Larry’s Pretty Good Reading List

aiii, I have gone back through my posts, and the most recent of these that I've found is from last august. I am not going to attempt to work out what I have started or progressed; I will start with 'what I've finished' and if I still have any oomph (and it is not bed time) I'll go poke at what I've abandoned. In reverse chronological order. I'm putting the list in, and then maaaaybe I'll have the cope to put a commentary. (finished today but not yet reviewed: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie)... oh, and if I notice that it is a short story, I've left it out, because I think I captured that before.

1. Bound by the Blood - Cecilia Tan. 4.5 stars. review - BDSM speculative erotica that is just so clever, but also very emotionally hard going.
2. The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography - A.J.A. Symons. 4 stars. review - presented as a biography, but it reads as a story of an obsession, and the biographical details are highlights.
3. The Siege of Burning Grass - Premee Mohamed. 3 stars. review - despite being well written, fantastic world building, good characterisation, passable plot I felt like I just missed the point.
4. The House that Horror Built - Christina Henry. 2.5 stars review - I usually love Henry's work, and yet this one just never quite gelled for me. (content note: pandemic) 5.Nest - Inga Simpson. 5 stars. review - recommended for those who like slow moving slice of life stories; each chapter is a tiny lightly sketched moment that adds to a nuanced and complicated story of getting old, making mistakes, and reconciling with your past.
5. Building a second brain: a proven method to organise your digital life and unlock your creative potential - Tiago Forte. 4. stars. review - some really good ideas, but dry and easy to put down and forget about it. I feel that 'less annoying than the majority of self-help books' is a low bar, but it cleared it.
6. Digital Sociology - Deborah Lupton. 4 stars. review - There is a lot going on with this book, looking both at how sociology as a process / research field is changed by using digital tools, and how sociology of the digital world works.
7. Angel of the Overpass - Seanan McGuire. 4 stars. review - very satisfying set of conclusions; well worth reading if you liked the previous ones. Possibly slightly darker horror than the last one.
8. The Viy - Nikolai Gogol. 3.5 stars. review - This was well written, and individual scenes are great, but I don't think I understand how the story fits together.
9. The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting - KJ Charles. 4.5 stars. review - I really enjoyed this, and finished it in an afternoon.
10. Vertigo - Karen Herbert. 3 stars. review - I noted this as "a little thriller in a literary public service story"; I found it really hard to engage with
11. The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman. 3.5 stars. review - excessively contrived plot, adversarial workplace relationships verging on farce, well written, complex full of interesting characters.
12. The Coffee House Witch and the Grumpy Cat - Ariana Jade. 2 stars. review - The writing is good, but the entire thing is set up and no payoff. And for something marketed as a romance, it really isn't.
13. A Sorceress Comes to Call - T. Kingfisher. 4 stars. review - solidly written fantasy / horror / regency romance with a heavy emphasis on body horror and loss of control, and I don't recommend it to people who have trauma over dangerous and controlling parents
14. Bad Actors - Mick Herron. 2 stars. review - I listened to an interview by the author, this was the Slough House book I found in the library. Author loves their characters, but I found them so badly written.
15. The Sea Mystery - Freeman Wills Crofts. 4 stars. review - perfectly readable murder mystery, more thinky and less personality driven in comparison to Agatha Christie.
16. Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire. 3.5 stars. review - lots of short, self-contained anecdotes. Dry and gets a bit same-old and repetitive.

Abandoned

1. Fly with Me by Andie Burke reason - not for me
2. Doing research: A new researcher's guide by Jinfa Cai, Stephen Hwang, James Hiebert, Charles Hohensee, reason - out of scope
3. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt reason - came across as disingenuous
4. The Pleasure of Drowning by Jean Bürlesk reason - do not share the author's sense of humour.
5. Unmasked: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD, Autism and Neurodivergence by Ellie Middleton reason - I kept finding myself contrasting it with Matilda Boseley's The Year I Met My Brain and finding it lacking.