All posts by Daneekas Ghost

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: New Year

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Books DG Read in 2024 - An exhaustive list:

Essays, Poetry and Memoirs 

  • Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark *****
  • Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer *****
  • All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld *****
  • Whose Story Is This? by Rebecca Solnit *****
  • The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy *****

 

  • Sure, I'll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford
  • Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
  • Call Them by Their True Names by Rebecca Solnit
  • The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Blythell
  • Wolfish by Erica Berry
  • The Sound of Being Human by Jude Rogers
  • Sparrow Envy by J. Drew Lanham
  • The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han
  • Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
  • Waiting For the End of the World by Stephanie Valente
  • Steep in the Boil by Meagan McShea

Science, History, Education

  • Charge by Frank Close *****
  • Superheavy by Kit Chapman *****
  • Sex Talks by Vanessa Marin *****
  • Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley *****
  • How Humans Learn by Joshua Eyler *****

 

  • Whatever It is, I'm Against It by Brian Rosenberg
  • Infusing Critical Thinking into Your Course by Linda Nilsson
  • Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine Denial
  • The Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa Damour
  • Everything in its Place by Judith Flanders
  • The Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend
  • The Last Week by Marcus Borg
  • If This is the Age We End Discovery by Rosebud Ben-Oni

Novels and Short Fiction

  • The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen *****
  • Either/Or by Elif Batuman *****
  • Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park *****
  • Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar *****
  • The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) *****
  • The Remembered Part by Rodrigo Fresán (translated by Will Vanderhyden) *****
  • Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán (translated by Will Vanderhyden) *****
  • The Biography of X by Catherine Lacey *****
  • Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson (translated by Saskia Vogel) *****
  • Clear by Carys Davies *****

 

  • Blackouts by Justin Torres
  • A Void by Georges Perec (translated by Gilbert Adair)
  • The Murmuration by Carlos Labbé (translated by Will Vanderhyden)
  • Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li
  • The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
  • The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
  • Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
  • Real Life by Brandon Taylor
  • It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne De Marcken
  • The English Experience by Julie Schumacher
  • The Complete Stories of Leonara Carrington by Leonara Carrington
  • The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter
  • The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
  • Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (translated by Donald Rayfield)
  • Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
  • The Employees by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken)
  • Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval (translated by Marjam Idriss)

Science Fiction and Fantasy

  • A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine *****
  • Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer *****
  • Monstress, Volumes 6 & 7 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda ****
  • My Favorite Thing is Monsters Part 2 by Emil Ferris *****
  • Lone Women by Victor LaValle *****

 

  • The City Of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Shriek by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Finch by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Authority by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer
  • Monstress, Volumes 1-9 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
  • Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
  • Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer
  • The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer
  • All Systems Red by Martha Wells
  • Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
  • Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
  • Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
  • Network Effect by Martha Wells
  • Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
  • System Collapse by Martha Wells
  • Invisible Kingdom, Volumes 1-3 by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward
  • Malarkoi by Alex Pheby
  • The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor
  • The House of Sundering Flames by Aliette de Bodard
  • Saint Death's Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney
  • Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk
  • The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
  • Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
  • Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
  • The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
  • Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

How was your reading in '24? What's on your list for '25?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Gift

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I ordered two books, but got three because the publisher lost my order, then realized that they never sent it, and sent a third book as an apology.

As we enter gift-giving season, what's the book you're giving your friends/ family?   Alternatively, what's the book you're dropping hints about wanting someone else to buy for you?

For my mom's birthday (this past weekend), I got her Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson, because she loves winter and Scandinavia and indigenous stories, so this seemed like a slam dunk.

I'm excited to read the fifth Stormlight book that comes out this week, and I'd like to get to the new James S. A. Corey series at some point as well (The Mercy of Gods came out in August, but I haven't got to it yet), so those would probably make good gifts for me.

 

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Vandermeer Appreciation Month

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In October I read almost all of Jeff Vandermeer's novels.

I read the Ambergris trilogy:

  • The City Of Saints and Madmen (re-read) - still an incredibly good evocation of place and environment. The city Vandermeer creates in these loosely connected stories is such a full on experience.  You can feel the menacing dampness and the uneasy sense that the mushrooms have more control than anyone realizes.
  • Shriek (first read) - probably my least favorite of his novels, this felt like an extended character introduction that wasn't really needed for the series. Non of the characters really had a goal other than revealing more information about the city.
  • Finch (first read) - now we get a detective story in the fungus-city. Duncan Shriek (from the second book) gets a role that makes sense here, so I guess that made the second book worth it, but this was still a much better book. Finch (the detective) actually has a goal that's not "look at this weird city!" A good finish to the series.

I read the Southern Reach trilogy (and the newly published fourth book) and enjoyed this more than I remembered, these are better books than I had previously given them credit for.

  • Annihilation (re-read)
  • Authority (re-read)
  • Acceptance (re-read)
  • Absolution (first read) - still in the middle of this.

I didn't re-read the Borne series, but I think those books are still my favorite Vandermeer.

Lastly, I read his stand alone book from 2021 that I bought but never actually read before

  • Hummingbird Salamander (first read) - more detective, less fungus. I feel like this book was missing Vandermeer's strength, which is overwhelming the reader with environment (the city in Ambergris, Area X in the Southern Reach novels, the Lab in the Borne series...) and that just wasn't here.  He still writes a good thriller with environmental themes, but this didn't get me as much as the others.

It's always fun to just plow through a bunch of novels on a theme, and I've found a particular joy in re-reading a bunch of novels and series this year.

What did you read this month?

WGOM Videos

Big | Brave – Theft

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I think I've played Big | Brave before -this song just feels right to me, it hits when it needs to hit, soars when it needs to soar and, sustains the whole way through.

That said, my favorite song this year might be "I felt a funeral" - just your classic drone metal setting of an Emily Dickinson poem.

2 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 102 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10 (2 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)
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First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – ZZZZZZZZZ

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The theme of my book purchases this month was apparently translated authors from eastern Europe.  I bought two new books:

  • Herscht 07769 by Lazlo Krasznahorkai - After Satantango and Seiobo There Below, I will read any Krasznahorkai that I come across.  I wasn't aware of this book, but came across it in the bookstore, and now it's mine!
  • The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk - I really enjoyed Flights and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, so here's another case where I bought this based on the author without much sense of what this book is about.  Kind of cool to have a signed edition from a Nobel Prize winner, though.

My reading slowed down a bit in September, as classes kicked into high gear, but I did read Pnin and it rated very high on the "quiet chuckles to myself per chapter" metric.  Thoroughly enjoyed it, even though reading Nabokov always gives me trust issues with every one of his narrators.

I also read The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera, which won a couple of sci-fi/fantasy awards this year for debut novel.  It was an interesting story, set in south Asia (but an alternate world overlaid on top of it).  Having read this and Rakesfall from Chandrasekera, I find his projects interesting, and I could see him writing something in the future that really puts it all together and blows me away.  These two books didn't quite get there for me, but still worth a look if like this kind of cultural sci-fi/fantasy hybrid genre.

How many z's are in the last name of the authors of the books you read or bought in the last month?