Jacob Tender

Not my favorite of Sedaris’ work, but a strong start.

The Grass Harp is a lovely tale, as are most of the short stories in this collection. Capote has an approaches his simple characters with a degree of tenderness I find very comforting.

I didn’t know he wrote anything like Master Misery. The supernatural element reads like Shirley Jackson or something like a Ted Chiang story. Good stuff.

Shut a Final Door observes deeply the effects of a narcissist in such a refreshing way. Teaching Irving to hate and killing his innocence through selfishness was described so honestly. Capote was so goddamn talented.

The Headless Hawk is a low-point for me. When people talk (or write) about dreams, I completely zone out.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this set of stories. Eager to revisit him in long form later this year with In Cold Blood.

This is my breakfast club.

An auspicious start to a series from Joe Abercrombie, whose characters I so deeply appreciated in The Devils last year. Read in this audiobook by the incomparable Steven Pacey, The Blade Itself also boasts strong characters. Many of which have names with good mouthfeel.

Abercrombie is my kind of fantasy writer. I’ve heard great things about the First Law world and, if the rumors are true, it should only get more compelling with each series of books.

The night before Frieda died, Chick spoon-fed her crushed ice. She kept taking away the spoon from him to feed herself and Chick thought everything was going to turn out fine.

I inhaled this in just two sittings. Goldstein has a unique voice that, when it hones in on something real and recognizable, cuts you to the core.

The format is strange at first, but becomes second nature after a few “chapters.” It’s brilliant in its specificity and sits somewhere between David Sedaris and Bob Mortimer.

I haven’t read this since I was a kid. Having some yardwork to do this afternoon, I threw on the audiobook read by Jeff Daniels.

It’s a perfect little thing, this book. Imaginative, but never escaping what seems plausible in the behavior and motivations of working dogs. It says so much over so few pages about humanity and the connection of all living things to nature.

I do wonder if this is a common read amongst grade-schoolers. Violence and death weren’t taboo where I came up but so much has changed.

After a solid run of competency, I like that Carl and Donut experience difficulty in this one. But I found it difficult too. Like I did during The Iron Tangle floor, I found myself zoning out during every race on this one. Despite the large and exciting climax, I found this to be one of the weakest books in the series yet.

I like the Dungeon Crawler World and its characters, but fatigue is setting in. One more book could probably do it but apparently Dinniman has plans for three (book 9, pts. I & II and book 10). Here's hoping the hole blown open at the end of this chapter allows some new life to blow in.

Really a remarkable bit of writing—if only for the specificity of things a 10-year old boy might do or notice or imagine. It's evocative in a way I wasn't expecting.

Regarding the choice to use second person to tell it, Tower tells <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-exchange-wells-tower">The New Yorker</a>:

First, I tried to write in this eleven-year-old kid’s voice, and it got a little nauseating and cutesy. Then I tried to write it in the third person, and there was an absence of sympathy in that approach. I arrived at the second person because that was the most guileless approach; I could get to the emotional marrow of the kid’s experience and outwit my own hand in fiction.

Family, man.

So ends my 3 month speedrun of DCC. All set for book 8.

"I could not tell my father that boys made me anxious. And so I invented individual reasons to dislike them. The hope was that I’d come off as discerning rather than frightened."

God, when David Sedaris hits. He hits. Very excited to see him read some of his work later this week.

Again suffers from a “huh, what’s happening now?” problem that’s reoccurred in this series. I’m still enjoying the ride, but the pace can be a little frustrating at times as the books lengthen.

Quick memoir, but I took a lot of detours on Wikipedia. Humble man, Bob.

Now that’s what I’m talking about! Easily the best yet. Great pacing, higher stakes.

The best yet in the adventures of Carl and Donut (after the beginning, at least). The setting felt more established. Stakes were raised. I’m starting to notice the emotional core others have been pitching for some time.

After two middling books, I hope the subsequent books of increasing length give the story to room it needs to breathe.

I need more Prepotente!

Shirley Jackson in her briefest work is hit and miss for me. There are some standouts in the collection, most of them taking place in New York City. The Lottery, though, is far and away the greatest of them all and they type of writing I aspire to in the flash fiction I hold close to my chest.

"Just pretend like you half understand"

As invested as I am in the story now, I can't pretend that this was a particularly good book. Not that it will stop me from continuing. I just hope this is a series low.

I had no idea what was going on for most of this one. The Tangle is too complicated. At least for an audiobook. I found myself frequently zoning out as it explained lines and stations our characters would never visit. Wholly inscrutable plot setting.

The catch phrases are getting annoying. You can't punctuate every dramatic episode with the same mantra. The heavy-handedness cheapens the action.

Audiobook specific: I wouldn't begrudge Soundbooth Studios re-recording the train dwarf. I had an immediate reaction to the dreadfully amateurish reading. Then read more about the voice "actor."

The positive news is Donut has fully evolved into an early 2010s lasercat meme and some secondary characters were developed to a point where caring about them is possible.

Beautiful illustrations and story. Not sure what age bracket is meant to be the audience. The language reads older than the cadence implies.

Order 9066 is one of many shameful acts conducted by the US government on minority groups. The only thing more sad is that we never seem to learn.

Not as strong as the start, but I hear this is a low point in the series for a lot of readers. Very fun. Took no time at all to listen to. Will I catch up in time for book 8? I think I might.

I wasn’t really sure what LitRPG meant before starting. In my head it was more “choose your own adventure” than literary “let’s play.” Now I understand. It’s a satisfying format.

I wondered how Dinniman was able to churn out so many big books so fast, but now I understand that too. They sort of write themselves. By that I mean the format guides the narrative in a lot of ways. The RPG of it all also takes up a fair amount of page-space. It's brilliant, really.

Looking forward to continuing on with Jeff Hays’ audiobooks and lining my shelves with colorful hardback spines for future rereads.

The Terror, a dense and fascinating book embellishing the mystery of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition in the arctic. I’d seen the show and had a hankering to rewatch it, but wanted to read the book first. I’ve been listening to John Lee’s reading for the last month or so.

It takes its time. Sporadically, expertly ratcheting the tension. The final 200 pages are a haunting and beautiful thing.

We also rewatched the show. It's great TV, but falls short of the grandiosity of Simmons' book

A lovely, short little winter read. Nicely coupled this evening with the dulcet tones of Duncan Troast & Charlie Martin’s music for 2 pianos.

Victoria Sawdon’s illustrations are beautiful and interwoven with the text. Clarke includes an afterwards which amounts to a love letter to Kate Bush. I’m alright with that.

"I have a new home, but it does not count. Home is where my friend is and there I never go."

I'm very fond of this story, its writing, and Truman Capote's personal narration in this 1959 recording which was used in the 1966 TV play depicting the story.

Some really beautiful art that occasionally crosses into “too much” activity, leading me to wonder what’s actually happening.

“Being stupid isn’t permanent.”

I’m late to the party, but I’m glad I came because Project Hail Mary is a good time.

There’s been a steady string of real sciencey sci-fi stories about Astronaut scientists in the last 15 years. Andy Weir publishes The Martian. Alfonso Cuarón makes Gravity. The brothers Nolan write and release Interstellar. Andy Weir publishes Project Hail Mary. Martin MacInnes published In Ascension. It’s a good time to be a geek for space.

I’m curious about how they’ll adapt this for the screen. I imagine the first third of the book will be heavily abridged. The real meat and potato from a tube kicks in later with a bit of tedium around the 90% mark.

The narrator of the audiobook sounds like the narrator of A Christmas Story and I couldn’t shake that for most of the book. He did a great job with the script though.

Good book!