WWW Wednesday – July 31, 2024

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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

AuthorityI’m still working my way through Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, and it’s unfortunately at a slower pace than I would like, though I’m nearly 100 pages further than I was last week. I’m continuing to enjoy the atmosphere of this book, for the most part, especially in how lost and ineffectual the Southern Reach reach is as an institute. It’s becoming more and more clear that Area X has been infecting them in subtle ways over the years, though how and how much isn’t quite clear, as the entire situation is terribly nebulous and hard for any of the characters to wrap their heads around. I am finding I like this novel less than Annihilation thanks to the resulting slow pace, however. It does feel immersive with Control’s struggles to get a handle on things, but the stagnating and obtuse atmosphere is ultimately having a double-edged effect.

Dead MountainI also decided to start reading Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar, a nonfiction book from 2013 about the Dyatlov Pass Incident where a group of nine hikers in Soviet-era Siberia when missing and were subsequently found dead under mysterious circumstances. Though I’m not inclined to believe anything paranormal was involved, it’s still a captivating mystery, and I’ve seen a few book recommendation videos list it among good nonfiction reads. So far, at about 50 pages in, I am enjoying it quite well. I will unfortunately struggle to keep the Russian names straight, which I hope I will come around on by the time I’m done, but otherwise the readability is very good. I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s any new or compelling information presented here that paints a different picture than other sources I’ve seen talk about this incident.


Recently Finished

The Flintstones Vol 1Since last week I’ve read the two volumes of The Flintstones Mark Russell and Steve Pugh, which I found a lot more enjoyable than I was even expecting to, and already I had good hopes for it. It turned out be a really amusing, satirical spin on the old cartoon while still maintaining the spirit of what I remember from watching the show when I was younger. Standout details for me include the fact that Bedrock was founded after committing a genocide, which Fred and Barney participated in, and the fact that the animal appliances, which only we as the reader can understand, suffer under their plight of being treated like household objects instead of living things. Despite how heavy that might sound, there’s enough levity throughout these stories to balance things out and an absence of heavy-handedness in how they’re presented that it really hits the mark.


Reading Next

Not sure what I’ll be reading next, I’ve got a lot on the go right now. Rest assured, it will probably be a comic of some kind; I’ve still got to keep up getting through those.

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

WWW Wednesday – July 24, 2024

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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

AuthorityI’m still plodding along with Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy, though I haven’t read as much as I feel I should’ve in the intervening two weeks. Still, at exactly 100 pages into it I’m both puzzled and continue to be intrigued. The tone of this novel, despite having a very different narrative approach and setting, is a little dreamlike in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on. In many respects, Control’s point of view helps ground the reader, yet the situation at the Southern Reach is just so odd. Nobody can confidently quantify or understand much of anything about Area X, yet they persist as an institution, albeit a waning one, and he’s met with such passive resistance, vague answers to his questions, and oddities in the old director’s office that it feels almost feverish.


Recently Finished

Marvel 1602Over the weekend I finally finished reading Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert, which took quite a bit longer than I expected it to. It’s clearly meant to be a larger project, so I’m not sure why I assumed it was the length of a regular trade paperback. This definitely isn’t a favourite among Gaiman’s work, but he did manage to make the characters really compelling in a rather unlikely setting. The main weakness I’d say this book has is that it is trying to include an awful lot of major characters at once, so it sometimes felt all over the place. I enjoyed those who were more fleshed out, but it felt like we couldn’t get in too deep with their own personal stories for the sake of the universe-shattering problem they must come together and solve. This overarching plot was fine, but everything else the characters had going on was actually a lot more interesting to me, so I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the end. Sure, the universe was saved, but so much feels unresolved.


Reading Next

The Flintstones Vol 1I found some comics at the library that caught my eye, so it’s likely I’ll be reading them soon; I picked up The Flintstones volumes 1 and 2 by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh. These two volumes are part of DC’s Hanna-Barbera Beyond imprint that gives a more modern and adult interpretation to these classic cartoons. I’ve heard a lot of interesting things about these books, such as Fred and Wilma’s monogamy being controversial in their community, so I’m excited to get a closer look at what the overall story will be about. I’ve got another library book I’m tentatively planning to start reading too, but I want to hold off on any commitments to that right now, as I borrowed it somewhat impulsively.

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

WWW Wednesday – July 10, 2024

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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

AuthorityI’ve started a couple of new thing since last week. First up we have Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, the second novel in the Southern Reach trilogy. I’m pleased to learn that this novel’s narrative is different from Annihilation in a way that I anticipated; where that first book was actually a field journal, this one is told more traditionally, from the point of view of a new interim director at the Southern Reach. Though I’m not actually very far into it thus far, it has already been rather tantalizing, as 3 of the 4 members of the twelfth expedition have been found outside of Area X, including the biologist, the protagonist of the first book. Their true nature, however, remains to be seen. I’m enjoying this new perspective character too, and I’m looking forward to the greater insight his point of view will provide into the institution researching Area X.

Marvel 1602I also finally started reading Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert, a retelling of the Marvel universe set in the 17th century. I’m enjoying it well enough so far, though the couple of chapters I have read feel like they’re dealing more with setup, so the story doesn’t feel like its really gotten moving yet. Still, it’s a unique setting for these characters, and I’m enjoying the ways that Gaiman has interpreted them for this it, though I don’t believe I’ve met all the characters who will be making an appearance yet. The most surprising was Rohjaz, a towering Native American who is inexplicably white of skin and blue-eyed, which the story explains through contact with Welsh traders before Columbus “discovered” the continent. It took me embarrassingly long to realize this is supposed to be Steve Rogers; though it feels a little odd, I appreciate that Gaiman made him firmly American rather than a European colonist.


Recently Finished

Nothing this week.


Reading Next

This is Where We Talk Things OutI’m pretty focused on what I’m in the middle of right now, so I haven’t made any big decisions about what I want to be reading next, though I do feel it should probably be a Discworld novel. As a shorter outing, however, I have been thinking about reading the novella This is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau, a horror story that I’ve heard can be read in a sitting or two. I should make an effort with shorter prose too, so perhaps I’ll be reading this sometime soon. Otherwise, I really need to keep thinking about what comics to read next.

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

WWW Wednesday – July 3, 2024

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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 this week; I’m between books again, which is good, though I feel bad that I missed the last couple of weekly posts. Two weeks ago I just felt like I didn’t have enough to say, and last week I just ended up being way too busy to make any time. I’m happy to be reporting back in.


Recently Finished

Hellboy The Dragon PoolOn Monday I finished reading Hellboy: The Dragon Pool by Christopher Golden, and goodness I’m really not sure how to feel about this one. In many ways, the writing is perfectly competent; I can’t think of anything particularly bad or awkward-sounding, and the regulars we know and love are characterized properly without any real issues. I just couldn’t escape the feeling that the entire story was a waste of time. An ancient dragon king is unearthed, wreaks some havoc, and then they defeat him. Hellboy’s relationship with Anastasia is touched upon, but they stay separated and it doesn’t amount to more than tension between the two. There’s tension with the Chinese government a little, because it takes place in Tibet, but that doesn’t come to a meaningful head either. It just goes through the motions, written well enough, reaching a predictable conclusion and overall being rather boring. I feel it deserves a little lower than a 3 out of 5, even, but I’m having trouble actually settling on that. I don’t know if I’ll ending up writing a full review on this one or not.


Reading Next

Marvel 1602I’ve done a rather poor job of reading comics, as I continually complain about, and I’m really thinking I need to more thoughtfully go through my digital backlog and make a more concrete list of things I want to read this year. It was so much easier when I had series I wanted to catch up on/finish, but with luck I can get myself treating such a list in the same way.  Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman should still be first on the chopping block, as it were, I just need to figure out what else I want to push myself to read finally. So many of them have languished there for so long, it’s about bloody time.

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

WWW Wednesday – June 12, 2024

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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

Hellboy The Dragon PoolAfter a lot of humming and hawing, I finally decided to start reading Hellboy: The Dragon Pool by Christopher Golden; though I made up my mind late last week, I didn’t manage to get a start on it until Monday night. There are some other series that I arguably should be getting to instead, but I realized that I haven’t read a Hellboy novel since summer 2021, so it’s nearly been 3 years. After this one, I will only have four more left to read, and this will be the last one published by Pocket Star Books before the publisher switches back to Dark Horse. I’m enjoying it well enough so far at nearly 60 pages in, though it’s doing its usual setup with the characters so the novel is accessible enough, so the story hasn’t quite gotten going yet. I’m most intrigued that Dr. Anastasia Bransfield is appearing again, an old flame of Hellboy’s that first appeared back in the first novel The Lost Army.


Recently Finished

Nothing this week.


Reading Next

Marvel 1602I’d still really like to read Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman soon, which I will likely get to before anything else. Reading another Hellboy novel finally has me thinking about other books related to this series that I really need to start reading; I’ve owned the first four omnibuses of the BPRD books for a number of years now, and I really ought to start reading that series finally. Part of me wants to start trying to read another book concurrently with The Dragon Pool, but I need to quell that a little so I can just get that book finished with faster.

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

WWW Wednesday – June 5, 2024

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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, as I’m happy to report I’m completely between books right now.


Recently Finished

RoadsidePicnicOver the weekend I pushed myself to finish reading the last quarter or so of Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I really enjoyed this novel, which felt like it packed in a lot despite ultimately being rather short. One chapter interestingly moved away from the main character, giving us a different glimpse into how things operate in this town and including a conversation with a drunk scientist where the concept of the “roadside picnic” is brought up overtly. The other character openly resents the notion that it may just be a bunch of crap aliens left behind without a care, that this insults humanity. Though maybe a little on the nose, I feel this is a very realistic reaction and discussion; people who believe in the inherent exceptionalism of humanity would be insulted by the mere suggestion that aliens visited and moved on without a care, that the stuff left behind must be a test for us.

What If 2In a surprise turn, I also managed to finish reading What If? 2 by Randall Munroe yesterday while sitting in the waiting room while my car was getting looked at. I don’t have much more to say about this book; I really liked it, and I was surprised to find how breezy of a read it actually is once I actually sat down and read a lot of it at once. I rated it exactly the same as the first book, which makes sense to me. I wasn’t so in love with these that I would give either five stars, but they’re both solidly good enough that they deserve four, and this book seamlessly continues what the first book was doing, which is for the best. Looking back at my own review of that first book, it’s funny to realize that a review of this one probably wouldn’t sound that different.


Reading Next

I still need to read comics I’ve been repeatedly saying I’d get to, but I’m giving myself a break considering I was able to get two books finished this week. I still need to make up my mind what I’m reading next though, as I’m actually feeling a little stuck on that. I want to start Authority by Jeff VanderMeer for instance, but I’m feeling a bit of a break from science/science fiction first. We shall see.

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

WWW Wednesday – May 29, 2024

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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

RoadsidePicnicI made some decent reading progress this past week, though editing work has picked up again, so I haven’t had as much free time for reading as normal. Still, I managed to get a little further along in What If? 2 by Randall Munroe. I’m continuing to enjoy this book a lot; I especially love his deadpan responses to questions that are obviously fatal. I managed to get an especially good chunk of Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky finished, such that I’m a little over halfway through it now. It’s not especially long, so I’m hoping I can get myself to finish it up by next week. The effect of the Zone on the stalkers trying to raid it and the strange devices found within is becoming increasingly disturbing. It’s not just that we don’t understand what the tech is for, but the effects they have on us are unnerving. Legs touched the “hell slime”? You’ve got no bones below the knees now. Yikes.


Recently Finished

Nothing this week.


Reading Next

Marvel 1602I think I’m being stupid with how I’m neglecting comic books lately, so I decided before I started writing this post that I’m going to read Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman before next week. Considering it’s a comic book by Gaiman, I’m not sure how I’ve gone so long without trying to read it, especially since I’ve owned a copy for a while now. This simply needs getting done, and I’m starting to get impatient with myself. The prospects with reading this book are actually quite exciting, as I actually know very little about it. It’s just one of those books you hear about somehow, but I’ve never actually seen anybody talk specifics or reference it in an obvious way. It seems such an odd time period to place superheroes too; I hope I enjoy it.

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

WWW Wednesday – May 22, 2024

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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

RoadsidePicnicThough I’m not nearly as far along as I feel I should be, I’ve gotten a little over a quarter of the way into Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I could have talked about this book a little last week, but I didn’t feel that I’d gotten far enough into it to give many impressions. So far, I’m enjoying it pretty well; it’s making for easier reading compared to my last book, which is weird considering this is a Russian science fiction book and not an English children’s book, and it also has a different feel in terms of style that I attribute to it being a translated text. In contrast to a lot of other science fiction, I like how much this one feels like humanity is groping blindly at trying to understand advanced alien artifacts; even the institute that the protagonist works at is largely at a loss. Typically, the trope is that uncovering alien tech jumps us forward, so it’s refreshing to see humanity more humbled by it.


Recently Finished

WovenSince my last post I read Woven by Joshua Barkman, his latest self-published book collecting the comics he released online every day in November of 2023. I actually read this one before the 15th, but I was a little busy and decided to put off talking about it until I could write a more substantial post. Technically, this is my second time reading this story, but it was nice to go through it in one sitting collected together like this. Though these books have consistently told stories about wildlife in a fairly realistic art style, I really appreciate how Barkman has adopted different visual styles with each project; the muted blue and the red contrast really well with each other. It’s also a nice little story about creativity and struggling with discouragement and embracing your passion.


Reading Next

I’m not really sure what I’m going to start next, even as far as comics go, though I’m always giving myself grief about that. I did, however, finally finish my review of Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh, which I finished reading all the way back in March. I don’t know what’s wrong with me that it took me so long, but I’m glad it’s finally done. Other than that, I just want to focus on what I’m reading right now so that I don’t end up taking too long again.

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

WWW Wednesday – May 8, 2024

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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 new at the moment. I’m still technically reading What If? 2 by Randall Munroe, but I haven’t made any progress on it in a little while.


Recently Finished

Watership DownOn Monday I finally finished reading Watership Down by Richard Adams, and I have such weirdly mixed feelings about this book. Though it seems there are a number of books akin to this one about animal societies, I’ve not read much of any of them, so I found this book to be a uniquely weird and earnest reading experience. I wonder how many of the others are like this one; I always heard about this book being for kids, but I think I would’ve bounced right off of it when I was younger. It’s surprisingly dense for what it is, takes its time moving the plot along, and deals with surprisingly heavy subject matter. Toward the end, I was legitimately a little stressed out while reading it. All in all, I think it’s a great book, but I frequently had to force myself to read it, so something about it I struggled with too. I have another review in the pipeline almost finished, but I want to get this reviewed too, hopefully a lot closer to the date I’ve finished reading this time.


Reading Next

RoadsidePicnicAs I’ve said in previous weeks, I want to start reading Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky pretty soon. I’m hoping I’ll get this book finished a lot faster after Watership Down slowed my momentum considerably for two months. With that in mind, I can’t help but think about other books I want to start soon after. I’m considering The Truth by Terry Pratchett, but perhaps I may start Authority by Jeff VanderMeer instead. There are a lot of series I feel I need to continue, so I ought to pick up one of those after the last couple of books have been standalone. I need to make myself read more comics too, as usual, but I haven’t decided on what to read next yet.

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

WWW Wednesday – April 24, 2024

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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 managed to make some pretty good progress in Watership Down by Richard Adams, putting me at nearly three quarters of the way through. It’s an odd reading experience that I don’t have too often where I genuinely have good things to say about a book, but when it comes down to it, I have very little motivation to read it, especially in huge chunks. I think perhaps it is the writing style, which tells a good story overall but has a dryness to it that makes reading it feel like more of a chore than I’d like it to. It perhaps comes across like something written for children by someone who doesn’t quite know how to write for children. At any rate, things are coming to a head in the story as the rabbits of Watership Down are about to kick off their big plan to extract female rabbits who wish to leave the oppressive Efrafa warren. I suspect imminent losses and heartache before the deed is done.

What If 2I also started reading What If? 2 by Randall Munroe, the second book where the author provides serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. It’s proving to be as much fun as the previous book, and as expected it feels precisely like a continuation of what the last book was doing. It’s funny how humbling a serious answer like the ones this provides can be to a question that at least feels a little plausible, such as the question about how many pigeons it would take to lift somebody on a lawn chair to the top of a skyscraper, which would technically require an amount of pigeons that dwarfs the size of the Earth in order to pull it off. Sounds an absurd number on its own, but as he lays it out it makes a troubling amount of sense.


Recently Finished

Nothing this week!


Reading Next

The Lost WorldAside from my need to read more graphic novels, I’ve got my eye on shorter reads for what I might pick up next to make up for the lost momentum that reading Watership Down has caused. I still have my eye on Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, though I can’t quite remember how long it has been since I even mentioned wanting to read that book (if I even have, I’m struggling to remember). I just eyeballed The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and noticed that it looks quite short, so I may take some time to blitz through that quickly as well, so long as it too doesn’t turn out to feel too dusty and old fashioned of a read.

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