monkey5s

Total 56 books ( as follows )

Today- er, yesterday (Saturday) I finished reading my eighth book in eight days. I am working on reading as much as I can for the library's Summer Reading Club, which runs for eight weeks.

Here's the breakdown so far:

1. Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations, by Clay Shirky. Out of date, since it was published in 2008. The topic is the effect of social media technology on the structure of society today. Despite this, I learned a lot. Probably people who took sociology in college would find it simplistic and silly, but the author did a good job of explaining things clearly and without jargon.

2. Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore, by Robin Sloan. Very entertaining, really raced along and made it easy to keep reading just a few more pages. It mainly dealt with the power of the printed word on paper, and contrasted it with using computers and programming as an adjunct to ink-on-paper storytelling. Great fun to read!

3. The best of all possible worlds, by Karen Lord. This was definitely science fiction, but it was remarkably unusual to me in that it did not deal with the big conflict that sets the story in motion, but rather with what comes next, as the race of people who survive their planet's destruction try to rebuild their culture on another world, that has several stray cultures' worth of people thriving together. Very well written, very enjoyable read.

4. Soft apocalypse, by Will McIntosh. Wow, this was a tough one for me to finish. I despised the protagonist, didn't really like any character in this book. There was an instance of animal harm that nearly made me stop reading, too. But I persevered, to see if the protagonist ever got over even a tiny bit of his assholiness. Survey says: not so much.

5. The interestings, by Meg Wolitzer. Wow, did I expect to like this a lot more than I did. I started out appreciating the main characters, but the novel spans what, 30, 35 years? And by the time it ground to a close I just wanted to slap people (especially Jules. And shake her so her teeth would rattle). But I had jumped into this one immediately after finishing the previous one, and I was unprepared for how well these two mirrored each other. They both involved a core group that formed under specific circumstances, and the novels both dealt with what happens to these people over time.

6. Ella Minnow Pea: A progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable, by Mark Dunn. It was a fast read, though it slowed down as you went along, because by the end I had to sound out the words to figure out what they were trying to approximate (which is the full gimmick of the plot). Quaint characters, easy suspension of disbelief, really a fun way to pass some time.

7. Where'd you go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple. I didn't realize until I started it that this book involved a lot of letter-writing to advance the plot, as well. It moved along brilliantly quickly, even the parts that got a leetle far-fetched. Some of the messages of the book seemed kind of tacked-on at the end, but on the whole I enjoyed it.

8. Red moon, by Benjamin Percy. Wow. Two quick, fun reads counterbalanced by this... uh, bulky, wordy tome. No, I don't mean that in a bad way! Only, I kind of do. I guess I got into the habit of having a succinct plot that resolves in a reasonable length of time. This? Keeps building. And building. And yes, it earned its "horror" sticker, what with the masses of bloody horrible deaths involved with the whole "werewolves live among us like reg'lar folks, except when they DON'T" aspect of the book. When I get through a book like this, I sometimes play the 'could it have been edited a tad?' game, and this one? No, he really didn't waste words describing things that we didn't need to know. The pages were so packed with information that I sometimes felt like I was Alice with the Red Queen, having to run as fast as I could just to stay in one place.

Whew!

Now I plan to read two fun paperbacks, both continuations of series I enjoy. But I may take a little break first, since I have been reading instead of doing ANYTHING, like, you know, basic housework, laundry, yardwork, etc.

I've had extra-painful days this weekend. There's been high winds for two days, which means the air pressure is changing rapidly, and that's a bad thing for my arthritis.

But, the grass keeps growing. So I managed to get out these this afternoon, and mow. WOW did it hurt- the worse knee felt weak, like I couldn't be sure it wasn't going to just give out. The bad knee was the same as usual, but since it's better at the bending but not at the holding strong, it was a struggle. So the fact that there is one small part of the front yard that did not get mowed before the mower ran out of gas is really good. I was wanting to give up way before the mower did.

The other thing I did this weekend was read. The book is The Highest Frontier, by Joan Slonczewski. It's a science fiction/college coming-of-age novel, and that means there's no real plot, per se, but the worldbuilding is amazing. However, I'm still having trouble getting used to certain aspects of it. You see, the story involves a college in an orbiting habitat, that was put up by the state of Ohio. There's the Ohio River, and the Scioto, and the little homesteader town that's on the other side of the habitat from the college is called Mt. Gilead.

Which is the county seat of Morrow County, the next one north of mine.

The author blurb on the back flyleaf indicates that she lives in Gambier, and is the head of the biology department at Kenyon College there. So, she lives about 30 miles from Mt. Gilead (where I'm about 22 miles from the place). I'm sure people who live where there are many novels set don't even twitch when they see things like this, but I am really not used to it.

Oh, there are other issues I have with it, but it's been interesting enough to keep me going, just to see what happens next. So. Enthusiastic endorsement? No. But, if you enjoy science fiction that is well-thought-out, give it a try.