BrokenTunes's 2021 Thread

Well, hello there,
Thanks for checking out my update thread. Please feel free to say hi and comment.

This thread is mostly about books. I love them. However, I’ll also add some non-book-related updates over time because despite appearances I do have other interests, like drinking tea, travel, tennis, and general adventuring. So, if there is something that makes me smile, marvel, or think, I’ll probably write about it.
I'll use WP for reviews and post in the first place and will post a link to the WP post here.

However, I'll probably also cross-post reviews on LibraryThing. That is, I'll cross-post reviews that do not have any media content.

But back to the books…

I’m an eclectic reader, but I do go through phases of different interests and binging on books on the same theme or by the same authors. Thrillers aren’t really my cuppa and I generally stay away from Romance and YA, but there isn’t really any genre I don’t read…

Oh, and I do like a good deal of biography, history and general non-fiction.

How Do I Rate Books? —
Ratings are a very individual and somewhat arbitrary thing. I like to rate books as honestly as I can – basing my judgement solely on my reading experience and not on my expectation of the book or, heavens forbid, on how others perceive the book. As a result – and because I have been exposed to some pretty amazing reads – my ratings are pretty conservative.

Star ratings explained:
0.5 – Abysmal. Hated the book so much I would not even use it as a doorstop.
1 – Really disliked the book.
1.5 – Blergh.
2 – I don’t know how I feel about this book: I don’t like it but there are worse. This is still DNF country.
2.5 – This is nearly a good book, but there is still something missing – like depth, character development, a plot, a point, etc.
3 – I like it.
3.5 – This was really enjoyable.
4 – I really like it a lot.
4.5 – This was so great it made me think about the book for quite some time after finishing.
5 – This book has made such an impression on me that I would call it a game-changer.

I've been in a posting slump - tho thankfully not a reading slump - since the end of November, so I haven't been around much. I really enjoyed the time off, which also gave me some time to focus on RL stuff I needed to tackle.

However, I do miss posting bookish updates and chatting about reading.

I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I planned to dedicate most of my January to stepping out of my comfort zone and exploring sci-fi.
I thoroughly enjoyed this project, not least because of Darth Pedant’s and Lillelara’s excellent company reading two of the books.
But I also found a new author that I really loved, and whose book The Sparrow I loved so much I had to order the sequel, Children of God, immediately on finishing.

The rest of my book picks for Sci-Fi January were a mixed bag: A Memory Called Empire was good but dragged in places.
Semiosis also had an interesting premise but failed to deliver for me in the execution.
The absolute worst of the picks, tho, was Hugo Award winner The Three-Body Problem, which was ridiculous, boring, badly written, and which I could not wait to get over and done with.

I also managed to read the first Omnibus of John Mortimer’s Rumpole stories, which I loved.

For my (M)DWS Birthday Challenge, I tried Standhal’s much-lauded The Red and the Black but had to abandon the book because I could not suffer through another 300 pages of absolute boredom.
Instead, I picked up The Waves as Woolf had a January birthday, and despite my low expectations I really enjoyed the book. I daresay it was probably the first time ever that I liked Woolf’s use of stream-of-consciousness narration.

To finish off, I listened to a production of Agatha Christie’s The Lie, which was good but very clearly an early work.

February is already shaping up to be a very busy reading month. I three have buddy reads planned and I am looking forward to all of them equally.

We have:

Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompsen
Westwood by Stella Gibbons

and

K 2 Traum Und Schicksal by Kurt Diemberger

And just a note so I don’t forget, my (M)DWS choice for the Birthday Challenge this month will be Christopher Marlowe. A friend recommended Dr. Faustus or Tamburlaine or Edward II.

If I have time, I may add A Dead Man in Deptford.

Oh, and I also had time for a book haul:

Welcome back! Posting slumps happen. My suggestion is not to try to read every thread you missed. People in here understand.

Three Body Problem was a DNF for me. I don't think it was badly written, but perhaps badly translated. I bailed after all the torture near the beginning.

Nice book haul!

>3 clamairy: Hi. Thanks for the advice re reading the threads. That's a really good suggestion. I had a look at the sheer amount of comments and updates that I missed and tbh it was a bit overwhelming.

The funny thing about The Three Body Problem was that a friend from Hong Kong advised that he thought the translation was actually better than the original! LoL. Not being able to read the original, I will never know.

I totally understand that you bailed on it. I was tempted to do the same but I was reading this with two friends who made it more fun than torture.
The writing was abysmal tho. The prose irked me from the beginning, but even the writing that did not sound like a physics textbook, passages like the below, really frustrated me:

"As the forty-some metal slices moved past each other, the piercing noise was like countless giant fingernails scratching against glass."

I have tried this. I suggest you try this, too, and then tell me whether you experience anything like a "piercing sound". I can't.
The book was full of this nonsense.

>4 BrokenTune: Perhaps you're right. If it had been well written I might have stayed with it despite the torture. That was probably the icing on the cake. I've made it through plenty of other books with disturbing content because they weren't crap.

>2 BrokenTune: I’m glad you’ve decided to continue maintaining reading thread here. I’m also very glad you enjoyed The Sparrow so much! It’s one of my favorites. I really enjoyed the sequel also.

I haven’t read A Memory Called Empire or Semiosis, although both are on my to-be-read-someday list. I did read The Three-Body Problem and the rest of that trilogy. I liked it pretty well. I wouldn’t classify it as a favorite, and a lot of the details have faded from my memory in the four years since I’ve read it, but I enjoyed it at the time. I remember it as being more of a “thinky” ideas book rather than a character-driven book, and there were some things I had issues with, but I mostly had fun reading it.

Regarding the “piercing sound”, I can't remember the context behind that passage, but I would guess it was used more in the sense of “something really loud that could pierce your ear drums” rather than necessarily something high pitched like a “piercing scream”. Possibly a case where the translator didn’t use the best word to convey the author’s intent. It's interesting that your friend from Hong Kong thought the translation was better than the original! I always wonder what I'm missing out on by having to read a translated work rather than the original.

>4 BrokenTune:, >5 clamairy: I have The three-body problem on my kindle but I'm not feeling enthusiastic about reading it as I've just DNFed another Chinese SF novel, Waste tide, which had similar problems with its prose - very clunky and all telling, no showing. I would blame the translator, who is Ken Liu, but I've read his short stories which he wrote in English and they didn't have any of these problems. Your friend in HK's comment was very interesting and also confirms my theory that Liu is not to blame.

>1 BrokenTune: I did manage to complete Scarlet and black some years ago, but I'd never revisit it. The "hero" was far too obnoxious and dull to spend time with again.

I hope you enjoy Westwood. I liked it a lot when I read it last year.