Month: March 2024

Book Review – Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

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Annihilation

Annihilation is a 2014 science fiction horror novel by Jeff VanderMeer and the first novel in the Southern Reach trilogy. Area X, a once lightly populated region, has been under quarantine for decades for unknown reasons, long since reclaimed by nature. There have been 11 expeditions into the region, most of them meeting bizarre and violent ends. The last expedition had all of its members return home under mysterious circumstances, mere husks of their former selves, before all succumbing to aggressive cancer. Now, the 12th expedition is underway, made up of four women including our narrator, the biologist, whose husband was part of the 11th expedition. They struggle to comprehend the phenomena they uncover in this hostile yet strangely captivating environment, the trust between them slowly eroding.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – March 20, 2024

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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

Watership DownI’m happy to report that I’ve made some fairly decent progress on Watership Down by Richard Adams since last week, considering that I haven’t had a huge reading window to sit down with it. I’ve finished Part One, which has me at nearly 120 pages in. Though I have no clue how things will develop going forward, I am excited by this story being an odyssey, though the promised land of the title that I presume they will be seeking hasn’t even been mentioned yet. Already they have faced many tribulations and encounters with other creatures and rabbits. I’m quite captivated by how many of the rabbits are characterized, with certain concepts being difficult for them to grasp; there’s an interesting balance between them thinking like people and thinking like the animals that they are.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week, as I have sadly continued to neglect comics and graphic novels.

Reading Next

Vermis IAs I laid out in the spring TBR I posted yesterday for Top Ten Tuesday, I want to make myself read more from my comic book backlog. Already I plan to be reading A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll soon, though this is hardly an old book that has been left waiting, but I also want to make myself read Vermis I by Plastiboo soon, a mystifying art book about a dungeon-crawler RPG that never existed. I hope I can make myself start or even finish these by next week, but we will see, as I’m not quite sure how my reading time will be divided up in that time.

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

Books on My Spring 2024 TBR

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. I always love putting together a seasonal TBR list, even though I rarely complete it and a lot of books end up being repeats in the line-up. I just like to get a decent idea of what I might want to read in the near future. With that in mind, half of this list includes books that are neither novels nor nonfiction prose. With no plans to complete/read through any comic book series this year, there are some books I want to make sure I finally crack open and read.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – March 13, 2024

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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

Watership DownIn keeping with a trend lately toward starting books almost entirely on a whim, I decided to finally start reading Watership Down by Richard Adams, a book I’ve heard a lot about since childhood but have never taken the time to actually engage with; I’ve not even seen any of the adaptations. I only started it a couple of days ago, though, after finishing what I was previously reading, so I’m only about 25 pages in right now. So far, I’m surprised by how deeply Adams is building up rabbit social hierarchies, folklore, and even cultural terms, especially since it feels otherwise grounded in reality. It almost feels like a fantasy novel, but the only real fantasy is the notion of rabbits being able to think more like people. It’s feeling a little dry so far, but I’m hoping I’ll get more into it as I get further along.

Recently Finished

Death in Her HandsOn Monday I managed to finish reading Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh. Although the tone did indeed feel a little more humorous for much of this, as the protagonist seemed mostly swept away by her own wild imagination, this took a perhaps unsurprising dark turn towards the end considering Moshfegh’s inclination towards telling bleak stories. I’m typically expecting such things from her work, but I found the penultimate developments in this story before the ending to be especially depressing and anger-inducing. I’m not mad at the author, she’s excellent at her craft, just the character, though it did make the book fall in my esteem overall. With time, I will perhaps regard it differently, but for now I’ve got to say that I’m a little soured.

Reading Next

A Guest in the HouseI’m not sure what I’ll read next, since Watership Down is a bit longer than the books I’ve been reading lately so I’m not sure how long it’ll take me, but I would really like to read the graphic novel A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll sometime soon. I really enjoy her art style and one of her short stories from Through the Woods is one of my favourite horror stories ever, so I’m excited to read something longer in form from her.

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

WWW Wednesday – March 6, 2024

Ryan1 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

Death in Her HandsI’m still making my way through Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh. I think I’ve only managed another chapter or so since last week, but I’m continuing to enjoy it. However, I’m starting to feel like this experience is going to go one of two ways for me: either a shoe will drop that makes the story a lot more interesting or things will stay nebulous with the character ruminating on the ideas of her wild imagination. Though I don’t think I’ll hate the latter thanks to the strength of Moshfegh’s writing, I will be somewhat disappointed. On the one hand, the character does seem to be a really anxious person, more so than she realizes, and on the other hand she does seem sound enough of mind that I don’t think she’s imagining everything. Perhaps by next week we’ll see how things turn out for me.

Recently Finished

Shuna's JourneyOver the weekend I read through Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki, an illustrated work by the author that was originally published in 1983, before he even founded Studio Ghibli. Though I referred to it as a manga last week, it actually reads a lot more like a picture book, though with greater visual and thematic depth than one made for children. This actually had some of the weirdest and most quietly disturbing ideas I think I’ve seen from a work of his, specifically in the otherworldly forces presented in the story. It was fun to see early iterations on ideas that would pop up in later works too like the films Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. Though this was a library read, I enjoyed it so much that I will likely pick up a copy to own for myself someday.

Reading Next

I still don’t really know what I’m going to be reading next, but I’ll have to make up my mind soon since I will likely be wrapping up Death in Her Hands pretty soon. I just don’t know what I’m in the mood for, only that I don’t want to read more nonfiction right now.

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