Month: July 2021

New Books & Novel Discoveries (July 2021)

RyanLeave a comment

Goodness, it has been a weirdly mild summer around these parts. I’ve gotta say, a big part of me is happy not to feel like soup for days at a time, but it does make certain summer activities a lot less pleasant. All things considered, it could be a lot worse though, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

Unlike my last post, I have not read through any of the books I bought in June, but I wasn’t really expecting to. Spent too long agonizing over whether I’ve remember all the books I bought or not again too. It’s not even that many, I don’t know what my deal is.

Enough rambling, on to the books!Read More »

Advertisement

WWW Wednesday – July 28, 2021

Ryan8 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Good OmensI’m just about halfway through Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, so I haven’t quite finished it like I planned to last week, have I? My attention’s admittedly been a little divided over the last week, though I’m still happy with the progress I have made on it. It is startling just how faithful to the book the miniseries was. Not just in terms of events and content, but tone as well. Gaiman did a stellar job as showrunner. Having read a lot of each author’s bibliography, Pratchett’s writing style is much more apparent than Gaiman’s. Granted, I’d they’re cut from a similar cloth as authors, though I find Gaiman’s work is typically darker and Pratchett’s more funny. It’s hard to comment much more on the story itself, as nothing is all that new to me, it’s just a really enjoyable reading experience.

I’ve also made it to the end of the first series of poems from Hope is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I decided a reading surge was in order, so that I don’t take an eternity finishing this book. It continues to be enjoyable, though I don’t always absorb what I’m reading as much as I’d like. I came across “Because I could not stop for Death” in my last reading, the only poem of hers I’m familiar with, and that was a nice little reread.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week, unfortunately, I haven’t cracked open any comic books while making my way through Good Omens. I did manage to finish up a review of Into the Dark, though, and I’m quite happy with how that turned out.

Reading Next

Hellboy The God MachineI’m still planning to start reading Hellboy: The God Machine by Thomas E. Sniegoski next, so it’s only a matter of time. The name is really intriguing, I hope this one’s got something more interesting in store for me. As much as I like the pulpy fun of some of the previous Hellboy books, I’d like a little more substance if I can get it. I still want to get Good Omens done before the month ends, so perhaps I’ll start it this Sunday. It’s just hard to think of any that I want to get to right away, having pretty much cleaned out the Star Wars backlog. Other than that, I should probably start thinking about some comics to start reading so I can continue staying on top of those. I know I have stuff to read, but nothing feels all that urgent. I can be decisive when really I want to be, so I’m sure I can pick something soon.

Until next week, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

Books I’d Want With Me While Stranded On a Deserted Island

Ryan2 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. I don’t participate every week, but when a topic catches my eye I like to jump in.

I have a hard time choosing what to read next at the best of times, so the idea of picking just 10 books to have with me on a deserted island is really tough. Since it’s a situation where I’d be stranded, however, I started to think specifically about what books I’d be most fine with reading over and over. These are potentially the only books I’ll ever be able to read ever again, after all.

There are some series I love enough that I feel they should be here, but they’re sort of an all-or-nothing type deal, and we don’t want a list that’s 80% Dark Tower books or something. Let’s forgo anything practical too. I’m sure some books about agriculture or building shelter would be more useful to me than a novel, but we’re in the land of hypotheticals here. What’s the fun in practicality, right?Read More »

Book Review – The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray

Ryan1 Comment

Into the Dark

The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray is the first YA novel in the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia series, which is set 200 years before Star Wars Episode I. Jedi Padawan Reath Silas may not be as Force-sensitive as his peers, but the young apprentice works hard to earn his mettle within the Jedi Order, determined to become one of its great scholars. His ideal routine of plunging into the Archives of the Jedi Temple on the planet Coruscant is stripped away, however, when his Master, Jora Malli, becomes the Jedi commander of Starlight Beacon, a space station on the Republic frontier in the Outer Rim territories of the galaxy.

Reath isn’t the adventurous type, but where his Master goes he must follow. Travelling to Starlight separately from her,  with Jedi Masters Orla Jareni and Cohmac Vitus, and Jedi Knight Dez Rydan, he is struck with trouble sooner than expected. A disaster in Hyperspace forces their transport ship to seek refuge on a derelict space station, along with a number of other refugee spacecrafts. While the reason for the catastrophe eludes them, the station itself holds a dark secret: an overbearing presence of the Dark side of the Force that Reath and his fellow Jedi struggle to understand. If they’re not careful, a nightmarish scourge that has been dormant for eons could be released upon the galaxy.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – July 21, 2021

Ryan8 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing at the moment! 👻 I’m between books. No progress made on Hope is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson either.

Recently Finished

Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters Vol3Over the weekend I read through Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters Volume 3 by Jason Ciaramella et al, finishing up this little trilogy of Godzilla comics. This time around the creative team was entirely overhauled. Something tells me higher-ups somewhere weren’t happy with the way the comic was going. I don’t blame them, I haven’t been fond of this series at all, though this was certainly the best one. Gone is the weird cynicism and painfully unsubtle cultural commentary. This is simply wrapping up the story, such as it is, having the psychic twins try to control Godzilla himself and having the soldier man pilot Mechagodzilla and square off against the old King of the monsters as well. It’s more action-packed with the clear objective of just ending it all. In that way it made for simple fun, with platitudes about the human spirit tacked on at the end.

Into the DarkThe other night I also finished reading The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray, the first YA novel in the Star Wars: High Republic multimedia series. Overall, I really liked this book, though it’s not one of Gray’s better Star Wars novels. My biggest gripe with it was how it introduced the Drengir, carnivorous plant-like beings that are deeply tied to the dark side of the Force. This is technically their first appearance in the series, but I first met them in the comic book series, which made them a lot more menacing. This made them feel too much like just another sapient species, when they’re supposed to be nightmarish. I wish I’d read this novel first too, because the conflict with them seems tentatively resolved by the end, which would have made their resurgence a bigger deal. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see how this conflict spans the series.

Reading Next

Hellboy The God MachineGood Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman is next on the docket! I’m hoping I can get it finished and reviewed before the month is out. It’s a little over 400 pages long, so I’m going to have to really push some reading quotas to get through this. Seeing as it is such a dream duo as Pratchett and Gaiman, however, I’m hoping that I’ll fly through those pages. After that, I think I’m going to start reading Hellboy: The God Machine by Thomas E. Sniegoski, which is the next book I plan to read for my series challenge. I’m particularly curious about this book, though given the series track record I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

Until next week, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – July 14, 2021

Ryan2 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’ve made a bit more progress on Hope is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, though only a little. I read through the chapter of poems about Love from the first series.

Into the DarkI’m still making my way through The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray. I’m closing in on 300 pages, but I’ll still have a little ways to go after that. I think I could have finished it over the weekend under normal circumstances, but I had made some summer plans that ate up that time. Can’t dedicate all of my summertime to reading. At any rate, I’m still really enjoying this book, though it hasn’t yet leaned into the horror like I was hoping. It’s been taking its time building up to that, though it’s still a lot more foreboding than Star Wars novels typically are. One of the most interesting things about all of these High Republic stories I’ve been reading is that they’re doing what the prequels should have done but never really did: actually giving a nuanced look at what it’s like to be a Jedi Padawan. I’m really enjoying the world-building that this is doing.

Recently Finished

Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters Vol2Last night I read through volume two of Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters by Eric Powell et al. It wasn’t as blatantly critical of pop culture and politics as the previous volume and some of the story was actually halfway decent. The idea of the emergence of giant monsters being something humanity is utterly unprepared for is an interesting idea. I’m definitely interested in a story like this, examining the human cost of all of this destruction, the refugees it would create. Problem is, the book is still weirdly irreverent and painfully cynical, to the point where the shortcomings of humanity’s countermeasures always felt like a punchline. It’s woefully on-the-nose too. I think I rolled my eyes the hardest when a mob of people were desperately fighting over supplies, and an onlooker remarked “Makes you wonder who the REAL monsters are…” Give me a break.

Reading Next

Plans have not changed on this front. I’m sure I’ll be finishing volume three of Kingdom of Monsters, just so I can finish this weird little trilogy up. I’m still committed to reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman next too, it’s only a matter of finishing up Into the Dark first.

Until next week, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

Book Review – Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Ryan2 Comments

Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in 1969. Considered an American classic and among the world’s great antiwar novels, the story is centered around the firebombing of Dresden, Germany during World War II. It follows Billy Pilgrim, a U.S. Army private, who embarks upon a strange odyssey while struggling to survive as a prisoner of war. Billy’s consciousness becomes unstuck in time, sending him to various points in his own past and future, including his married life after the war, waning years after surviving a serious accident, and the period of time he spent as an exhibit in an alien zoo. Through it all, he always returns to his horrific experiences during the war.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – July 7, 2021

Ryan2 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Still no progress on Hope is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I’ll pick it back up any day now. 😅

Into the DarkMeanwhile, I’ve started reading The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray, the first YA novel set during the High Republic era of Star Wars. I’m a little over 150 pages in at the moment. Though this book has been a bit of a slow burn so far, I’m really into how this story is integrated with Light of the Jedi, the cataclysmic incident at the start of that book being the reason a trio of Jedi and a bunch of other refugees find themselves holing up in a derelict space station. While I’m sure it won’t get too extreme, it’s developing into a genuine horror story, which is an uncommon thing to see in the franchise. I believe this is actually setting up the monsters I’ve seen in the High Republic comic book series, so it’s a shame I didn’t read this book first.

Recently Finished

Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters Vol1Over the weekend I read through the first volume of Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters by Eric Powell et al. Oh geez, this was not what I was expecting. I think I need to retroactively thank my old comic shop for botching my subscription all those years ago. The art is very good and the monster mayhem is just fine, but the story is a weirdly shallow and irreverent critique of popular culture circa the late aughts. Potshots are taken across the board at the Media, Democrats and Republicans, aggressive rednecks, judgy liberals, and more! There was a laser focus on fictional equivalents of Lady Gaga and the Jersey Shore for some reason, making me painfully aware that even back then we lived in a Society. I didn’t hate it, though, it was a humorous relic. There were two murderous psychic schoolgirls who bond with one monster and declare themselves the new Queens of France too. The whole book should have been about them.

Reading Next

Good OmensI do intend to continue with the second volume of Kingdom of Monsters, for whatever that will be worth, but I think for my next novel I will finally crack open Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. I’ve been a big fan of both authors for so long, and really loved the miniseries, so it’s about time I actually get around to reading this book. It is a bit of a shame that most of the story will be familiar to me, but I will not be deterred. Maybe it will touch upon some elements left out of the miniseries that will better justify a second season. I’m excited about that, but also confused. I liked it as a one-and-done sort of thing.

Until next week, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

Reading Challenge Update

Ryan6 Comments

Summer is in full swing and I couldn’t be happier. The weather’s been nice, and where I’m living has only had to deal with a few days of heat wave last week, so the temperature has been enjoyably moderate for me.

Spirits are up since my last update too, when reading was apparently more of a chore for me. I’d actually forgotten about that, so it’s nice to realize just how much that feeling is behind me at the moment. I think part of it has to do with the reading quotas I’ve started making myself stick to, which has gotten me through books at a much better pace. Making reading more goal-oriented on a smaller scale has been very motivating.Read More »