First: December goodies. 368 reviews (+241% from last month) Average rating: 3.72 stars (+2.4%) Most popular book: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and Kulti by Mariana Zapata (4 reviews; 4.00 and 5.00 avg, respectively) Most popular author: Madeleine L’Engle and Tana French (5 reviews; 4.20 and 4.60 avg, respectively) Most reviews: NTE (congratulations!; 42 reviews) Fiction: 120 reviews (+253%) Nonfiction: 65 reviews (+51%) Uncategorized: 2 reviews (same as last month) Most popular genre: Fantasy (80 reviews) Male authors: 127 (219%) Female authors: 225 (+346%) […]
Officially did not finish list of 2016
So, I’m totally stealing this idea from NTE. These are the books I attempted, but wasn’t able to finish (for one reason or another). I really like the idea of including these books in my Cannonball, if for no other reasons than they still warrant some discussion. In no particular order: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (4 stars) I loved Stoker’s writing, and the book had a beautifully sinister atmosphere to it. It’s not hard to understand, reading this, why the book resonated so strongly with […]
Atwood’s writing is the elegance of despair
Damn. Look, we all love reading. And it’s probably also true that most of us want to, at some point, write a book, right? That’s not just me? Well, this book covers a lot of ground the ground that I had cleared for a book I’ve been playing around with. And though I’ll probably never write a book, that’s still disheartening. So this disappointment kind of hovers over this entire review, like a black cloud of self-doubt and broken dreams. Also, I approached this book […]
It’s a travesty this has only been reviewed once before (thanks, bonnie!)
I would love to rhapsodize about this book, but I’m kind of pressed for time (doubt I’ll be able to write this review before Christmas, and I don’t want to hold off since I just finished this book and it’s fresh in my mind). The best way I can describe this, I think, is to say that The Way of Shadows (2008) a bit like The Name of the Wind (2007) by Patrick Rothfuss mixed with an Assassin’s Creed video game. Azoth is an impoverished child […]