Ended up reading 8 books this month. I feel pretty happy about that, I think.

Bossypants – Tina Fey
Stories I only Tell My Friends – Rob Lowe
Listened to both of these on audiobook. Selfishly I wanted more SNL stories from Tina Fey and more West Wing stories from Rob Lowe. They're both solid autobiographies, but I think I enjoyed Stories I only Tell My Friends the most.

Soulless – Gail Carriger
Read this after the Writing Excuses podcast recommended it. It's a paranormal romance novel set in Victorian England.  I've been looking for a decent novel with all the standard supernatural stuff like vampires, werewolves and ghosts and this seemed like it might be it. It's not a bad book, but I'm not really the target audience for it. It probably helped that I had read three other books set in Victorian England this year (Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice and The French Lieutenant's Woman) and was able to spot where Carrigan plays around with certain conventions. It's the first book in a five book series and I'm in no rush to read the rest of them. Probably will someday though; I liked some of the characters too much to abandon it completely.

Cujo – Stephen King
I am slowly working my way through King's entire bibliography for the first time and whenever I start a new book that I've at least heard of before I'm curious how different it's going to end up being from the image I have in my head. Cujo is one of those books that I always knew of as one of the more well-known King books, which might be because of the movie adaptation (which I haven't seen). I somehow had it in my head that it was a book about a dog possessed by some demonic evil force that goes on a rampage and kills lots and lots of people. Turns out that's not quite what the book is , it's not necessarily supernatural in nature at all, which was surprising. I don't really have much to say about the book. I liked it more than I thought I would, but it's not going to end up on my list of favorite King books.

The Running Man – Stephen King
If you want to read a book about King's take on a dystopian future game show, I'd recommend The Long Road over this one, but it's a quick and easy read that at least didn't leave me feeling like I'd wasted my time.

Speaking of dystopian future game shows...

The Hunger Games Trilogy – Suzanne Collins
Being home at my parents place for Christmas, I decided to look through my sister's books for something to read. I was originally planning to read Twilight so that I could finally know for myself if they're as bad as everyone says they are, but didn't feel like ruining my holidays after all so I decided to read these instead. The discovery that it was written in first person present initially worried me, but Collins won me over on that front fairly quickly. The books are really easy to read and most of the chapters end on enough of a cliffhanger that you get that "just one more chapter" feeling in your gut. I just finished the third one yesterday so I think I'm going to need a bit more distance before I know if they're actually good or not. I know I liked them a lot as I read them and felt very invested in enough of the characters (especially Katniss) that I wanted to read on and make sure I got some closure, but I also had enough small problems with the plot that I think I'm actually going to reread them in a couple of months and see if they hold up. I'll probably post some more substantial thoughts on it at that time. Maybe.

Next I'll be reading The Revolution was Televised (Alan Sepinwall) and The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger(Stephen King). Very excited about that last one.

Last edited by Hansen (2012-12-31 04:01:19)

I'm definitely planning on getting the original version. I almost bought the revised/expanded edition, but I figured I'd do the opposite of what I did with The Stand and go with the novel as originally published. I did love the expanded edition of The stand though and don't think I would have enjoyed the shorter version of that quite as much.

But not reading all of them is never gonna happen, since that would ruin the whole 'read every King book ever in order' thing. I'm just fascinated by seeing how an author evolves over time and how each book is infuenced by when it's written. I'm already spoiled on at least one of the really dumb things that happens late in the series though and it doesn't sound great. That's part of the fun though; gotta take the bad with good.

I own the Signet mass market paperback of Gunslinger from the late 90s/early 2000s; not sure which one that is. I distinctly recall not liking it as much as the others of the first four Dark Tower novels. Wizard and Glass is best, IMHO.

I'm surprised you prefer the expanded The Stand. I read the "uncut" edition first and was let down; I read the original several months later and loved it to death; after Misery and Christine, it's my favorite of his novels. The original just feels so much more like the American Lord of the Rings he was going for, and is so much tighter and more focued from an editing standpoint. Also, the absolutely horrible deus ex machina at the end actually felt...fitting in the original somehow. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some long-winded, rambling King (Under the Dome was the first book by him I read, if that's any indication), but in this instance the publishers were right.

Last edited by Abbie (2012-12-31 05:30:58)

The food descriptions in the A Song of Ice and Fire books border on pornographic at times. Can't say the Balrog burger did not pop up in my mind few times reading the last book in the series. Stay away from the honeyed locusts though if you do not have the constitution of Strong Belwas.

It's surprisingly well sourced, and not just with the GRRM books, but in finding 1 to 1 analogs in actual medieval cookbooks.  it breaks down recipe's be region, then meal (Breakfast on the Wall, for instance), and they are mostly pretty easy and straight forward.  Each recipe starts with a quote of text from the book where they are mentioned (And yes, Honeyed Locusts ARE on the menu), as well as breaking down the types of cuisine from region to region (The Riverlands obviously have a lot of fish, the Reach is a lot of grains and pastries, Dorne is more mediteranean, etc).  Another cool feature is that for select recipe's, they will feature the original medieval version, and then show a modern interpretation.  Medieval Applecakes have a very rustic presentation to them, whereas the modern Applecake recipe is a bit more refined and benefits from using a stand mixer.

Some early standout recipe's that I cannot wait to try are the Sweet Pumpkin Soup, Pigeon Pie, Iced Blueberries in Sweet Cream, and Dornish Snake with Fiery Sauce.

Right now I'm reading 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. It's sort of dry, but it's also thoroughly explaining how the Columbian Exchange changed the world. Literally and figuratively. Like, did you know there were no earthworms in north america pre-1500? Me neither. And that introduction has huge implications. Stuff like that.

Listened to Steve Martin's Born Standing Up thanks to the recommendations ep, really enjoyed it. It's a short book, I listened to the whole thing during a day's work.

Started listening to Patton Oswalt's Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, and I officially do not find Patton Oswalt funny. I mean I've known this for a while, but I decided to give him one last chance with this book. After taking me all day to get through the first hour of a 3.5 hour recording, I gave up.

Moving on now to Craig Ferguson's American on Purpose.

Wrapping up Ringworld, just started Old Man's War, and working my way through The Emperor of All Maladies.

I got Harry Potter Page To Screen last year, and it is intense. The amount of research that went into that book is absurd.

I'm doing them in order. So just Looking For Alaska so far.

I'm enjoying Katherines so far (I'm about halfway through), but I can see where you're coming from, it doesn't quite feel on the same level as Alaska.

And Doc, I know eh? That thing is a beast and a half.

Hmm, to be honest I thought Katherines was better than Alaska. But then again I really didn't like Alaska too much. Having just read Fault in our Stars, I think the level of quality of John Greene books I've read goes something like this

Fault in our Stars >>>> Katherines > Looking for Alaska > Papertowns

Over the winter break I've also read slaughterhouse five which was good but I still think cat's cradle is better. I tried reading catcher in the rye but I hated the main character too much to continue (got like 60 pages in or something). I read the Bartimaeus trilogy which was awesome. I'm about 23% through Cloud Atlas, which has been harder to read through than I initially thought it would be. And I'm also like 30 pages in on the Golden Compass.

Finished two books today.

Gunslinger (Stephen King)
Pretty good. Amazing storytelling. Hard to see this made into a TV series though. I will be reading on but I need to cleanse the palate before I venture back into The Dark Tower series.

Born Standing Up (Steve Martin)
Pretty quick read. Totally explains why he left stand-up. Nowhere to go for him but down. Better to translate his success into movies than suffer the fate of once famous but now just footnote stand-up's (look at Andrew Dice Clay). I was a Steve Martin fan before, still am.