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Saturday, September 01, 2007

Reading List: August

It seems I haven't been reading a lot this month, and it's true. School started again, and that, plus all the preparation before it started, cut down considerably the time I devoted to reading. Plus, I've also been (re)reading Stephen King's The Stand at the same time, and even though I still haven't finished it, I've spent many, many hours working on it. Anyway, this is what I read in August:

The Tommyknockers
Yet another Stephen King I read ages ago and that I wanted to read again. Parts of it were much better than I remembered them (the first couple of hundred pages and the last couple of hundred), and some other parts (the middle three hundred) were not that good. Still, a cool book.

Girls, vol. II: Emergence
At last I got to continue this bizarre story by the Luna Brothers. Things keep getting weirder and weirder, and the mystery unfolding in Pennystown is nowhere near being solved. An interesting if strange read.

Harley & Ivy
Straight out from the pages of Batman, wacky character Harley Quinn goofs around with her best friend Poison Ivy. This graphic novel compiles three different stories starring the two criminals, all of them rendered in a cartoony, animated style by artists like Joe Chiodo and Bruce Timm and written by Judd Winick and Paul Dini. The stories are funny and little else, so while this book isn't great, it's certainly entertaining.

The New World
Ah, the final installment in the Age of Discovery trilogy by Michael Stackpole. This book is better than the second one, and it might be as good as the first one. Still, this series has disappointed me because it wasn't as much fun, as compelling or as intriguing as Stackpole's previous novels. There are two good things to say about this series, though: it is fairly original, and it is certainly unpredictable. And yet I found myself wanting more.

Death: The High Cost of Living
Neil Gaiman's famous character Death gets a story of her own. This is an old comic book (I mean graphic novel, excuse me) I had never read, and I borrowed it from a friend. The story is weird and beyond quirky, but then again, this was written by Gaiman, so I shouldn't be surprised. It was also interesting to see the early work of Chris Bachalo, whose current style has nothing to do with what you can see in this book. Weird.

The Ruins
Scott Smith's second novel after the acclaimed A Simple Plan, The Ruins feels and reads like a teenage horror movie: four airheads (two cute couples) go to Mexico on vacation and get in trouble. Deadly trouble. The book is okay, but the pace is kind of slow in the middle. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it's nothing to write home about.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bueno, Fel, no entendía lo que decías de The Stand, hasta que he echado un vistazo en Amazon al número de páginas que tiene. Ya no es que seas un lector compulsivo, sino que además lo eres también como re-lector.

¿No estás cansado de tanto King, últimamente? Porque parece que es lo único que has leído durante este verano. Apuesto a que en tu casa tienes un pequeño altarcito con su foto y unas velas...

Sobre el Vol. II de Girls, pues no sé qué pensar. Aunque no es que sea algo sorprendente, ya que aún no me he leído el primero.

Sobre la conclusión de la última saga de Mr. Stackhorn, creo que de momento no voy a leerla. Prefiero recordar con alegría la DCW.

En fin, que un mes flojo en lo que a satisfacción recibida se refiere, ¿no?

Mario Alba said...

Sí, no ha sido un mes muy satisfactorio, la verdad. Lo de The Stand es increíble: más de 1.100 páginas, y además con microletra. Pero hoy me he pasado por Barnes & Noble y me hecho con cuatro libritos para alternar con The Stand, que sigo leyendo y lo que me queda...

Anonymous said...

Pues ya nos dirás qué tal.
Yo, entre libro y libro, suelo leerme unas cuantas docenas de páginas del libro de relatos y poemas completos de E.A. Poe que lucho por acabarme. Que no es que esté mal, para nada, pero sufre del síndrome Stand: letra enana y márgenes inexistentes.

Mario Alba said...

Trágico síndrome, sí señor. Ahora mismo estoy leyendo Pyramids, un libro de DiscWorld, pero pronto volveré a The Stand, aunque sea para leer un par más de capítulos...

Anonymous said...

Pues suerte con eso... :P