12 books for 12 months – 2017

My main reading goal for this year was to make serious headway into my unread books (books I’ve owned for six months or more and never opened). To better motivate myself to get through this stack – which was easily 100+ books at the start of the year – I set a moratorium on book buying, which I was able to maintain more or less successfully.  And I’ve finished up the year by taking out 34 unread books, out of 85 read for 2017 total. Not spectacular, but it’s within spitting distance of 50%.

My Desert Island Library

One desert island. 10 books. Which ones do you bring?

(Still no sign of my reality TV contract. I can’t imagine what’s taking so long.)

Thoughts on ‘The Unconsoled’

After a nightmare, one of the most maddening moments comes when trying to pinpoint the terrifying aspects. The fact that you couldn’t run from one place to another, to use a common dream situation, seems minor when set against how much it makes your heart hammer.  It’s the heightened reality of things that aren’t or should never be real that lends the fear.

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, this eeriness comes in the distortion of recognizable things, rendering innocuous moments sickening. Not because the moments themselves have much in the way of horror. But because those things simply can’t be real- and yet within the story, they’re as inexorable as anything in the real world.

Thoughts on ‘The Sea Shall Embrace Them’

“The sea swept over the Arctic’s stern in a maelstrom of dark water and white foam. It rumbled and roared on either side of the ship as her bow eased skyward. There was no quick incline to an almost vertical position, no massive lunge to find the bottom. She slowly backed into the waves at a twenty-five-degree angle, assuming grace and beauty even in her last moments.”

But apart from those last moments, nothing about the Arctic’s sinking is graceful or beautiful. It showcased cruelty and selfishness in spades and the limitations of the code of honor that only a few people bothered to follow in the events leading to the disaster. While David W. Shaw’s The Sea Shall Embrace Them has flaws, with writing occasionally clunky and facts occasionally unclear, the horror of the sinking of the ship and the mad scramble to escape it is wrenching to read and hard to forget.

Thoughts on ‘The Historian’

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a book that defies summarizing. It’s a labyrinth of travel, history, families, horror, and legacies. It goes layers deep, with every generation working its way through a different part of the maze. Every now and again a shaft to the past opens to show the centuries past and how their shadow may be more than just a shadow. It can be described, but begs to be experienced.

But if you need a description, this quote from the book should suffice:

“To make it short and shocking, I’m on a quest of sorts, a historian’s hunt for Dracula – not Count Dracula of the romantic stage, but a real Dracula – Drakulya – Vlad III, a fifteenth-century tyrant who lived in Transylvania and Wallachia and dedicated himself to keeping the Ottoman Empire out of his lands as long as possible.”

October Reading: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”

This is one of my favorite books ever.

Brushing Off The Dust

“Recently published… Nov 7th, 12:59 pm”

Um. That’s a while. Hi?

Believe it or not, I’m not dead, I haven’t stopped reading, and I haven’t given up on blogging.

Thoughts on ‘Johannes Cabal The Necromancer’

Johannes Cabal traded his soul to Satan to gain power over the dead.

And as is usual in such deals, he eventually realizes that he wants it back. What is not standard is the method in which Satan decides to let him attempt to regain that soul.

To regain his soul, Johannes Cabal has to run a carnival.

Thoughts on ‘In the Garden of the Beasts’

You know that mantra “Study history or repeat it?”

It’s wrong.

Studying history isn’t going to be enough to avoid repeating it. Learning from history is what will prevent us from falling into the same old cycles. In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larsson is a tricky book to classify insofar as history goes. It’s a stunning portrait of life in Germany while Hitler came to power. And it’s very unsettling, because the burden of learning from this is placed almost entirely on the reader.

Why I’m Giving Up On Goodreads

Time to blow off the dust on this thing! It’s been a very busy summer, but hopefully I will be able to have more frequent posting from here on out. I plan on actually creating a schedule (it remains to be seen how well I’ll actually stick to it). But you have to start somewhere, and right now, the best way to do that is an announcement!

So here it is: I’m giving up on Goodreads.

I’m sure the four people following me there will be crushed, but honestly, it’s time for me.