* Hefner became one of my favorite bands in college, and when they broke up, the lead singer released a solo EP about former porn star Chrissy Moran. Darren Hayman writes about that experience here.
92) Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Super Showman – G. Michael Green
93-98) Wonder Woman: Land of the Dead/Mission’s End/Who is Wonder Woman/Love and Murder/Amazons Attack/The Circle – Greg Rucka
99) The Other Side of the Island – Allegra Goodman
100-101) Ultimate Iron Man: Volume 1/Volume 2 – Orson Scott Card
102) Empire – Orson Scott Card
103) The Accidental Billionaires – Ben Mezrich
104) Infinite Crisis – Geoff Johns
105) Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? – Alan Moore
106) Swim the Fly – Don Calame
107) The Fenway Foul-Up – David Kelly: I received this cute early reader mystery about two kids who solve the mystery of the star Red Sox player’s stolen bat as an ARC. Excellent for what it is, not much else to say.
108) Best of the Best – Tim Green: A rough, but passable, kids baseball book. Got an ARC of this one, found the characters to be almost completely unlikeable across the board, and found a lot of the situations that the kids encountered to be a bit ham-fisted and, worse, lacking in any sort of consequences. I think the most unfortunate part is that so many kids sports books are the only way to shoehorn these sort of “life experience” stories into books boys will read. Because boys get the shaft so often when it comes to kids and literature, it means they end up with this sort of high interest, limited quality product that will be popular for a number of reasons, but lacking in the type of things that will keep them reading in the long term. And it’s not to say Tim Green is a problem, because his previous books have been good – this one just kind of got to me.
109) The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman
110) Never Let Me Go – Kazao Ishiguro
111) Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins
112) Talking to Girls About Duran Duran – Rob Sheffield
113) Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour – Bryan Lee O’Malley
This places me nearly a month ahead of my goal of 150 books in 2010.
I think I’m leaning toward the 3.5 side more than the 4, but still.
I don’t want to say much because I don’t want to spoil anything for those still trying to get through it. I guess all I can say is that I feel like this series deserved a better ending than it got, and that sometimes a story should really just be a story.
With that said, the first half of this book in particular just races along at a great, breakneck pace. Obviously it couldn’t keep that up through the whole narrative, but the book itself benefited from making sure we were invested early and not letting up right from the start. Not a lot of writers will do that, and it was a good change of pace.
Is the series great? Yeah, I think so. I just expected more from the final volume, I guess.
When my one reaction to finishing a trade of Wonder Woman is "Why would they ruin her legacy like this?" I think I’ve figured out that there’s a problem. That this book doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the story and also ends up being a ham-fisted anti-war allegory doesn’t help. To think that the Rucka run was so good, too…
If I could pick 4 words to describe this? Get On With It.
I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and I appreciate a solid attempt at world building. This book was essentially 230 pages of world building to come up to an attempt to tie things together without actually taking care of the rest of the story. It’s frustrating because the narrator is all over the place (probably the point) and the story just a lot of buildup before it gets to the point. It’s not poorly written, I just don’t read books to become frustrated by them.
I picked this up mostly because the movie preview looked interesting and the reviews were good. The movie looks less interesting now, and I’m sure I can think of a number of books which are more thought-provoking about this topic than this book was. Too bad.
Honestly leaning toward 3.5 on this one, but purposefully rounding up. I struggle with short story collections, especially when they do somewhat fit a general larger narrative. The invariable result for me is that the stories you like end up being too short, the stories you dislike feel too long, and the resolutions are never fulfilling.
This is a book that follows members of a foreign periodical in Rome. Each chapter is a self-contained story, some characters more interesting than others. It’s a decent way of doing it, but it usually means that you spend a lot of time wondering what happened with X and Y, but too stuck with a different cast of characters. With the whole story building to an eventual end, it means that you really get jolted into an ending that doesn’t feel right, but still has great pieces that put it all together.
I dunno. I knew this was short-story-esque going in, and short story collections nearly always leave me cold, so I don’t know why I thought this would be much different. But it was different enough, and that’s worth something, I guess.
The views and opinions expressed at this blog and associated blogs are the views and opinions of the author, and not necessarily the views of any associated employer, campaign, or organization.
Uncategorized | Jeff | 
September 3, 2010 7:45 am | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe
