Bout of Books 35 Wrap-Up

 It was the first week of classes, and I have about 92 students, but I managed to finish 4 of the books I was halfway through. 

Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice was the best - prescient and witty.

I very much enjoyed the always clever Grady Hendrix's Final Girl Support Group

I finished re-reading Sandman v.1 and it holds up well

I finished Lisa Unger's Confessions on the 7:45 and my main thought about it was that I should really give up on a "fun" read when I don't think it's any good. The book had an interesting plot, and started off OK, but the characterization was weak. We hear one character tell another that she's a "woman of iron" but she gives zero evidence of this in her thoughts and actions. 

I still have reading to do for research, and I haven't made much progress on this year's academic reading challenge because I really have to prioritize writing my own book this year.

Bout of Books Update - Days 3 and 4

So far, I'm doing OK in my goal of finishing some of the many books I'd started and stopped. 

Wednesday I did finish Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice which I thought was just excellent! We didn't have that much of a discussion of it in book-club, but it's such a fascinating and prescient commentary on so many different things. It's an interesting commentary on the Cold War, on the nature of science, on how language works, on relationships between different disciplines, even on human beings in general. The ending is also just really cool.  

During my walk yesterday, I listened to a bit of Alifair Burke's If You Were Here, which continues to be fine, if not gripping enough to get me to find more time to listen. 

This morning, I got back into Grady Hendrix's Final Girls' Support Group which I still like, and hope I can finish before the weekend. I have about 100 pages of that left, and since the first 100 pages when pretty fast, I'm guessing I'll be able to finish it soon.

I had a bunch of meetings and other work to do today, so I'm glad I was able to make some time for reading this morning. I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll have some time to read more of my work-related books before I go into a weekend of reading fiction to celebrate this readathon. 

In honor of reading unfinished books, here's some Massive Attack "You're a book that I have opened/and now I've got to know much more" 

Bout of Books 35 Days 1-2

 I did OK yesterday despite numerous work tasks and a few interruptions during the day. Finished one of my many in-progress pleasure reads by finishing volume 1 of the Sandman comic. I'm reading that for the second time since I'm watching the TV series. It's been more than 10 years since I read it the first time, and it definitely held up. It's always interesting to see how an adaptation differs from the original.

  I also finally made it past the preface in Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice and am on p.75 as of this morning. I need to read another 50 or so pages today if I want to finish the book in time for tomorrow's book club. I read a little bit of Lisa Unger's Confessions on the 7:45 last night before falling asleep, at least enough to learn about another character's sordid past.

Today's plan includes a lot of course prep, but hopefully I'll have some time to do other reading or at least listen to an audiobook for a while. 

For today's reading & listening theme, in honor of finally finishing something, and despite being really obvious, it's still good. I also just noticed that funny line about cutest boy having "wavy hair like Liberace." 

It's Bout of Books #35 - August 15-21

 It's bout of books week, so I'll sign up again. 

What is this "Bout of Books" you ask? Here's what the organziers have to say:

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 15th and runs through Sunday, August 21st in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 35 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

I usually sign up for this readathon, though I don't always wind up following through. The August readathon is especially bad timing for me, because it falls during the first week of classes at the university where I teach. These days are often taken up with meetings, student emails, and other business on top of the usual teaching stuff. However, I'll give it a go. My goal is pretty modest - I just need to finish some of the books I've started this summer. I've managed to start a bunch of books without finishing them and have gotten 4 books behind in my goal of reading 101 books by the end of the year. Looking at the list of "fun" books below, I'm guessing the problem is that none of these books are really thrilling me or I wouldn't have picked up a new one before finishing the one I'd already started, though I love Sandman and Paper Girls and started re-reading them while watching the new TV shows. I also have a book-club meeting on Wednesday night to discuss Stanislaw Lem's book His Master's Voice which I've been reading a couple of pages of every day in the morning before I start panicking about the on-coming semester. Now that all my syllabuses are complete, maybe I'll finally be able to immerse myself in it.

  

  So here's my current stack of partially-read books, and I'll see how far I get during the week 

for fun:

Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice 

Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group 

Alifair Burke, If You Were Here (audio) 

Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 

Alex Robinson, Tricked 

re-reading, because of the TV series: Neil Gaiman, Sandman v. 1 

re-reading because of the TV series: Paper Girls comics (I have these as single issues and re-read through issue 12) 

for research: 

Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment 

Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar in Exile 

 for teaching: 

Sarah Maza, Thinking About History

In honor of Lem, theme music for this reading and listening post: