Comments | paulhaines: Books Read 2011

paulhaines

Books Read 2011

Dec 29, 2011 14:51

The following are the books I've read this year. Anything in green I thought was excellent (5/5).

AUTHOR TITLE YEAR
Sebastian Junger

War

2010

Thomas E. Levy

Curing The Incurable

2002

Orson Scott Card

Pastwatch: The Redemption of ( Read more... )

geek-list, reading

Comments 21

haloumi December 29 2011, 05:01:47 UTC

Good to hear from you again - hope you're feeling better.

Out of curiosity, given that I agree with most of your rankings, what was your main problem with the Matheson? I've always felt that I didn't like it as much as I should but I've never been able to put my finger on why.

Happy New Year, by the way!

haloumi December 29 2011, 05:02:40 UTC

Urk - my original first line was 'better than your last report'. It sounds a hell of a lot less glib like that.

Don't mind me, I'm fighting technology.

paulhaines December 29 2011, 05:36:07 UTC

It was also a short story collection. I'd give I Am Legend 4/5 but several of the other shorts in that collection were fair to middling.

benpayne December 29 2011, 07:24:45 UTC

Maribou Stork Nightmares is one powerful book.

Haven't read Cabbage or School/Work yet.

paulhaines December 29 2011, 11:37:30 UTC

Cabbage and School/Work would be a 2/5 from me. It was interesting to read an early work of his and to see I still loved that era of Welsh, but everything since "Filth" has just gotten weaker, boring and tired for me.

ext_176383 December 29 2011, 11:53:45 UTC

Glad you're still with us, Mr. Haines! Too long between updates; I was getting anxious.

I loooooved "Never Let Me Go." Hated "The Coma." "Kali Yuga," now that was some twisted fiction.

paulhaines December 29 2011, 20:55:32 UTC

I struggled with "Never Let Me Go" - started off wonderfully, but I found it too slow and by 3/4s of the way through I was quite bored.

I hated "The Coma" too. The Law of Diminishing Returns for that boy.

ext_176383 December 30 2011, 04:44:24 UTC

I know! Is Alex Garland just fucking with us now?

Huh, I just looked him up, and he wrote the screenplay for "Never Let Me Go." That's weird.

paulhaines January 1 2012, 00:43:45 UTC

He's been doing lots of screenplays - 28 Days, Sunrise etc Doing better with them than with the novel form obviously (I enjoyed both those movies).

ext_959339 December 30 2011, 11:07:30 UTC

Dude! Alice in Wonderland didn't make a 5/5 for you? I love that book so much, so surreal. I think I've read it to the boys 3 or 4 times and they love it too. And Catch-22. You have to be insane to be part of an insane war. Reminds me of the Interferers and Slice of Life. Mind you he should have done a Harper Lee and stuck with the debut. The rest, meh!

paulhaines January 1 2012, 00:44:33 UTC

Nah, just couldn't get into them. I think the nonsensical just did my brain in and I wanted more narrative and resolutions. So staid, am I.

flinthart December 31 2011, 06:18:01 UTC

Hey. I hope Xmas treated you and yours properly.

Interesting list. I'm surprised you'd not read either 'Alice' or 'Catch 22' before. I can see where Alice might not be your personal cup of chai and all; personally I think it's an artifact of its time, and benefits from being measured against other such artifacts. But I am surprised Catch 22 didn't do better. Did it get oversold to you before you read it?

paulhaines January 1 2012, 00:42:36 UTC

I also read Alice last year too. Both times aloud to Isla. To me it's a book of nonsense and after a while I get very bored by it all. I'd also read kids' versions as a child too, but don't really remember the story, just the pictures of those editions.

Catch 22 I'd been wanting to read for a long long time and it has similarities to Alice - it's a book of nonsense. Got about 100 pages in before I went 'pah'.

Maybe that's the pattern and why I just couldn't get into them. I suspect I would have liked that sort of thing much earlier in my life.

flinthart January 2 2012, 05:13:32 UTC

Mmm. I'll grant you Alice/nonsense. It's a gentle and charming nonsense, though.

Catch-22... has it's nonsensical qualities, yeah. But it never read like nonsense to me. I met altogether too much of it whenever I dealt with the government - either on unemployment, or working for the government. And to me, there was an undercurrent of desperation to it; a kind of madness-in-response-to-greater-madness which gave it considerable poignancy.

Eh. To each their own.