January Reading Wrap Up

 

Woohoo! January was a great reading month and I stuck to reading only physical books from my shelves. I read 8 books for a total of 3450 pages not including my in progress sip read. 

1. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome: #1 of the 12 book series. The story brought back memories of my three older sisters and I putting on plays in our carport when we were about the same age as the Walker kids, for our parents and neighbors.  And days spent playing and romping through the neighborhood with all the kids on our block, until dusk and dinner. ****

2. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin:  I'm not particularly fond of Le Guin's writing, and I don't know what it is about it but it always turns me off.  However, reading one chapter at a time before bed, helped me get through it. All I can say about it is that a perfect society is hard to find. No matter how hard one tries, not everyone will agree.  ***

3.  The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry: #8 in the Cotton Malone series.   Little did I know when started reading the story that we would get a history lesson on the birth of China, what happened to Mao's body, whether oil was biotic or abiotic, and more. It was fascinating, although there were a lot deaths.  ****

4.   The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty:  #2 in the Daevabad trilogy. Politics, racism, oppression, infighting, back stabbing, assassination attempts, and magical entities all make for an riveting and thought provoking tale.  By the end of this book I wasn't too terribly fond of Dara. I wonder if he'll redeem himself in the 3rd and final book. Good riddance to Ghassan. My gosh, he was horrible. ****

5. At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities by Heather Webber.  While Driftwood is a charming, magical, little town, set by the ocean, and the place is full of love, and helps draw Ava out of her comfort zone, all the characters go through the wringer, ironing out their issues and relationship, until they find their happily ever after.   ****

6.  Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster: #1 in the Icerigger series. Aliens, ice beasts, pirates, nutty monks. Lots and lots of ice. Always cold. Battles, beasts, crazy sail boats, even a volcano. Our characters are tested against the elements as well as against the pirates, and ice beasts. Fast, fun, furious, ferocious, crazy story.  ****

7:  The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami: My disappointment knows no bounds. Thankfully I can go back and read his other stories which I enjoyed more.  **

8. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros:  #3 in the Empyrean series. Long story short, without giving away any spoilers, the tale is full of battles. The dark wielders Venin, politically, with authority, in attempts to win over other islands leaders to fight with Navarre, as well as her battle to keep hidden Xaden's infection by the venin.   In the process of trying to find Andarna's kin, we learn more about Violet's history with her dad. Plus throw in the life of a cadet as she trains and bonds more with Tairn and Andarna, and her fellow classmates, and it makes for one hell of a story.  *****

My rating system is a mishmash of Goodreads and others.  

5 star - The writing was compelling, the world building was outstanding and the story flowed. Couldn't put it down. Evoked an emotional response and made me feel my feelings. Unique.   As a series opener, would make me want to read the whole series.  As a new to me author, would make me want to read more of their stories. Would reread again in the future. 

4 star - The writing, world building, and characters were excellent. Enjoyed the story. Would read this series or author again. Willing to give it a second read.

3 star - It was good, but...

2 star - I read the whole thing or may have skipped to the end to see what happened. May have had morally grey characters without any redeeming qualities, or something about the story turned me off, or it failed to live up to my expectations.   

1 star - Did not get page 50 or 100 depending on length of the book as it wasn't my cup of tea.  

BW11: Daylight Savings and Super Powereds and History, oh my!

Ugg! Daylight Savings Time. Enough said. Although I am appreciating the fact we only have a few clocks to adjust when I think about the clock merchant who has to reset a 1000 clocks. It's week 11 in our 52 Books Quest and our next 52 Books Bingo category is All the World's a Stage. Which works well with our golden age theme since William Shakespeare was alive during the Elizabethan era, considered the Golden Age in English history.

I finished Super Powereds Year Four by Drew Hayes. Many answers to all the questions throughout the books. The kids learned so much the final year through their battles and the intramurals, learning to trust themselves and their powers, culminating in the final battle between the Heroes and bad guys. We never did find out which ten graduated? Grateful for the epilogue ten years later giving an update on all the characters. This is one series I'll read over and over again.

Also finished Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time and love Inspector Grant. He's very cerebral. Grant is recuperating in the hospital from an injury during the line of duty. He's bored out of his mind and becomes enamored with a picture of Richard the III and if the story was true that he killed his two young nephews. Grant involves everyone in his mystery from the medical staff to his friends while he reads everything he can about Richard. Along the way he uncovers the historical facts are tonypandy - historical events that were well-accepted but not reported accurately - in books like Sir Thomas More which Grant discovers were all hearsay since More was too young at the time of the event. Fascinating story and I will never think of history in the same way again.

I'm up to H for book by title and E for author. In actuality my reading has been all over the place, every though trying to read alphabetical. Keep getting side tracked with other books so kinda reading out of order. Working on two books - historical fantasy novel Hidden Palace (#2 in the Golem and the Jinni) by Helene Wecker and science fiction novel Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. I've stumbled across a couple articles on Le Guin - My Le Guin Year and My Year of Reading Ursula Le Guin and decided the universe was telling me to stop staring at the book on my shelf and read it, so there you go.


We watched Adam Project on Netflix Saturday night. Lots of action with plot, great script, and wonderful acting. If you have a chance to see it, do. So very good.

Bookish Notes and Links - Preparations for Harry Potter Anniversary next year

 

Procrastinating web wonderings this morning:

Ursula Le Guin has jumped into the awards game with Prize for a single work of Imaginative Fiction.   

I love doorstoppers:   Rhythm of War & Other Best Fantasy Doorstoppers.  Now that I've finished Wheel of Time, dipping into the Stormlight Archive with Way of the Kings.

Off the Shelf's ebook roundup: November eBook Deals: 10 Magnificent Reads for Your Digital Library

2022 is Harry Potter's 25th anniversary. James has a reread and movie rewatch in store for us. Bloomsbury unveils big plans for 25th anniversary of first Harry Potter book

Tom Hanks likes manual typewriters and wrote a book: Uncommon Type: Some Stories  and hails Edinburgh bookshop owner as his hero.   Brings back memories of learning to type on my dad's old manual. 

😘

Wednesday hmmm! Not quite granite, not quite mud

A friend mentioned Ursula LeGuin's essay, Being Taken for Granite, which is included in her book - The Wave in the Mind. It struck a chord as we've been having minimal success lately with our building project.  I'm not quite granite, but don't think I'm quite mud either. Thinking about what that means.

Being Taken for Granite 

by 

Ursula Le Guin

Sometimes I am taken for granite. Everybody is taken for granite sometimes but I am not in a mood for being fair to everybody. I am in a mood for being fair to me. I am taken for granite quite often, and this troubles and distresses me, because I am not granite. I am not sure what I am but I know it isn't granite. I have known some granite types, we all do: characters of stone, upright, immovable, unchangeable, opinions the general size shape and pliability of the Rocky Mountains, you have to quarry five years to chip out one little stony smile. That's fine, that's admirable, but it has nothing to do with me. Upright is fine, but downright is where I am, or down wrong. I am not granite and should not be taken for it. I am not flint or diamond or any of that great hard stuff. If I am stone, I am some kind of shoddy crumbly stuff like sandstone or serpentine, or maybe schist. Or not even stone but clay, or not even clay but mud. And I wish that those who take me for granite would once in a while treat me like mud.

Being mud is really different from being granite and should be treated differently. Mud lies around being wet and heavy and oozy and generative. Mud is underfoot. People make footprints in mud. As mud I accept feet. I accept weight. I try to be supportive, I like to be obliging. Those who take me for granite say this is not so but they haven't been looking where they put their feet. That's why the house is all dirty and tracked up.

Granite does not accept footprints. It refuses them. Granite makes pinnacles, and then people rope themselves together and put pins on their shoes and climb the pinnacles at great trouble, expense, and risk, and maybe they experience a great thrill, but the granite does not. Nothing whatever results and nothing whatever is changed.

Huge heavy things come and stand on granite and the granite just stays there and doesn't react and doesn't give way and doesn't adapt and doesn't oblige and when the huge heavy things walk away the granite is there just the same as it was before, just exactly the same, admirably. To change granite you have to blow it up. But when people walk on me you can see exactly where they put their feet, and when huge heavy things come and stand on me I yield and react and respond and give way and adapt and accept. No explosives are called for. No admiration is called for. I have my own nature and am true to it just as much as granite or even diamond is, but it is not a hard nature, or upstanding, or gemlike. You can't chip it. It's deeply impressionable. It's squashy.

Maybe the people who rope themselves together and the huge heavy things resent such adaptable and uncertain footing because it makes them feel insecure. Maybe they fear they might be sucked in and swallowed. But I am not interested in sucking and am not hungry. I am just mud. I yield. I do try to oblige. And so when the people and the huge heavy things walk away they are not changed, except their feet are muddy, but I am changed. I am still here and still mud, but all full of footprints and deep, deep holes and tracks and traces and changes. I have been changed. You change me. Do not take me for granite.