August was a surprisingly busy month for reading, particularly given a nearly two-week trip to Portugal right off the top.
Here’s how it shook out:
Read
Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within – Natalie Goldberg
Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Started and stopped
Death With Interruptions – José Saramago
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology – Adrian Tchaikovsky and others
Shroud – Adrian Tchaivosky
If Found Return To Hell – Em X. Liu
Smart Phone Dumb Phone – Alan Carr, John Dicey
Reading
Earthflown – Francis Wren
Dungeon Crawler Carl – Matt Dinniman
This is the second month in a row that I tried a José Saramago book — he’s probably Portugal’s most famous writer, so I thought I’d try reading his stuff in prep for/while visiting Portugal — but while both I tried were interesting concepts, it was almost exclusively the formatting that kept throwing me off. There were single sentences that ran on for most of a page (and at least one that went on for more than a page), which has always been a difficult style for me to make myself get through. And it seems a trademark Saramago style is to have some dialogues which a) have no quotes and very little punctuation, and b) are in paragraph blocks with only commas and capitals to delineate that the speaker has changed. They would go something like this:
Why did you do it this way?, Because it seemed it was best, But clearly when I asked you to do this it was with another end goal entirely, Yes but this was the most effective approach, And I understand that but when something is needed it should of course be done with the goal in mind and not the ease of the process, Which I would normally agree with but you aren’t considering the contingencies in this case, Which would be what exactly?, The fact that there were others pressing me for expediency being the utmost priority, But those requests were made by people under my authority, Yes but all of you are above mine.
… which, again, made it difficult for my brain to follow, and thus made the reading a particularly difficult effort, which isn’t something I seek out in what’s intended to be casual, enjoyable reading.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective is a collection of short stories in the “grim dark” fantasy genre, which is new to me and explores the ambiguity of moral rights and wrongs in the characters’ actions, for example in the sense of countries who start wars always feel they’re in the right, and is it acceptable to make someone suffer who has made you suffer? The writing styles of the stories I tried out were, again, not my thing, so in the spirit of seeking something I’d enjoy more, I closed it and moved on.
Shroud started really engagingly but then seemed to drag a bit after the first… phase? section?… of the story, so I chalked it up to being one of those Adrian Tchaikovsky stories that wasn’t my cuppa. Always interesting ideas, not always executed in a way that works for me.
… and on the starts and stops went.
I’ve got a number of books and audiobooks already lined up for September, so let’s see how that goes.