Wednesday Reading Meme
What I Just Finished Reading: Three books this week: Stinger by Robert McCammon, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, and Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell. Reviews below.
I also DNF'ed Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. Let me tell you why. First, the book is a tell (he's literally telling his story to a scribe) so there is absolutely NO sense of immediacy or suspense. Two, it's HORRIBLY overwritten. There is enough purple prose to fertilize ten gardens. But the tipping point for me involves... a movie from 1984 called Red Dawn. It's a bit of a cheesefest with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and I adore it. It's about a group of teenagers who hide out and fight back guerrila-style when their town is taken over by Russians. WOLVERINES!
Anyway. At one point in the movie there's a kid that's creepily obsessed with killing the Russians. They've met up with a downed American fighter pilot, and their dialogue goes something like this:
Pilot: All that hate will burn you up, kid.
Kid: It keeps me warm.
So, back to Empire of the Vampire. I'm reading away, rolling my eyes at the crap writing, when I come across this exchange between the scribe and the vampire hunter:
Scribe: Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, chevalier.
Vampire Hunter: But at least he'll die warm.
I MEAN. Who steals from RED DAWN of all freakin' movies? Come on. I'd have thrown it if it wasn't a library book.
What I'm Reading Right Now: I've started Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is apparently a (new?) genre called "litrpg", which is like the prose equivalent of a video game? It has begun with literally the world destroyed and most people killed, and the survivors must compete in an 18 level dungeon, earning prizes and entertaining people watching in order to build an audience. ... I don't know. I'm going to give it another night of reading before I decide to continue or not.
(Carl is in the dungeon with a cat that I have heard learns to talk, so I am going to try to at least get that far.)
What I'm Planning to Read Next: It'll either be a library book I picked up about mutated spiders (I HATE BUGS AND AM TERRIFIED OF THEM, WHY DID I DO THIS) called The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone, or one of my bingo prompt books, either The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist for a palate cleanser or Goblin if I want to get scared.
121. Stinger by Robert McCammon
Flashing back to the past with this horror thriller published in 1988. It reminded me of how much writing has changed in the last 30+ years. This one has the slow build of its time, setting up the large cast of characters and the locale, a small town simmering with racism and tension. Into it drops an alien, quickly chased by another alien who encases the town in a forcefield and sets about killing and mutating anyone in its path.
There’s some gruesome deaths, multiple POVs of our cast trying to escape or outmaneuver the monster, retribution for some and redemption for others, all leading to a showdown on board the alien ship. Loads of pulpy fun.
Dates Read: October 12 to 16, 2024
Page Count: 542
4 out of 5 stars
+ Challenge Factory Save The Bees - 6C - character stalks something (Task 6 of 7)
122. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
In an unclear-when near-ish-future world, sentient robots are available. Annie’s owner, Doug, has also turned on her option for self-teaching, so she’s a learning, growing robot. She starts out as a maid-bot but he soon adjusts her settings to ‘cuddle buddy’, a sex-bot. But she still has to obey his commands… except when she doesn’t. Her parameters aren’t really all that clear, and since the story is *about* her growth I think harder lines had to be drawn.
This book was hard to read. I feel that the author was going for a feminist, quest for self-empowerment vibe. It fell far short for me. It’s simply difficult to spend almost an entire book watching a woman be emotionally, sexually, and verbally abused by a caricature of misogyny while she anguishes mentally over what *she’s done* and how to fix it before it feels like it’s the reader that is taking the beating.
Can’t recommend.
Date Read: October 19, 2024
Page Count: 231
2 out of 5 stars
+ Challenge Factory Save The Bees 7B - “honey” in text
123. Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Second memoir by the owner of the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland, housing 100,000 books throughout many, many rooms. If I win the lottery, I’m taking a holiday to Wigtown.
This felt like visiting with old friends. Shaun still occasionally actually says those things that anyone who’s ever worked in retail has long wished they could say out loud. Nicky is still making a mess of things, and things are rocky in Shaun’s personal life. I find his excursions to buy books so fascinating, as well as the insight into the surprising genres that are big sellers.
Dates Read: October 20 to 22, 2024
Page Count: 323
5 out of 5 stars
.
I also DNF'ed Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. Let me tell you why. First, the book is a tell (he's literally telling his story to a scribe) so there is absolutely NO sense of immediacy or suspense. Two, it's HORRIBLY overwritten. There is enough purple prose to fertilize ten gardens. But the tipping point for me involves... a movie from 1984 called Red Dawn. It's a bit of a cheesefest with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and I adore it. It's about a group of teenagers who hide out and fight back guerrila-style when their town is taken over by Russians. WOLVERINES!
Anyway. At one point in the movie there's a kid that's creepily obsessed with killing the Russians. They've met up with a downed American fighter pilot, and their dialogue goes something like this:
Pilot: All that hate will burn you up, kid.
Kid: It keeps me warm.
So, back to Empire of the Vampire. I'm reading away, rolling my eyes at the crap writing, when I come across this exchange between the scribe and the vampire hunter:
Scribe: Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, chevalier.
Vampire Hunter: But at least he'll die warm.
I MEAN. Who steals from RED DAWN of all freakin' movies? Come on. I'd have thrown it if it wasn't a library book.
What I'm Reading Right Now: I've started Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is apparently a (new?) genre called "litrpg", which is like the prose equivalent of a video game? It has begun with literally the world destroyed and most people killed, and the survivors must compete in an 18 level dungeon, earning prizes and entertaining people watching in order to build an audience. ... I don't know. I'm going to give it another night of reading before I decide to continue or not.
(Carl is in the dungeon with a cat that I have heard learns to talk, so I am going to try to at least get that far.)
What I'm Planning to Read Next: It'll either be a library book I picked up about mutated spiders (I HATE BUGS AND AM TERRIFIED OF THEM, WHY DID I DO THIS) called The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone, or one of my bingo prompt books, either The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist for a palate cleanser or Goblin if I want to get scared.
121. Stinger by Robert McCammon
Flashing back to the past with this horror thriller published in 1988. It reminded me of how much writing has changed in the last 30+ years. This one has the slow build of its time, setting up the large cast of characters and the locale, a small town simmering with racism and tension. Into it drops an alien, quickly chased by another alien who encases the town in a forcefield and sets about killing and mutating anyone in its path.
There’s some gruesome deaths, multiple POVs of our cast trying to escape or outmaneuver the monster, retribution for some and redemption for others, all leading to a showdown on board the alien ship. Loads of pulpy fun.
Dates Read: October 12 to 16, 2024
Page Count: 542
4 out of 5 stars
+ Challenge Factory Save The Bees - 6C - character stalks something (Task 6 of 7)
122. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
In an unclear-when near-ish-future world, sentient robots are available. Annie’s owner, Doug, has also turned on her option for self-teaching, so she’s a learning, growing robot. She starts out as a maid-bot but he soon adjusts her settings to ‘cuddle buddy’, a sex-bot. But she still has to obey his commands… except when she doesn’t. Her parameters aren’t really all that clear, and since the story is *about* her growth I think harder lines had to be drawn.
This book was hard to read. I feel that the author was going for a feminist, quest for self-empowerment vibe. It fell far short for me. It’s simply difficult to spend almost an entire book watching a woman be emotionally, sexually, and verbally abused by a caricature of misogyny while she anguishes mentally over what *she’s done* and how to fix it before it feels like it’s the reader that is taking the beating.
Can’t recommend.
Date Read: October 19, 2024
Page Count: 231
2 out of 5 stars
+ Challenge Factory Save The Bees 7B - “honey” in text
123. Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Second memoir by the owner of the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland, housing 100,000 books throughout many, many rooms. If I win the lottery, I’m taking a holiday to Wigtown.
This felt like visiting with old friends. Shaun still occasionally actually says those things that anyone who’s ever worked in retail has long wished they could say out loud. Nicky is still making a mess of things, and things are rocky in Shaun’s personal life. I find his excursions to buy books so fascinating, as well as the insight into the surprising genres that are big sellers.
Dates Read: October 20 to 22, 2024
Page Count: 323
5 out of 5 stars
.