May books

[semperfiona]

• From folklore to fiction : a study of folk heroes and rituals in the Black American novel, +H. Nigel Thomas (St. Vincent) (paper)


• The Stone Diaries, +Carol Shields (Canada) (paper)


• The Savage Detectives, + Roberto Bolano (Chile) (paper) (abandoned 33% ish)
  The book seems to be three vaguely-connected novellas. I read one all the way through, but didn't enjoy it, so gave up after a few pages of the second one wasn't any better. First novella was the diary of a feckless 17-year-old who skipped classes at university to bum around Mexico City drinking with a bunch of avant-garde poets who never actually wrote anything. Lots of diary entries about his tawdry sex life sleeping with several different women who all seemed to instantly fall in love with him. Bleh.


• Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman (paper)


• Death in Venice, +Thomas Mann (Germany)


• The Sacred Band, *David Anthony Durham


• Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, Salman Rushdie


• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, +JK Rowling, UK (audio) (reread)


• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

Tammie has given me a good idea for alleviating the frustration I'm feeling from the Read the World project. Instead of just going and getting the randomly selected books, go to GoodReads or another review site first and check out some reviews to see whether the book is likely to fit me. Here's hoping that will help me find more pleasure in the project. I have also checked out several recent acclaimed SFF novels as a palate cleanser.

I've just gone through my list of previous reads, and GoodReads ratings do not seem to correlate at all with my opinions of the books. However, in a number of cases the negative reviews do manage to mention the things that I also hated, so perhaps I can get some value from those.