Month: November 2023

WWW Wednesday – November 29, 2023

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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

The Lost WorldI’ve managed to put another decent dent into The Lost World by Michael Crichton this past week, which is pretty good considering my track record with it thus far between the big reading days. Honestly, I’m a little taken aback with how much this novel might be back-loaded with action. Last night I realized that I’m two-thirds of the way through, but it doesn’t feel like all that much has happened plot-wise. I have a general idea of where things are going right now thanks to the film adaptation, but it’s so weird that what’s coming happens relatively early in the film but so late in the novel. It’s certainly a much more subdued approach, which isn’t inherently bad, but there’s a listlessness to it all that I’m still finding unfortunate. Also, I’m amused by Crichton retconning the whole “vision based on movement” thing with the T. rexes, though it seems it was all based on developing science, so I appreciate him trying to keep up to date with things too.

Recently Finished

Paper Girls 4Over the weekend I finally read through the fourth volume of Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang. I’m disappointed in myself that I’m not remembering key plot points right away when I find myself continuing this series. It’s hard with comics sometimes, as I don’t want to commit to a whole series if I end up not liking it, but if it’s good my reading of it will be so spread out that I don’t feel like I’ll wholly appreciate it. I’m going to make a point of re-reading this series sometime in the near future so that I can better appreciate it as a whole. Nevertheless, I really liked this volume, especially in how it fleshed out the different factions of future peoples embroiled in conflict that the girls are caught between. Their competing philosophies and methods are really interesting.

Reading Next

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 11I’ve got more Paper Girls and the final volume of the Twilight Princess manga on the horizon, and then I will by starting The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, along with another small book, hopefully. It’s funny that this time of year always has what I’ve got left to read so clear, but I’m a little excited that it’s involving so many this time. I think I will feel very accomplished.

It’s unfortunate that this month I really didn’t post much at all except for these updates, but I am working on an Alien 3 review, which will hopefully go up before next Wednesday. Additional posts should hopefully pick up in December too, if I can weave them between holiday plans effectively enough.

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

WWW Wednesday – November 22, 2023

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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

The Lost WorldI got a respectable 100 pages or so further into The Lost World by Michael Crichton with the extended reading time I had available to me earlier in the week. I really need to start putting more time into this book at other points throughout the week though so that I can get it finished up sooner. I’m liking this novel fine, but the dryness of Crichton’s writing style is more apparent here than it was with the first book, which definitely had its own moments with that. I’m honestly finding myself a little bored with it so far, as the characters spend of lot of time lecturing to each other and there isn’t much conflict to speak of at the moment. Hopefully things will pick up as different parties presumably start to clash. There’s a lot of emphasis on the topic of extinction and how the dinosaurs allow them the opportunity to study it as a natural phenomenon, and I’m curious about how this may work into the narrative.

Recently Finished

Shut Up Slow Down Let Go BreatheOver the weekend I made myself read through Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe by Marcus McCann; that sounds a lot more harsh than I mean, though, as I had trouble getting into it as I predicted. This is no fault of the poet, I just have trouble getting into a lot of poetry. I had the same problem reading an Emily Dickinson collection. I was determined to read through the whole thing, however, as it wasn’t very long and I want to push myself outside of my comfort zone at least some of the time. Overall, I enjoyed it well enough. Some of the poems managed to break through and resonate with me too, so I’m glad I was able to take something away from the experience despite how I struggle with the medium. I even took a photo of a couple of pages so I can revisit them.

Reading Next

The Fifth ElephantI’m realizing that there really isn’t a lot of time left in the year, so I’m going to have to make some concrete decisions about what I want to finish before 2024. So, I know that the next full-length novel I want to read is The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. I may not meet all the goals I set for the remainder of this year, but I want to at least achieve this one (catching up on all the Discworld novels I owned at the time I set the goal). There are some other shorter books I’m going to try to squeeze in too, but I definitely want to make sure I read this one.

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

WWW Wednesday – November 15, 2023

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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

ScornI haven’t made any progress in The Lost World by Michael Crichton since last week, though I don’t feel all that bad about this because I actually had more books on the go than normal that took priority over it. I have continued reading Scorn: The Art of the Game by Matthew Pellett, though, and I’m hoping I can get that finished within the next few days too. I’m still enjoying reading it, though I’m finding the Kindle format frustrating; why on earth do some of the sentences overlap with each other? I had to convert the file into a shoddy PDF so I could read what one sentence was saying that had become completely illegible in the app. Otherwise, it’s introducing concepts that I’m really wanting to keep an eye out for in the game when I replay it, now that I have an idea of what to look for.

Recently Finished

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 10Over the weekend I read two graphic novels; the first I finished was the tenth volume of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Akira Himekawa. I liked this volume a lot more than the previous one, which I tried to have a positive attitude about, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it just wasn’t as good as I wanted to feel like it was. I even went back and lowered by Goodreads rating of it, and this isn’t the first time I’ve done that with this series. In this penultimate volume, Link, Midna, and the knights of Hyrule are charging the castle to oust Ganondorf and his horde of monsters. I’ve really enjoyed how this series has given the knights a chance to develop and actually feel useful instead making obligatory appearances that don’t matter or being comic relief. I’m excited to read the final volume, though I’ll have to wait a bit to get my hands on a copy.

on-a-sunbeamI also finally finished On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden after taking a break from it to read more spooky books last month. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, especially the art. I can’t remember if I mentioned previously, but there’s some really creative art direction with how the buildings and vehicles look. I was especially fond of the ships shaped like giant koi/goldfish, though the cathedral-like space stations were pretty great too. The only thing I found to be a shame was the story got especially interesting with its setting in the latter chapters, but it spent so little time there relative to the book as a whole that it felt like it ended just as it was getting really good. I would love it if Walden spent more time in this world expanding upon some of these ideas only touched upon, but it stands well on its own as a creative backdrop to good a coming-of-age story.

Reading Next

Shut Up Slow Down Let Go BreatheThough I have tentative plans with other books that I own, I am planning to read the poetry collection Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe by Marcus McCann, which I came across recently at the bookstore and then borrowed from my library. I’ve realized that I don’t think I actually want to be buying much poetry, so the library will be the way to go with that going forward. It looks to be pretty short, so hopefully I will be able to get through it fairly quickly (assuming I don’t bounce off it, sometimes I have trouble getting into poems). It seems like its sense of humour will be up my alley, so I’m optimistic.

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

WWW Wednesday – November 8, 2023

RyanLeave a comment
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

ScornI’m not sure if I alluded to it another week, but I started casually reading Scorn: The Art of the Game by Matthew Pellett. I don’t read art books too often, but I really loved the visual style of this game, which I recently played through for Halloween, and I’m hoping it will provide further insight into some of the ideas behind the game’s world. So far, I’ve loved the deeper dive into what the artists’ inspirations were when designing the world, especially the emphasis on the Space Jockey from the film Alien rather than the titular monster itself. It clicked in my mind and made immediate sense to me, as that aspect of the movie is especially obscure and unclear; you know you’re looking at the body of an alien being, but it’s hard to fully make out what it is. This feeling was captured in the game’s art really well.

The Lost WorldI also started reading The Lost World by Michael Crichton; so far, I’ve put a lot of mileage into it from one sitting, close to 150 pages. Right of the bat, this book is definitely weaker than the previous book, though I am enjoying it. I’m like the idea that “Site B” is a well-kept secret by the now bankrupt InGen, so characters have to spend some time figuring out where it even is, but the way they start their expedition half-cocked with very little manpower feels too much like characters being uncharacteristically dumb. The children in the story are not insufferable, but their presence feels more forced than the first book. As it is, Crichton’s strengths haven’t been in his character work, in my opinion, so I’m not sure why he mixes things up so much by adding kids. He writes them fine, but I don’t think the nature of their perspectives gels well with his writing style, so I kept hoping their involvement would be more limited.

Recently Finished

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 9Over the weekend I finally continued The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Akira Himekawa with volume 9. This volume sees Link and Midna venturing into the Twilight realm to finally face off against the usurper Zant. This part of the volume I enjoyed rather well, especially as it did more to flesh out the Twili people and more of what life was like for Midna at court. The latter part of the book involves the subplot with Link’s hometown that disappeared when he pulled a strange sword from a stone as a youth, all elements that were not part of the original game. I liked that this made the Twilight realm feel bigger, but it was wrapped up a little too neatly for me by the end of this volume. I get that you want to give Link more of a backstory without derailing the original story, but this didn’t walk that line well.

Reading Next

Nothing cemented right now, as I’ve got a lot in progress.

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

WWW Wednesday – November 1, 2023

RyanLeave a comment
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’m technically between books at the moment, but I believe I forgot to say anything about On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden; I decided to shelve it for the time being, since it’s not really a Halloween read, which means I’ve been holding onto this copy from the library for quite a bit now. I should make short work of it soon enough, though.

Recently Finished

Alien 3 First-DraftI’m happy to report that I was able to finish all the novels I wanted to for the Halloween season (it was only three, but my goals are usually modest), the last one being Alien 3 by Pat Cadigan. My feelings for this story didn’t drop any further since last week, which is good, though they didn’t pick back up again either. It seems like everything interesting was front-loaded into the novel and then it just devolved into a typical Aliens story. It does have me curious about what the graphic novel that adapted Gibson’s second draft is like though. It’s a shame that Alien novels disappoint me more often than not. There’s one more I’m willing to give a chance; if it doesn’t work out, I think that’s it for me and any more novels in this franchise.

Reading Next

The Lost WorldWith spooky season behind us, I want to be moving onto some other reading goals to close out the year. To polish off the small Jurassic Park kick I’m on at the moment, I’m going to start reading The Lost World by Michael Crichton soon. If my new reading regimen keeps up, I’m hoping I can fit another book into November alongside it. Otherwise, I’ve still got plenty of comic book volumes I need to be getting to, between Paper Girls and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, so this might be shaping up to be a more accomplished reading month than normal.

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