Category: Books and Reading
The Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge motivated me to read some books that had been on my TBR list for many years, and it also enabled me to re-read some of my favorites. Fantasy was my first favorite genre, but I haven’t read a lot of it lately because it seems to have lost its magic, as I wrote about several weeks ago. In fact, all of the fantasy I read this year was written before 1993. My year in fantasy fiction began with a fantastically original series...
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol reaffirmed one thing for me: I really don’t like classic satires. From Candide to Gulliver’s Travels to Zuleika Dobson, they hold very little interest for me. I’ve had a bit more success with modern satires like the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett, but in general satire is not a genre I appreciate. Dead Souls is an episodic story in which the main character Chichikov travels to various Russian estates trying to purchase “dead souls.” It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Dead souls are peasants that...
I had thought of this country as the big range, but now, I told myself, I would rename it the violent land. That was it, a violent, savage land. It had changed me since I had come into it. The Violent Land by Wayne D. Overholser is a classic of western fiction, but it would be a mistake to limit its value to a single genre. Part adventure, part romance, part Bildungsroman, Overholser’s award-winning novel is outstanding in every respect. The plot is tight, the characters are believable and...
Nonfiction November 2017 continues with a prompt about favorite nonfiction books hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey: Nonfiction Favorites: We’ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I’m excited to talk about what makes a book you’ve read one of your favorites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular ways a story can be told or particular writing styles that you love? Do you look for a light, humorous approach or do you prefer a more serious tone?...
All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery. Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was someone behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the wall. I read Ghost Stories of an Antiquary over the course of this past year as part of the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge. Each week I would draw a card from a deck of playing cards, and if it...
Abase thee and serve me, worm of the pit. Else will I by and by summon out of ancient night intelligences and dominations mightier far than thou, and they shall serve my ends, and thee shall they chain with chains of quenchless fire and drag thee from torment to torment through the deep. The Worm Ouroboros might be called world-building fantasy in the tradition of The Lord of the Rings but for two details: it was published 22 years before Tolkien’s trilogy, and it is much darker. In fact, though Tolkien himself...
As I was looking at my TBR pile I noticed I have quite a few unread westerns. I started looking around for a reading challenge that focused on the American West, but I came up empty. I checked three lists of 2017 challenges from Feed Your Fiction, Girlxoxo, and Xxertz, and aside from a few choose-your-own-genre challenges, I didn’t see any that were specifically aimed at reading westerns. So, I thought, why not create my own challenge for next year? Thus, the Wild Wild West 2018 Reading Challenge...
This week for Nonfiction November 2017, Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness invites readers to either Be the Expert, Ask the Expert, or Become the Expert: Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic...
This is the official sign-up post for the Les Misérables Chapter-a-Day Read-along. Please join me in spending the next year reading one of the great works of world literature, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. If you’ve always wanted to read the unabridged edition of Les Misérables, this is your opportunity. Maybe you love the musical or one of the movies. Maybe you’ve read an abridged version and now you want more. Whatever it is that has brought you here, I invite you to join me in reading this epic work of historical...
The What’s in a Name Reading Challenge hosted by The Worm Hole was a lot of fun. The challenge was to choose a book from each of six categories, write reviews of each of them, and post them on the appropriate pages at The Worm Hole. I’m happy to say that I have finished the challenge–my first real reading challenge ever. Here are the books I read in the order I read them, along with links to my reviews: A title which has an “X” somewhere in it: The Chronicles...
It’s time for another Nonfiction November post. After reading last week’s posts my TBR pile has already grown! For a roundup of last week, see the links at JulzReads. This week Sarah at Sarah’s Bookshelves hosts one of my favorite events of Nonfiction November, Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to...
Late last year when I was trying to find books for the What’s in a Name Reading Challenge, the hardest to find was a book whose title included “an item of cutlery.” After a lot of searching I finally settled on a book I had last read in 1996 when it first came out, The Story Knife, a mystery by Fr. Brad Reynolds, SJ. Fr. Reynolds is a Jesuit priest (like Pope Francis), and he happens to have grown up right here in Spokane, Washington, where I live. I...
