Book Review: Across the Green Grass Fields

It has been a couple of months, since I read the book, but I’m grateful that it has taken me this long to write the review of it, as it has given me time to reflect on the book. After finishing the book, my immediate first impression was that there was a really interesting adventure that could have happened, but somehow hadn’t. It seemed somehow lacking or perhaps boring compared to the other books. It made me wonder, considering Seanan McGuire has also written Middlegame which is one of the most mindbendingly complex stories I have ever read, I figure there was more to the story than my first impression, so I stewed over it for a while, and now I think the adventure that didn’t happen serves to highlight one of the main points of the story (summary and some spoilers below).

Book Bingo Reviews from Hunter

I won, again, and thus the standing is now 2-2. So, I guess, next year will be the tie breaker. But this year, it was close, very close. And frankly, I think the only reason that I managed to win was, because I spent most of a weekend and a Monday afternoon after work reading and only stopping for dinner and a shower. Sunny’s very dramatic gifs and bitmojis (what even is the plural form of bitmoji?) over Snapchat, when I announced my win, was both hilarious and making me feel just a teeny bit bad, but not really, since we are now even. 

But now to discuss the books I read, in the order that I started them:

A Work Older Than 500 Years: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

The book was written in the late 1300s and is a collection of 24 separate stories told by the various members of a party of pilgrims heading to Kent (in England). The group met at an inn and decided to travel together, and along the way each member of the party shares a story. 

Now, despite the stories being over 500 years old, I did enjoy most of them. Although, if you intend to read or listen to the book, I would advise you to seriously keep in mind, when the stories where written. Because from a modern 21^st century perspective more than a few parts of the stories can be seen as derogative towards pretty much anyone, who is not white, male, Christian, straight, and at least middle class. In fact, one of the original stories had been removed from the edition that I read, due to extensive use of racist language. All that being said, the book does give you a pretty good look into the mind of the people of 14^th century England, and it also marks the beginning of the modern English language. 

So, yes, I would recommend the book, but go in to it with an open mind, and remember that it was written 500+ years ago, and luckily times have changed. 

A Classical Science Fiction Book: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

Book Bingo Reviews 2021: I Guess There is Always Next Year

I didn’t win, so next year will be the tie breaker. I’m not exactly surprised, because I cannot finish a book without starting three others. I guess I’m just not a one book person. Anyway, the reviews are below.

A Classical Science Fiction Novel

En verdensomsejling under havet [eng: Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea] by Jules Verne is the story of how professor Ignores-all-the-red-flags-for-SCIENCE! Aronnax together with his two companions, his assistant Must-categorise-everything Conseil and the Canadian Only-sane-man-here-why-don’t-anyone-listen-to-him? Ned Land are kidnapped (or saved from drowning, it’s debatable) by Captain All-the-red-flags Nemo. I loved it. It’s been a couple of years, since I’ve last read Jules Verne, so I knew I’d probably like it if it was like the other books, I had read. Jules Verne is a hard science fiction writer, so there tends to be lot of science stuff and calculation and in this case marine biology in his books. If that’s not your thing, you should probably read an abridged version. I’ll admit, I got a little tired of Conseil categorizing everything all the time, and there was many description of the food they ate, so I got hungry every time I was reading. However, I did really appreciate the lifelike descriptions of the Nautilus and the sea. Originally, I planned on reading Asimov for this category, but unfortunately there were no digitally available copies of his books at the library. Once I had finished the book, I discovered that there is a sequel, where the mysterious past of captain Nemo is revealed, I briefly considered reading it, but decided that I like my Captain Nemo as a mysterious crazy person. I would definitely recommend Jules Verne, if you want to read some classic science fiction, or an abrigded version if you want to skip some of the longwinded science.

A Book from NPR’s Book Concierge 2020

Best Reviewed Cold: The Count of Monte Christo

I’ve watched the movie some years ago (one of them), but the book is just so much better. There will be some spoilers in this review, not for Edmond Dantès epic revenge, but I’ll be talking about the background and the characters and such, so spoilers for around the first fourth of the novel, and in the last paragraph there will be some spoilers in general for both the movie and book, but is it really spoilers if the book has been out for more than a century.

First of all, I really liked the way the novel was written, The Count of Monte Christo has several POV characters, and due to this the reader starts of knowing more about the plot against him than Dantès himself, as we follow the conspirators’ POV. So, we get the “joy” of experiencing Dantès slowly coming to the realization of what actually happened to him. In fact, Dantès isn’t really the POV for that much of the novel considering the story is about him and his revenge (I’d say he’s the POV character for maybe 25% of the novel), mostly the story is told from the POV of the other characters. Thus, when he begins his revenge plan, we know almost nothing about what the plans entail and can only follow along as the plan unfolds. There were moments where I thought for sure that he was going to get discovered, but he was always ten steps ahead.

The Carl Hamilton Saga – Hunter’s Latest Audiobook project.

First of all, sorry for being MIA for a while, but life, work, and the continuation of the Covid-19 lockdown happened. So, a couple of months ago, I started to re-read the Carl Hamilton novels by Swedish author Jan Guillou. I started reading them when I was around 11/12 (I think – it’s been a while) and frankly, I might have been a bit too young to read them, but I turned out all right. 

The first book in the Carl Hamilton Saga

Before starting this re-read, I had read most of the novels once, a few of them twice, but never in order of publication. And thus a new reading/audio book project was born. The posts for this read through will be divided into three parts. This post, part one, will be my general thoughts and some background information about the novels. Parts two and three will be my thoughts on the individual books. Fair warning, as I’m only 2/3 of the way through all the books, part three might not be for a while, but I hope you’ll hang in there. Also, whether I’ll stick with only three parts is still subject to change. 

Book Review: The Near Witch

The Near Witch is the debut novel of V E Schwab. I read a rerelease, it included the short story “The Ash-Born Boy”, which takes place in the same universe. It was an excellent novel, so I’ll definitely pick up more of Schwab’s books.

Top Five Favourite Neil Gaiman Short Stories

Here are my top five favourite short stories by Neil Gaiman. It tends to change depending on my mood, but these are my current top five (I have included the collections, where you can find the stories, if you want to read them, and I highly recommend you do). There are no spoilers, though I will be mentioning, what the stories are about and what I like about them, so don’t read this if you prefer to go in blind.

Image by Kenneth Rodriguez – A Calendar of Tales

5. We start off with “A Calendar of Tales”, which is a short story comprised of twelve short tales, that Mr. Gaiman (@neilhimself) wrote from the following twitter answers to his questions:

Third Time’s the Charm: Book Bingo Reviews 2020

I finally won! And it only took three tries. Overall, I attribute my victory to Denmark being on corona lockdown and me taking long walks, because my fitness centre was closed, so quite a few of the books ended up being audiobooks that entertained me on my walks. 

Book Bingo Reviews: Didn’t Win This Time :(

Alas, no hat trick for me. But Hunter was  on fire this time, she has been done for months at this point. Whereas I started each book with enthusiasm and then got distracted by other shinier books, before I was halfway through. Also, there were a couple of the bingo books I didn’t like at all, but were too stubborn to dnf like I usually would. Basically, I have a thousand excuses, and I’m totally going to win next year. Here are my Book Bingo reviews for 2020 in reading order.

A Book With a One Word Title
Originally, Middlegame by Seanan McGuire was the book I’d chosen for the time travel category,

Book Review: Come Tumbling Down

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire was a nice surprise, since I thought Down Among the Sticks and Bones would be the last, we would hear of the Wolcott twins. Come Tumbling Down takes place after the events of Beneath the Sugar Sky and is (as far as I know) the end to the story of the Wolcott twins, but then again, I didn’t see this book coming, so who I am I to say that it’s the end.

(review and spoilers below)