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Hello dreamwidth/livejournal. Long time no see and all. This is me, saving my book logs for myself in case my hard drive dies or something equally annoying happens. One cannot have too many backups. This year I haven't been no where near as prolific a reader, I have however been better about keeping track of what I read. The writing reviews part has gone under a bit - I must try to be better in the new year.

Book Log 2011
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Did Not Finish:
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I vaguely remember wanting to post regularly - unsurprisingly enough I haven't done so. I'll start being better, self. Tomorrow. Really. I promise.

Meanwhile,

I shall do another thing I wanted to do for ages and that is to post my reading log. I just had a fright when I thought that I'd somehow deleted part of my notes from the beginning of the year only to realise I had them posted on LJ. Phew. Better to have it all here.

Note: these aren't formal reviews, just notes, more or less extensive, for my own use.

( Book log 2010, March - July )

Somewhat related: After reading the new chapter of the warnings discussion, I've started thinking about book reviews and if (how?) the issue should apply to them. I rarely see book reviews (professional or in the blogosphere) include information about possible trigger content and for some reason this strikes me as a bit odd. Or maybe it shouldn't, considering the resistance to warnings in some parts of fandom. Still, I always thought book reviews are the perfect place to talk about this kind of things. They discuss the quality of writing, story telling, characters, the use of ISSUES and pretty much all possible reaction the reviewer had while reading the book. What better place to share information that is normally hard to come by - especially if you are a recluse with social phobia: ask your friends gets complicated. So why are there so few of them? Am I just reading the wrong blogs? Lack of awareness?
I feel this is, or should be, a reviewer's responsibility - after all, I'm much more likely to pick up a book that somebody pointed out to me than one I just found by browsing the shelves. It seems callous to just send people in blindly and yet this is exactly what I usually see happening. Take As Meat loves Salt - I found this book very disturbing and I was entirely unprepared for it, despite having read several reviews before buying it. Why did not a single one of them mention the several rapes the reader sees through the eyes of the perpetrator? I find it... irresponsible, somehow. Especially because in the blog world the reviewer, often literally, takes the part of a friend who points me at a book and says: here, read it, it's cool!

This said, I'm somewhere on the fence about what I myself should do with my reading log. On the one hand the chances of people reading this and choosing their own reading material based on my list are vanishingly slim. I don't need any common trigger warnings myself, so why should I mention content that didn't negatively affect me in what is essentially a personal reference? I'm more likely to be bothered by several mental health related issues and narratives, in which case I'd include something that disturbed me of course. But what's the point of listing things like violence, rape etc for myself?
On the other hand, I am posting this publicly and however small the possibility of someone picking up a book based on this, it is there by nature of this being public. I feel... I don't know... an obligation to at least offer this information. Even though I feel weird (and presumptuous) doing it.
I have included a few notes of this kind on some books this time, though definitely not consistently, but I'm still not sure how I should handle this in the future.

Repost from LJ, to have the whole year in one place.

Book log 2010, January - March

Robin Hobb:

The Farseer trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice / Royal Assassin / Assassin's Quest) Dreadful narration by Erik Sandvold, luckily not available to buy. I really hope the recently released new recording is better.

The Liveship Traders (Ship of Magic / The Mad Ship / Ship of Destiny) Read by Roy Avers - excellent narration, despite the dreadful quality (cassette tape rip). Unfortunately no longer available.

The Tawny Man (x 2) (Fool's Errand / The Golden Fool / Fool's Fate) Read by Jack Fox - somewhat better than the Farseer books, but not optimal.

Rainwild Chronicles (Dragon Keeper) narrated by Saskia Butler - rather liked this one.

I really like the world Hobb has created, even though it is in essence very traditional 'high' fantasy, and I love her character-driven stories and the themes (gender, sexuality, privilege and discrimination of various groups) she writes about. So far none of the books I read have come off as preachy - one of the main reason I might be turned off from books that attempt to introduce very real issues in their fantasy - and I hope this remains that way. I also appreciate the fact that none of her main characters are perfect - they all have very real and at times excruciatingly annoying traits and weaknesses. Even the Fool, my most beloved (bad pun is bad) character is worthy of a headdesk reaction on more than one occasion.
There are aspects I find less likeable: the sometimes over-the-top villains, too much exposition in places, the endings (or individual plot lines) being wrapped up somewhat too neatly. The plots aren't usually too complicated - Hobb's primary strength are characters. However, on the whole those of her books set in the Elderling World are some of my favourite fantasy and I have read most of them several times now without enjoying them any less than before. Now, I hope I can get my hands on the new book 'Dragon Haven' soon, but somehow the audio book doesn't seem to be around yet, despite supposedly haven been published at the same time as the hardback.

Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
Started listening to the audio book, read by Nick Podehl and couldn't get into it at all. The reader sounded like a sulky teenaged boy and while it might be fitting, considering the main character is a teen throughout the majority of the book, that was a bit too real an experience. Okay, this was just an overly convoluted way of saying that I found the narrator's voice extremely off putting. So, I picked up the book and found it much easier to get into. The beginning was slightly incoherent (though maybe the audio book is to blame) but after the first twenty pages or so I found it much more enjoyable. The premise is the good old gifted orphan makes his way in the world fantasy story (as told by the adult looking backwards), but the details and the world building give it a fresh look. The language is rich and beautiful without being ostentatious, which is of course an added bonus. I liked it a lot and I'm looking forward to the next book, whenever that might come out.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Audio book this time, read by Rob Inglis who does an beautiful job of it. I felt somewhat detached from it, maybe because I know it so well I didn't really listen any more. It struck me how very different Tolkien's style is from the more personal character-involved writing of more recent books. LotR is much closer to the epic narratives and legends that inspire the Silmarillion than to any of the epic fantasy books that followed after. While the story is no grander than many others, the language seems to widen the scope of it to such a degree that most of the characters remain little more than sketches, with the occasional glimpse of personality. This isn't bad in itself, but I think I wasn't really in the mood for this kind of story telling just now, which is why it suddenly stood out so clearly.
Also, this time around the ugly racial imagery really jumped out at me. It's a bit sad to realise that the world that fuelled my imagination for so long comes with a baggage that is difficult to ignore.

John Connolly - The Book of Lost Things
Audio book read by Nick Rawlinson. Rawlinson has a pleasant voice but an odd tendency to slow down the reading speed and lower his voice to almost a whisper at the end of some sentences or paragraphs - often in places where it made no sense. But apart from that the book was very well read.
I feel very ambivalent about this one. It's a story about David, a boy whose mother dies and who can't get to grips with his stepmother and -brother. He finds his way into the land of faerie and has various encounters with more (or less) well known characters from stories and myths. My favourite was Roland who was based on the knight from Browning's poem.
The resolution was pretty predictable, the twists on traditional fairy tales not quite so. Despite the premise this is not a children's book - it's much too violent for it. So far so good.
I liked the story, I liked the writing. What I did not like (with the exception of Roland) were the twists on the traditional tales. Pretty much all of them in one way or another (sexuality, eating habits, looks, behaviour) villainised (is this a word?) the female characters. In a way this is explained from within the story (David's negative feelings towards his stepmother) but all the same, it was too much, especially since it went hand in hand with most of the females in the story being in some way brutally killed - several times while their nakedness was in some way exposed. It did all make sense in the narrative, but the continuous repetition of the theme ended up lessening my enjoyment of the book.

David Liss - Spectacle of Corruption
Audio book read by Michael Page. Nicely read. I would have liked a bit more variation in the different voices, but that's my only qualm.
Murder mystery set in the 1720s. The protagonist and first person narrator is Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish thief-taker who gets framed and convicted for a murder he didn't commit. He flees prison and then proceeds to resolve the political intrigue surrounding the murder and his conviction. This is the second book about this character, the first is 'A conspiracy of paper' and I have not read it. This might be the reason why I found it difficult to connect to the (recurring) characters and understand their motivations and relations to each other. Apart from that it was an okay book, but not exactly what I was hoping for. For me it failed to bring the time period it was set in to life, though I'm not quite sure why. The details on daily life and politics were well researched (with a few exceptions) but all the same, I somehow didn't feel as if I was reading something about the early 18th century.

Roger Zelazny - The Chronicles of Amber 1-5 (Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos )
Read this one myself for a change. For some reason I expected this series to be (high) fantasy but it's actually somewhere on an undefinable scale between fantasy and science fiction. It's... pretty odd for lack of a better word. The set of characters is extremely limited for a series that has almost 800 pages (in my edition) - so limited in fact that other persons/peoples/beings are almost abstract, which of course is one of the points of the set-up. The main focus of these books are the wold(s) created within them and the philosophy behind them, not so much the characters. I only began to be really invested in the story of the first-person narrator and one of the central figures of the limited cast in the middle of the second book. I think I'll maybe read this cycle again at some point, but as a rule I'm a very character-oriented reader and as fascinating as the world and its concepts were, I'm not really tempted to read more about it - there are 5 more books focusing on another central character and some short stories, I think, and for now I'll not bother with them.

Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora
Audio book read by Michael Page (again) No complains about the voice variety this time. I think he goes a tittle bit overboard with the intonation sometimes, but it fits the characters.
This one is about a group of con artists and thieves operating within the network of organised crime in a city based on early-modern Venice. An engaging book with likeable characters despite them being, well, thieves. It takes the stories of the merry exploits of a band of (thieving) friends and mixes it with the violence and savagery of organised crime and drops it all in a sunny world that has a distinct Mediterranean feel to it (from my POV at least), despite being strictly fictional. One thing I really liked about this world was the gender equality in the society of Camorr - it isn't absolute and it isn't unquestioned: there are assumptions that in some positions a man would be expected to have authority but on the whole the girls give as good as they get and in the background tumult there are as many girls and women passing by as man in as a wide variety of occupations, including artisans and soldiers. In fact it almost seemed as if the author was making a point by always saying "men and women" whenever describing a gathering of people. I wish this wasn't something I'd take notice of, but it was there and I enjoyed it.
I liked the book quite a lot and I'm now listening to the second book, 'Red Seas under Red Skies' which is also excellent.

Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair
Started listening to the audio book read by Erik Sandvold, didn't finish. In fact didn't even get far into it. It's the same narrator who pretty much ruined Hobb's Farseer books - the man reads completely without intonation. I got used to it with Hobb's books, because I know and love them, but I couldn't enjoy a completely new book with this narrator. I might try it again if I find a cheap paperback somewhere.

I used to know how to talk. At least I think so. I think I have vague memories of spending hours chattering on the phone, writing letters, diaries, essays, speaking to people standing in front of me, having things to tell them. I'm not sure if maybe I didn't dream all that. Maybe I just imagine I had something to say and all that came out was meaningless ramblings or everything was filled with the same awkward silence as now, except I choose to forget them. I don't know. I sure as hell don't know how to do it now. It's not just that I seem to be perpetually surrounded by my own silence, trying to fill it by talking to imaginary friends or boyfriends that aren't here that never will be here, because where will they come from if I don't have anything to say to them? I just don't understand how this communication things works. How do you find friends? How do you get to know people? What do you tell them, that catches their attention? If there is nothing there, no funny stories, no information, no advice, no anecdotes - what do you talk about if you have nothing to say? Except for how you have nothing to say, but really, you can't say that to someone you just met.
So I'm seeing this psychologist woman now and this is supposed to be about me, right? About meeting someone to whom I can tell things. Or something. I don't quite see the point. Except how is it supposed to work if half the time is filled with awkward silences, with me looking at the watch to see if the time's up yet, dreading it'll be because it'll be another missed opportunity to say something. Say what? I don't know, whenever I try to think of something I just get the usual silence echoing around in my head, as if it's hollow.
Instead of talking I then lie in bed, pitying myself for being so upset about not talking when it's my own fault if I don't. Or I post strange entries to online journals (haha, as if...) when this isn't really the place to do so... this is supposed to be the place to post funny or insightful or ranty things, not for self-pitying whining. I guess I could lock this, make it private but then it's again just myself alone with my own voice. I just don't see the point in it all.

Current Mood: blank

YES!

(Though, seriously wtf still so many voting CDU? But anyway. Their majority? Gone! Hopefully *crosses fingers for accurate estimates*)

was quite literally a pain. It started with the worst sore throat I've had in ages, continued with a running nose (we're talking rivers here) progressed to a truly disgusting cough and ended with my voice role-playing as Mickey Mouse. A mickey having a voice change.

Everything else, like
- spending hours after hours engrossed in the train wreck that was Diana Gabaldon vs. fandom.
- going to an appointment with the student consultation services about maybe, probably, likely dropping out and possible plans B/C/D. It only took me eight months.
- attending a lecture about the current legal situation of same-sex marriage ("Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft") and traditional marriage in Germany. An excellent lecture it was, too. All the information, neatly laid out without any legalese. The first truly good use of power point I have seen in my 2 1/2 years here.
- and visiting the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen which has a permanent collection of lots and lots of medieval wood sculpture and plenty of paintings, a surprisingly large and interesting collection of 16th and 17th century painting and some odds and ends. Pretty cheap entry fee, too. Would recommend to anyone in the area. Currently it's hosting an exhibition on Hans von Aachen, a 16th century painter. Fancy being laughed at? it was really pretty, but they could have provided more background information.

- all faded into relative insignificance in light of the constant stream of *wince*sniff*cough*coughlouder*CoughAgain*sneeze*sniff*SQUEAK*.

And if my state votes the conservatives into power again on Sunday, I'll probably add weeping and wailing and death of rage to the list. All these last weeks I've been walking around suppressing the urge to vandalise all their fucking posters with their smug faces. I suppose if they are voted in again (or, heavens forbid, form a coalition with the liberals) I'll have to look for a place to move to, because there's simply no way I'll have a second chance at a different education with the conditions here.

Hello new journal, hello new site and hopefully hello new people!

I used to be known as

mieronna/

miri, but that person hasn't really been me for a while and I decided it's time to start again.

For now, I'll be happy to grant access to anyone who asks/grants access to me. I don't really have any plans for this blog and it'll likely just be personal ramblings and not lock at all.

I also plan to use this account as a feed for various 'meta' content I'm currently interested in - if I subscribed to you and you've no idea why, this is the most likely reason.

This journal will be fully mirrored on Livejournal, under the same name.