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Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 18th, '19, 21:34
by bombus
jacobgrey wrote:Haha, there have been a fair few books over the years that enticed me into giving up sleep to finish them XD

for sure! I think I like reading more than I like sleeping (or maybe it is just that I am better at reading than sleeping)

I will finish book 32 of the year today, less than 50 pages to go- the hard part is deciding which book to read next

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 18th, '19, 23:26
by jacobgrey
Haha yes! Also in a way, reading is like dreaming. Going somewhere else for a while, with people you might not know or that might not even be real :D

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 20th, '19, 14:42
by AliceON
sooooo I finished the first real, 500+ -page-long book for the year. finally

not that less voluminous books aren't real, but counting Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and two issues of a comic somehow felt like cheating. though the Wilde's play is at least a finished story. something I can't say about the book I just read. the author planned a trilogy but it ends up being 5 books and 2 of them are split into 3 and 9 volumes, between 480 and 750 pages each.

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 20th, '19, 21:41
by Akili Li
wulfilalice wrote:sooooo I finished the first real, 500+ -page-long book for the year. finally

not that less voluminous books aren't real, but counting Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and two issues of a comic somehow felt like cheating. though the Wilde's play is at least a finished story. something I can't say about the book I just read. the author planned a trilogy but it ends up being 5 books and 2 of them are split into 3 and 9 volumes, between 480 and 750 pages each.
Yikes! That's quite an expansion on the original plan! Which book (series) was it? And what did you think of it?

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 21st, '19, 13:30
by AliceON
a russian-language fantasy series set in a made-up country resembling france of a time period that let me assume it's a musketeers' fanfiction at first.

yea it's quite an expansion and you can really feel that the author thinks she's got all the time in the world. there are scenes that are just dropped there and she never comes back to them. likely in the next books, but not in the one they're introduced. there are also a lot of endnotes explaining geography, history, religion, politics, etc, but most of that could have been explained in the text. especially since it's a 3rd person and what a better point of view, to add explanations? that was annoying. not the endnotes in general, but when it's 6 per page and some of them are just 2 words or 1 sentence.

that's technical, though. there were some red flags in the content. for instance, she made up an ethnical minority within that country that has enough money to influence its politics (and even pays the neighboring country to start a war). they're a rather closed community and I just can't help comparing, you know. a rich and powerful minority with its own non-converting religion. and their only woman who is given a point of view falls in love with an outsider and is so happy that because she's part of a ritual she can't be married off to anyone. I'm just so not sure about that. I mean, members of a minority don't marry each other only because an authoritarian father told them so. it's mostly because they have shared context, shared background, culture, texts, etc. outsiders aren't even that attractive when you think of how much harder a relationship without all that is. if she was one of the characters belonging to that group, that'd be ok. but she's the only girl with a voice and at all looks so fetish-y.

women are generally given the role of a sexual object. not surprising, considering it's a russian author, but again, annoying, if you have experience with literature that's more respectful. granted, most of the world and story is seen through male eyes but even when the perspective is given to women, they see themselves in the same way, either in respect to sex or marriage. I do bear in mind what "time" is being portrayed but, for example that girl from the minority is presented as a rebel of sorts because she sneaks to read the holy texts that are forbidden to women. even if most of her brain is devoted to love because she's young, she could have at least been reflecting on what she read? on the philosophy of her culture and religion? who even reads forbidden holy text without thinking at least something about them? come on. any woman in any time period could have a problem that wasn't related to being a wife, a wife-to-be, or a prostitute. somehow the decision was to just leave them that.

I hope it gets better in the next books because the author is clearly counting on some reader loyalty and maybe allowing herself more than she would with a standalone. but I'm rather skeptical. what I liked about the book is that it was interesting while you were reading it and that finishing it put me in a better mood for reading more complicated books

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 25th, '19, 11:11
by LittleJulez
Holy moly, Alice, if I were you I would drop this series :mcheh: Does not sound too catchy for me. But holding my thumbs for you that it'll get better!

jacob, I feel ya! I always think that I can read before falling asleep, but usually I am already too tired for that.

I couldn't resist and started reading Percy Jackson 4. It's a really good one so far. I had my doubts about the series when I was reading the 2nd one, but this one is really catchy. ^.^

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 26th, '19, 20:04
by Sanssouci
The library website is still down. It's been at least two weeks. You can't go on their website to see what you have out, so you can't renew anything or put anything on hold. You can return things at the library, but the whole system is down, so they can't actually return it. So they're just piling up all the returns waiting for the system to come back up. And it's every library in the county. One library is saying they don't have any more room for returns, so they're asking people to not return anything until it comes back up.

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 26th, '19, 20:55
by Akili Li
How frustrating!
Card catalog versions might not have gone down, but they did have their own issues, though, so I can't even wish for those back again. (I LIKE being able to check availability from home instead of going in and checking at the library)


I've gotten distracted from sorting again. This time by a book on flower language.
The language choices are... kind of limited. I realized part-way through it that my hazy imaginings were a little unrealistic, but it's still kind of fun.

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 26th, '19, 23:10
by jacobgrey
I'm getting through this book slowly. I thought I would read more by this author but by now I've decided definitely not to. Book one was more exciting, book two doesn't hold my attention enough.

Re: The 2019 Reading Challenge

Posted: Jul 27th, '19, 02:36
by Sanssouci
I finished The Toll-Gate today. I didn't love it, but I did like it. So now I might give Georgette Heyer another chance someday.

I had my 2019 reading goal set to 10, but I already hit that, so I just raised it to 18.