Uploads from jaythebooknerd, tagged books

Reading Stack - February 4, 2011

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 17:53:25 -0700

Airedale Attacks! I've read all the library books here. Room was a well deserving prize winner with a non-annoying/non-precocious/non-HaleyJoelOsment kid as the main character, which is doubly impressive. At the moment I'm actually still edging my way along Proust Volume 5, Part II: The Fugitive (no one armed men involved sorry) and I have yet more library books winging their way. I would make a juggling metaphor here but Haley stole my ball!

Reading Stack - February 16, 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:49:49 -0800

jaythebooknerd posted a photo:

Just because Annie is using them as a pillow don't jump to the conclusion that any of these books are not exciting. And please don't tell the library that I let my dog use their books this way. She is very soft and doesn't drool that much...

I've already read White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, and while I can't comment on the 'truth' (a slippery word in this context) of its portrait of modern India, the book worked for me because I believed in the transformation of Munna/Balram from a villager in traditional India to a entrepreneur in the new India. It is the new Balram that tells the story, so I found the book sort of chilly to begin with and it was only a good fifty or so pages in that the book sunk its fangs into me.

The other two books are The Family Trade by Charles Stross and Bad News by Donald E. Westlake. I wasn't really blown away by Stross' Toast (a collection of short stories), but it had some interesting ideas and struck me more as a young guy's first go, so I thought I'd give him another try. Donald E. Westlake, comes to me by, yet again Spider Robinson. Robinson read the first chapter of Bad News on his podcast , unfortunately it was on the occasion of Westlake's death. The good news was that it was a funny opening chapter featuring career criminal John Dortmunder.

2008 Reading Stack

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:18:33 -0800

jaythebooknerd posted a photo:

Another year of being happily lost in books. It's odd to think I started with Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen in January and ended with his Shriek in the year end. I suppose it is a testiment to his world that I feel like I've been immersed in it for years. Other lovely discoveries in addition to Ambergris (Van's city) have been Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital, George R.R. Martin, Roberto Bolano, and Haruki Murakami. I'd hoped to have more Proust done, and just thinking of the wonderful translation gets my enthusiasm going. Hopefully I can carve out some psychic space for In Search of Lost Time in 2009.

Using the local library (thankfully a interconnected system that spans my not so little island) opened up my reading breadth, slightly, this year. I've been able to indulge my curiosity without have to pay for it (other than my own sweet time). Also it has been good to have the deadline of a return date to make sure I get to books I might otherwise let snooze on my bookshelf for years. In addition to Adrian, I was rewarded with authors like Arnon Grunberg and Anne Enright. Maybe more non-fiction next year. But I really need to find fine writers of non-fiction, regardless of subject. (A photoshop confession: since I'd dutifully returned the library books long ago, I cut & pasted my library reads over stand-ins in the photo above. A guy really needs all the inches he can get.)

So this was the shape of my reading for 2008, more than some, less than others, lots of entertainment, some art, many different places and people. I really found myself loving the writers that pushed me, but at other times was equally pleased to find a pleasant place to dwell for a couple of hours a day. I don't know what it says about me but there it was.

Happy New Year.

readingstack 02-22-08

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:55:55 -0800

jaythebooknerd posted a photo:

Another GIANT HEAD for this picture.

This fuzz ball is Haley, our beloved Airedale. So from top to bottom we have: Rudy Rucker's Realware (a 50 cent library sale), Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder (a boing-boing pick), A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller (which I've had lying around forever), The Prisoner of Zenda (I mistyped this as Zelda – Link would be proud), Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi (I read a lot of Miller in my late teens and early twenties so this is a theoretically adult re-read), Ezra Pound: Selected Poems (this podcast interview with Marjorie Perloff (professor at Stanford) inspired me to pull it out), The Lost World & Other Stories by Conan Doyle (adventure! Dinosaurs! The Empire! (The British One!)), Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job (Janine got it out from the library, but since she is away I'm reading it right now), and finally, wordlessly, graphically, The Frank Book by Jim Woodring (given to me by Evan for Christmas, hurah for book gifts!!)

My 2010 Reading (some of it)

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 16:10:49 -0700

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Talk about late. It took me till April to get this done! The X-Men was a bit of nostalgia that didn't really hold up. Nile Shadows was a great library read which I then found on the discard pile for a buck! Awesome for me, not so great for anyone else on the island who might have wanted to get it out. But that is the rough and tumble world of library shelf space...

Finally got to read The Jewish Messiah which was as uncomfortable and odd as it was brilliant. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varnasi was another stand out in the year's reading.

I'm sort of shocked how short this pile is (partially cause it is very half-assed) but that is probably because of how complicated and varied life got. Some of it for ill, but at least I'm trying to pay attention and trying to deal with it.

I'll try and get my recent reading stack up soon.

Reading Stack - November 25, 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:02:27 -0800

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Another library stack. With some odd guy peeking out from behind.

Reading Stack - November 6, 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:39:43 -0800

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The yellow Vogon ship, or Annie, hovers menacingly in the background as I ponder my library reads. Scalzi's book is his 'practice novel' which he stuck up on his website, then a publisher came to him and wanted to publish it. (I'm sure this happens all the time in the publishing world.) The other book, And Another Thing..., is why the Vogon is upset. Eoin Colfer was commissioned by Douglas Adams' widow to write another Hitchhiker book and now I'm reading it.

Vancouver October 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:08:08 -0700

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This isn't Vancouver -- it's my backyard with a deer wondering what the hell I'm doing creeping gradually closer and closer, snapping pictures of it from behind the stack of books I picked up while I was in the city last weekend.

In the hipster-doofus bookstore Pulp Fiction (my kind of bookstore) I found Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital which I read from the library and loved loved loved as well as another Murakami (which the girl behind the counter said was her fav and one of M's weirder ones [which is saying something]) and two John Varley's (I was extremely happy to find the out of print The Persistence of Vision short story collection (replaced by his collected stories now) - the title story is one of his best. Many thanks to Spider Robinson and his podcast at www.spiderrobinson.com/podcast.html for introducing me this master. (Follow the link and scroll down to find Robinson reading POV on 11/9/08.)

The other books, less in style than the above, Tanith Lee, Micheal Moorcock and the pulp master Robert E. Howard (of Conan fame, though these seem to be western stories), I got at the former Bookworm, now Anna's Books, on the cheap which is the great thing about the old pocket paperbacks, the same number of words as the tradepaper backs, amazingly exploitative covers of questionable taste, yet for around 3 bucks Canadian.

So I took another step closer and the deer got up and walked off to find a less odd backyard to sleep in. It wasn't going to get any rest anyways - I had to let Haley and Annie (see my past bookstacks) out to use their open-air washroom and they usually bay horribly and send any deer running for the hills

Reading Stack May 5, 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:00:33 -0700

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Oh, my hand is tired! More library books keep coming in. I will get back to Proust III!

Reading Stack Extra - January 24, 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:27:07 -0800

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A little blue sky insert for my other January reading stack. Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has winded itself through the long request list to me. So I better buckle down and finish Doblin! A book stack is a very lonely place for just one book so I got Richard Dawkins and Charles Stross to keep Diaz company (they were a couple of authors I wanted to check out and, as chance would have it, they were the ones on the shelf.)

Reading Stack - January 1, 2009

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:00:31 -0800

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All I ask for is a chair to sit in and a book to read... Well, a couple of books. These ones should get me through the next month or two of 2009.

I've got the latest comics from Mr. Spiegelman (actually a combination of a new introduction and afterword sandwiched around in earlier collection Breakdowns). This copy is a library book, but I got very lucky -- my brother-in-law Evan bought this and Hamish X Goes to Providence, Rhode Island for me for Christmas! (My other loved ones should get with the program... not that I'm not grateful for my other presessies, but hey, books kick ass.)

In the non-fiction slot I have a biography about Robert Hooke (stemming from how interesting I found him in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle) and some essays by Micheal Chabon.

Spider Robinson read an AMAZING short story by John Varley on his podcast. If you want to hear a transcendent performance and read, go to Spider's podcast and download it now! Or go and read some of their books which I'm doing right now.

Alberto Manguel, one of the wonderful voices in Canada's great conversation, delivered the Massey Lecture last year and devoted one of his lectures to Berlin Alexanderplatz by German writer Alfred Doblin. Sounds like it will be a challenging and enriching read.

Finally, what would one of my reading lists be without George R.R. in it? I'm sure he'll have the rest of The Song of Fire and Ice cycle done by the time I'm finished in a couple of months. (I may be slightly fooling myself on this, but instead I'll have the joy of waiting, lots of lovely waiting... Ah, but there are plenty more books in the sea of stories.)

Reading Stack - March 27, 2008

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:31:35 -0700

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I don't know, I think Annie looks uncertain in this picture as to whether or not I will actually be able to read all seven volumes of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. But ah ha! There are only two volumes shown in this picture with much Flashman (Flash For Freedom) and Tanith Lee (Vazkor, Son of Vazkor - sounding very Conan, we shall see) to water down all that introspective Frenchieness. And look, two cute little picture books for when the reader gets all drooly - Maakies with the Wrinkled Knees (comic strips guaranteed only to be found in the foul suicidal alcoholic kiddy pages, but with art to die for for) and Chance in Hell (something from Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame - well fame if you know who I'm talking about).

My new authors are China Mieville who I've already started and love love love. And Christopher Buckley (you may know him from such movies as Thank You For Smoking! [I haven't bothered to see it]) who Janine has already read and finds funny and black as hell. Returning is Rudy Rucker: since I began reading him with number four in this series I thought I'd start back at the beginning. So to begin the beginning, and damn your doubts, little Cocker-Springer Spaniel cross!

readingstack 01-01-08

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:34:48 -0800

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It's another year of reading to look forward to! First up is to read my other two Madeleine L'Engle books. I'll have to be focused, Janine has just starting reading Wrinkle and will no doubt be hot on my heels. Past that I've got the other two in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Or next I could do some light and fluffy Pynchon (any Gravity's Rainbow strugglers out there? V was great fun.) Michael Ondaatje and David Gilmore give me my Canadian content. (It's a CRTC rule, you know, but for these two I'm happy to follow orders.) Ondaatje is the only writer I read in hard cover. Thanks again to Evan for funding that reading project. My new writer (for me) for the new year is Jeff Vandermeer, who I think I heard about through boingboing and trashotron (Rick Kleffel has lots of great interviews with authors on his site). And then there's Pratchett: my reading would be much poorer without him.

pic note: This is my wife's Buddha, nicely weathered.

My May-Dec 2007 Reading Stack

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:39:03 -0800

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It's a year end roundup! I only started the reading stack in May, but judging from how high I got, another four months wouldn't have forced me to reveal my secret identity. (My wife looked at my stack and remarked how this would be like a month for her.)

I slipped in a re-read of the The Golden Compass (top of the pile) after going to the movie. The book is wonderful, please read that instead of/before seeing the movie. Kidman was perfect casting but the script is your typical breathless checklist instead of a dramatization.

(Okay, I'm still reading Fisher's Art of Eating and Boswell's Life of Johnson, they get devoured bit by bit from my bedside, but honest I've read, if not remembered all the other books.)

Merry Christmas 2007!

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 13:58:50 -0800

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Here is the book part of my haul for a very happy Christmas. Hope everybody else found lots of books under the tree.... if that's what you were hoping for.

Look for these to show up in my next reading stack.

ps: The Shark ornament is one of my favourites for the tree. He has a present in his mouth and it says: "It's beginning to taste a lot like Christmas!" on his side. Another fine Hallmark creation.

pps: Oooops! Evan gave me City of Saints, Divisadero, The Frank Book, and Janine gave me The Last Hero and Torchworked Marbles. Thank you very, very much guys.

reading080507

nobody@flickr.com (jaythebooknerd) — Tue, 08 May 2007 23:20:39 -0700

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What I'm reading and may be reading in the future...