with some interesting bits, some less so, but I'm not sorry I listened.</div>
Rated The Boxcar Librarian 7/10
<div>Okay, the research seams REALLY show during the first half of the book, but the research is good, so the "Yes, girl, we can see you searched a bunch of different words for storyteller" are not too distracting. Once the story gets cooking, the "Look at me trying hard to get it right" falls away, and we're more invested in what is happening to these characters specifically. Brianna Labuskes does seem to get a lot right about Montana, despite not being from here, and it's nice to have a story that is about books and workers' rights and not forbidden romance at the ranch. For awhile, I was more invested in Alice and Collette working together, so once we switched back to Millie's point of view, had literally forgotten who she was and needed half a page or so to remember. That's kinda on me, but also, Millie's importance doesn't come to the forefront until the end.<br><br>Also, I expected there to be more queer people? Or maybe I read certain characters that way, like Sidney, and kept waiting for the reveal and... I mean, it's fine! I was just surprised.<br><br>Still, I was invested in how this all shook out. It was a little tidy for my taste, but ymmv.</div>
Rated Doctor Who and the Pirates 8/10
<div>This is a mostly very silly one that reminded me a little bit of that episode of The X-Files with the vampires (and Luke Wilson), though this involves pirates. Part 3 is a Gilbert & Sullivan-style musical, but there are touching moments throughout, including the ending. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn remain a great pair.</div>
Rated Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You're Too Scared to Watch 8/10
What a delight this is! It's richer than I was expecting, with lovingly-detailed, compelling plot summaries and sharp analysis. I am absolutely the target market for this book.
Rated The Way the World Ends 10/10
What a great (long) short story. I had recently wondered if Jess Walter had any new material out, and how great to find this.