Books Read: 2011

[Snickerd00dle]

Just finished the graphic novel version of the Last Unicorn, which was very awesome- beautifully illustrated, as well as finishing Grant Morrison's Animal Man series, might be my favorite work of his

[saturnfan]

1. Disquisition of Government - John C. Calhoun
2. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
3. Breaking the Backcountry: Seven Year's War in Virgina and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 -Matthew C. Ward
4. Christianity in Latin America: A History - Ondina and Justo Gonzalez (new)
5. The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America - Walter R. Borneman (new)

The Christianity in Latin America I read about 75% through, but even though I did not read every single word I feel I read enough of it. It is a somewhat dry text book intended to give the reader a brief overview of hundreds of years of history about the Catholic Church in Latin America. Like most survey works, it comes off in some segments as being too simplistic, but I suppose they can hardly be blamed for that considering the sheer amount of information that they are attempting to cover. The authors also use a lot of story telling to emphasis their points, perhaps their critical race theorists, but I like to believe they were just trying to make the book more readable and entertaining.

The second book is self explanatory, it was about the French and Indian War. I am not sure why I was assigned this book in a grad class considering it has no central argument and was clearly not an academic text. Its purpose was to be an entertaining read for the general public. However, I am not complaining.

[saturnfan]

Man, not reading going on here in racketboy.

1. Disquisition of Government - John C. Calhoun
2. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
3. Breaking the Backcountry: Seven Year's War in Virgina and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 -Matthew C. Ward
4. Christianity in Latin America: A History - Ondina and Justo Gonzalez
5. The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America - Walter R. Borneman
6. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 (new)

Finished another book for school and this one was pretty interesting. As the title implies, it is about the conquest of the Maya. However, it is much more than that, as it also explores how the Maya reacted to Christianity, how they incorporated it in their native religion and ultimately came to realize that it or the Spaniards were not going away.

[Opa Opa]

Man, not reading going on here in racketboy.

Probably not.
Wish I had more time to read books I'd like instead of textbooks.

Of course the thread is "Books Read: 2011" so there's still plenty of time to read.

[Flake]

The Phone Book. 512 area code addition.

Not the easiest read, mind you. Around the J's it got rough. At the T's I damn near gave up. But when I finally reached that last advertisement for affordable Italian food, I definitely felt the enormity of my accomplishment.

867-5309, ya'll.

[saturnfan]

The Phone Book. 512 area code addition.

Not the easiest read, mind you. Around the J's it got rough. At the T's I damn near gave up. But when I finally reached that last advertisement for affordable Italian food, I definitely felt the enormity of my accomplishment.

867-5309, ya'll.

In what way was reading the phone book heinous and wicked? Did you feel as if you had hurt someone or something in the course of your reading? Or was the phone book so long boring you felt as if it was some sort of horrible penance for your sins?

[Gamerforlife]

Finished Fables volume 11, which features a significant event that has been built up to since the beginning of the series and I feel it was handled quite well. I was surprised though, as this seemed like the sort of event I expected to see happen whenever the series came to an end. It feels like a significant chapter has been closed and a new one begins

I just have to say, the consistency of the series is amazing. I go through each volume so quickly and then can't stop thinking about picking up the next one. There's so many interesting characters, fun takes on old fairy tales, interesting plots and sub plots and there are some very creative use of panels in this series by the artist.

The story moves at a good pace and 11 volumes in I can say that even the occasional side story has been immensely entertaining and usually even those are tied to the bigger story somehow. There is so little filler in Fables. I just love that. The story just moves confidently forward, never holding back or wasting your time and always presenting you with something new and interesting. I haven't love a story this much since I started getting into the tv show Supernatural.

Can't wait to pick up volume 12. Have to see what happens to my favorite character Boy Blue

[Gamerforlife]

I doubt anyone will even read this but......

Finished vol 13 of Fables and it FINALLY happened. I finally read a volume that let me down. This volume is a good example of everything that is BAD about crossovers. Characters are introduced with little background info, certain things happen that make no sense but apparently are in jokes for people who have read the Jack of Fables spinoff series, which by the way, I didn't even know existed until I read this volume. Would have been nice if I had some way of knowing that I was expected to have read some other series before delving into this volume of Fables. That's why crossovers generally suck. The storytelling just seems really sloppy because readers are expected to fill in the blanks by having read something else. So clearly there is no need for exposition or explaining anything about the characters that isn't important to the main plot

Another thing I disliked, the series had just introduced a powerful new enemy in epic fashion. Then, this "crossover event" storyline kicks in, tossing him to the side and bringing in an even more powerful villain from the spinoff book, effectively making the previously introduced villain seem like a joke by comparison. So basically once this new uber villain gets taken care of, am I as the reader supposed to still be able to view that other weaker villain as any kind of real threat anymore? It's like the storyline is working backwards. Actually, it's like Fables had an important storyline going on involving the original villain, and then goes off on a complete tangent with this crossover storyline and its other villain. Very jarring to me as a reader. This "crossover event" as the front and back cover of the book call it seems like it was just carelessly shoved into the Fables storyline to increase book sales or something. Lame

On the plus side, the volume has a lot of meta, fourth wall breaking and satirical stuff going on. There are some truly hilarious moments in this volume at the expense of certain characters. This is Fables at its funniest and also its smartest as there are quite a few particularly clever jokes aimed at writers, literature and movies. The humor here is much smarter than any previous volume of Fables I have read. Unfortunately, given the other flaws in the story, it is annoying seeing Bill try and be so clever and funny. Makes the whole thing come off as rather pretentious quite frankly. In fact, this volume comes dangerously close to shark jumping territory as it goes overboard at times with the meta stuff and fourth wall breakage. It's like the book is making fun of itself, which is okay, but it does it so much it starts to get hard to take the story seriously at all.

Also, the finale of this storyline continues an annoying trend I have noticed in Fables. For whatever reason, Bill Willingham doesn't seem to believe in evil, merciless villains getting their karmic retribution. I'm not going to get spoilery but this is the second time in the series I have seen a villain defeated but not in any way, shape or form punished for their heinous, evil crimes. As a reader it is very unsatisfying to not see some uber A hole get what he truly deserves

[saturnfan]

1. Disquisition of Government - John C. Calhoun
2. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
3. Breaking the Backcountry: Seven Year's War in Virgina and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 -Matthew C. Ward
4. Christianity in Latin America: A History - Ondina and Justo Gonzalez
5. The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America - Walter R. Borneman
6. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570
7. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union - John Niven (new)
8. Hall of Mirrors - Laura A. Lewis (new)
9. Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ - Carolyn Dean (new/half read)
10. Texas Revolution - William C. Binkley (new)

A bunch of new additions here, Inka Bodies as you see wasn't completed, but I will list it anyways. The author analyzed art and paintings to describe how the Inka reacted to the Corpus Christi festival. It wasn't all that great. Hall of Mirrors was more interesting as it looked at the power struggle between Spaniards and natives in Colonial Mexico. However, the amount of evidence used to support her thesis that natives utilized witch craft to resist Spanish power was thin and unconvincing.

The book on Calhoun was also pretty disappointing, it had factual errors and Niven made unsubstantiated claims about his beliefs and political writings. Not recommended.

The Texas Revolution was probably my favorite of this recent bunch. It was a very brief overview of the conflict and is a good starting point for those interested in reading about it.

[Pulsar_t]

I doubt anyone will even read this but......

I actually read your post while installing World of Tanks I'm not into fantasy, but I've been thinking of reading Richard K. Morgan's rather unusual fantasy novel.



I'm currently reading the third Giants book by James P. Hogan.. Probably the most 'eventless' first encounter saga ever written, but the science deluging the text is quite enjoyable, at least I find it so.