Kris Awesome

I finished reading Through the Looking Glass earlier. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but it was still fun. The edition I read was The Annotated Alice (with both books in one volume, and lots of notes), and I’d skipped the annotations while reading through. So I spent the rest of my lunch break reading through those, and I find them fascinating for the most part.

I finished the fifty bajillionth read of Ender’s Game a couple of days ago. It amused me because I’d read the First Meetings collection over my winter vacation, and every so often I’d think about how the Ender’s Game novel compared to the original novella, or how the novel seemed to contradict a couple of the short stories. I’m going through something similiar with Speaker for the Dead, as I’ve just been re-introduced to Ender in that book (I told you I wasn’t that far into it when I put it on hold…) and if I recall correctly, the “Investment Counselor” story disagrees with that introduction. Interesting…

1919 is going pretty slowly. I do like it, but it’s like Gulliver’s Travels – I have to be in the mood for it. I just haven’t been in that mood for the past couple of days.

In general site news, I added sorting abilities to the list, author, and title pages (I’ve always had them on the status page); all you have to do is click on the headers to re-sort those lists. I don’t have a means of indicating what order and column you’re sorting by, not yet, but I’ll probably whip up something soon.

I’ve also updated the code so that re-reads are marked as such on the In Progress page. But, I don’t really feel like tracking each and every single time a book’s been re-read (that would require me to rework the tables in the database, and I’ve run out of the energy for that task). So once a book has been completely re-read, it is listed only under its most recent date of completion. For example, Ender’s Game no longer appears under the “pre-Bookworm’s Quest” page; it now shows up on the list of January 2006 books.

I forgot to mark one book as part of the Norwegian Book Club’s list, so I had to go back and fix that, and then I realized that Gargantua and Pantagruel is actually the collective title of five books, so I had to go back and muck around with the database even further. So it turns out that technically, I have 543 books to read. Oh well. Let’s get on to the thoughts on the books and not the site, shall we?

Anything I read (or re-read) before late December 2005 is marked only by the year, and in many cases, that date is just an estimate. Anything later than that is marked with the exact day I completed it, and I’m considering those to be the first books for the quest.

Since I promised them in my previous entry, here are some quick thoughts regarding those inaugural novels:

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe: It looks like it should be a quick read, but if you want a book that you can finish reading and be completely done with, you’re probably looking in the wrong place. Personally, I found it to be pretty thought-provoking, and mused about the themes for some time after completing the book. The apparently simple story of a flawed, proud main character and of colonialism in Nigeria left me with some mixed feelings, but not in a bad way; the ambiguity I see in the text makes me want to go back to it, so that I can sort everything out.

The 42nd Parallel, John Dos Passos: As I mentioned in my previous entry, this book doesn’t have a real ending, and is really the first part of one long novel. See that entry for my thoughts regarding the U.S.A. story.

An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro: Another fairly quick novel, I enjoyed this one because I felt I got to really know the character. There’s something so wonderfully real about the main character’s narration – for example, he can digress by sharing his memories, but in a way that’s unforced, and in fact, it reminds me of the way friends and I tend to go off into seemingly-unrelated-but-actually-very-pertinent tangents. (Whew, lot of hyphens there…)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland now belongs on this list, though I talked about it in my previous entry and don’t really have anything to add. Fun little read! I’ll be starting Through the Looking Glass shortly.

I decided to put Gulliver’s Travels aside for now, because I’m just not in the mood for it, and pushing through it in that circumstance would give me a skewed opinion of the book. So, I randomly checked a few books out from the library, and I’m not entirely sure which one to start with. I’m going to hold off on starting something new until I finish at least Ender’s Game; I don’t think I should have too many books in progress at any given time.

I suck at writing reviews, so you will not find them on this blog. What you will find, however, are book-related thoughts.

To kick off this blog, I’ll share my thoughts on the books I’m currently reading.

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card: I’ve lost track of just how many times I’ve read this; it’s one of my favorites. I’d actually just re-read it a few months ago, but a couple of chapters into Speaker for the Dead, I decided I needed a more recent refresher. Hey, any excuse to re-read a favorite, right? Ender’s not the nicest kid in the world, but I can still sympathize with him (hey, I was a so-called “smart kid,” and I wasn’t the nicest one around either), and I really enjoy the story.

Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card: (On hold until I finish re-reading Ender’s Game.) I tried to read this in high school, but I couldn’t get through it. I don’t even remember why I couldn’t get past the first few pages, but I’m glad I tried again. So far. I’m intrigued by the social landscape of Lusitania. I have to try to shut my “but Card sucks at writing sequels!” inner voice up when I pick this up again, though. (What? I’ve tried reading through three different series of his, and I’ve hated the later books in all of them. I mean, I threw the fifth Alvin Maker book against the wall a few times before I gave up and chucked the damn thing out through a second-story window.)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll: Why, no, I’ve never read this before, why do you ask? I keep trying not to see the film versions in my head while I read this, which makes for slower-than-usual reading. Even so, it’s been fun, and I’m enjoying the wordplay even more than the curious adventure.

1919, John Dos Passos: The U.S.A. trilogy isn’t really so much a trilogy as it is one huge novel in three volumes, if The 42nd Parallel and what I’ve read of 1919 is any indication. I can’t really talk about the latter without talking about the former, since The 42nd Parallel doesn’t have a real ending and 1919 basically picks up from where the previous book left off. So far, it’s an interesting look at the social landscape of early 20th century America. (Society again. Can you tell I used to be a sociology major?) And it reminds me that I really need to brush up on my American history, but in a good way.

Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift: I haven’t gotten very far in this yet. I’m not sure whether I’ve been in entirely the wrong mood each time I’ve picked up (which is possible) or whether the book really is as tedious and dull as I seem to think it is (also possible). I might just return it, give it a few weeks, and then check it out from the library again.

Before this site was finished but after I created my database, I completed a couple of books. I’ll post my thoughts on those soon, but for now, I’ll leave you with the above.