helvreads

[helvreads]

Hmmm, 42, 45 if you allow only some works of Shakespeare, some of Poe's works instead of apparently all of them, and only Inferno and not all of Dante's Divine Comedy. 46 if you include a very strong attempt to get through Last of the Mohicans that ultimately failed because dear gods was that boring. 47 if you include a failed attempt at Chaucer because old english is fucking hard.

It's not a bad list for European/American literary culture, tbh. A lot of classic stuff, and a lot of books that have had a big impact on modern culture. That said, not all classics are worth reading. Great Gatsby, I'm looking at you, because there is absolutely nothing great about you. Steinbeck is fucking horrible and gives American literature, but if you must read something by him, Of Mice and Men is a good choice because it's very short so the pain is over quickly. Same goes for Hawthorne, except The Scarlet Letter is actually good. Also, I enjoyed the show enough, but I have zero plans to actually read Game of Thrones. I've looked at it, leafed through the first volume, and I've got better things to do.

That said, I am thrilled to see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on this list because that book is a ride. I strongly recommend finding an edition with Ralph Steadman's illustrations in it because they really add to it. Another on this list that I particularly like is The Three Musketeers because as old as it is, it's actually pretty funny. Catch-22 is also hilarious if on the dark side and if you've ever enjoyed the show MASH I strongly recommend it The Name of the Rose is an interesting choice because if I recall it does deal with rosicrucianism and some of the conspiracy stuff with that--my husband found that one and it's in the same vein as the Davinci Code (which love it or hate it, is culturally relevant). I couldn't really get into, but maybe that was just the time.

Personally I would've loved to see Roots in this list because it's fucking amazing, but people who don't read much might be intimidated by its size even tho it's not at all a hard read (well, from a literary standpoint, much of the content is very challenging indeed). Also might've been nice to have fewer classic American writers, but that might just be my personal bias. Like most so called classic American literature I just find abysmally boring. Basically your fiction written before like, 1950. I hate it, it's boring and awful.

How many have you read out of 100?

[helvreads]

Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to Starter Town by Toshio Satou

Normally I don’t read light novels, but this one sounded amusing enough I had to give it a go.  If I had to class it, it probably falls into game lit, a genre that mostly annoys me, but it has the excellent benefit that the characters aren’t aware of it, so maybe not. Anywho, our hero Lloyd lives in a small village and is one of the weakest in his town.  He can barely hold his breathe underwater for an hour, and he can’t even collect lumber from the trees, which are actually deadly tree monsters.  But Lloyd wants to be a soldier, so in spite of everyone’s worries, he heads off to the big city to enlist, where there is all sorts of shenanigans going on.  The thing that Lloyd is totally unaware of is that his village is where all the legendary heroes retired, so the standard is a little skewed.  He fails the enlistment tests because he’s too fast and his magical knowledge is too obscure (and powerful).  When things climax and the town is overrun with monsters, he’s puzzled because he just sees a bunch of bugs and gosh, there must be some really scary monsters around here somewhere.

It’s totally tongue in cheek and it was just plain fun.  Been a while since I read something that silly, and the hero being sweet and sincere really just added to it.  I quite enjoyed it, and the fact that this is apparently a volume one means there should be more adventures to look forward to.

points earned: 1 total points: 41

[helvreads]

Junkyard Druid by M.D. Massey

This came up on my Amazon recommendations a while back and seemed like it fit well in that same urban fantasy niche as the Dresden Files and the Iron Druid Chronicles.  It tells the story of young Colin McCool, a cursed Druid who basically turns into a bit of a berserker and can’t die.  It’s a pretty standard “find the maguffin” story and while it had a lot of potential, it just kinda fell really flat for me.  Maybe it’s where the author typically does young adult (Colin initially was a character in another book for the YA audience), but honestly, it just felt a bit tired.  Other writers have done it and done it better.  That’s not to say it was awful or badly written, just that it didn’t live up to it’s potential and I found the main character to be quite slappable.

points earned: 1 total points: 40

[helvreads]

Unnatural Issue, by Mercedes Lackey

Another entry in the Elemental Masters Series, this one follows Susanne Whitestone, an earth master taught by the Puck himself (aka Robin Goodfellow, yes, that Puck, for you Shakespeare fans).  Brought up by the servants after her douchenozzle father blamed her for her mother’s death in childbirth, this one has both the best and worst villain I’ve seen in these.  Best, because his level of evil is insanely high, worst, because he’s a bloody misogynistic dumbass.  Her father, Richard Whitestone, is also an earth master, but one who’s gone bad and has the brilliant idea to resurrect his dead wife via necromancy.  He’s trying to figure out how to deal with the physical bits of that particular plan when he sees his daughter wandering the grounds and discovers that she’s the spitting image of her mother, which leads to an incestuously sick plan.  That’s right, the dude decides he’s going to summon his wife and stick her in his daughter’s body.  He hatches an elaborate plot and suddenly begins to like, actually pay attention to Susanne, but without realizing that she is at least his equal in power or that, in fact, she is an intelligent human being.  Susanne grows wise to the plan and runs, finding work as a dairy maid at a manor run by other masters with a surprising amount of staff that’s also skilled.  I really like this one because our heroine is so smart and practical.  Anyway, obviously she gets help, there’s a trip to France, WWI figures in, and there’s a happy ending for everyone except Richard Whitestone, who dies far too quickly.

points earned: 1 total points: 39

[helvreads]

oh fuck, it’s the middle of december and I’m not even close to my goal (granted, there’s a bunch of graphic novels and manga I haven’t counted and three reviews I have yet to do).  Ah well, at least I’ve been making a better effort to read

[helvreads]

Night, by Elie Weisel

And this was the one I actually read tonight. I've heard of this one, of course, but never read it. So while I was at the bookstore doing some retail therapy, I saw it on clearance and said why not?

For those who aren't familiar with it, this slim volume is the tale not just of a Holocaust survivor, but one who survived some of the most notorious camps, like Auschwitz.

In some ways I was reminded of Roots, as it's a tale of unimaginable horror and atrocities. However, in many ways it's completely different, and the two cannot be compared.

Night covers a span of around 3 or so years in a very short amount of pages. It starts with the author's peaceful home and life in 1942. The way is happening, but elsewhere, until it's at their doorstep. Then they're in the ghetto (which I think I'm going to start excising that word from my vocabulary, given its history), then on the trains, and then in the camps. The speed at which it happens is jarring and horrifying. Throughout, there is little emotional impact. There's a bit at the begging, but for the most part, it is a story of confusion, perseverance, and a total lack of hope. The tone overall is almost more of a recitation of facts, like the author has been through so much torment even he can't believe it all and he's just completely numb to the horror and the shame of what was done to survive. There is no place in this book for hope; it dies in the chimneys at the train station. It is horrific, and I think the one thing it expresses most is the speed at which it happened. We tend to think it was a gradual thing, but in many places it wasn't. One day everything is normal, the next the Jews are walled off in the ghetto, and a couple days later they're shipped away. I think the timeline he had was around a week, maybe a bit more. And the German officers were all smiles while it happened. The Jews were lied to, and it was done so quickly and sneakily that no one knew what was happening until it was too late. One of the critiques you hear today is how did the German people just let it go on, but when things happen like that, most probably had no idea. I'm sure they heard stories, but like at the beginning of this one, when one man escaped and tried to warn people, nobody believed it. How could you? It was so awful, you can't believe it.

But it happened. Weisel deserves his peace prize for putting his story to paper so that we don't forget what happened. This is one that should be read by everyone. We cannot forget, and we cannot let it happen again.

Points earned: 1

Total points: 38

[helvreads]

The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West, by Erik Hornung

Finally worked through this one, and I gotta say, it's fantastic. An alternate title might be A History of Egypt in Western Occultism. Hornung traces how Egyptian myth, mysteries, and magic informed and were mangled by outsiders for their own designs throughout history. He traces the thread through pretty much every major occult group, examining the changes that were made, and moving on as soon as the lore does. For those who are unfamiliar with Hornung, he is also a well regarded Egyptologist, so it's an especial treat for him to be covering this topic, and honestly a tad risky, given how many occult group totally mangled the Egyptian lore. He also somehow manages to keep his tone neutral for most of the book, although there were a couple spots you could tell he was rolling his eyes and one towards the end I'm pretty sure he was openly laughing at.

Tbh, I think this would be an excellent volume not just for students of Egyptology, who will be interested in how egyptosophy has wound its way through history, but also for anyone practicing within the Western occult traditions. Know your history, it's important.

Points earned: 1

Total points: 37

[helvreads]

Accidentally Catty and Accidentally a Genie by Dakota Cassidy

I read these two a couple weeks ago and never posted, but they're past of the same series so I'll do them together. These are part of Cassidy's Accidentally Paranormal series, and both are lighthearted formulaic paranormal romances. In Accidentally Catty our heroine is a vet who gets turned into a cougar (cue all the cougar jokes) and in Accidentally a Genie a completely different heroine gets turned into, well, a Genie. Complete with the skimpy outfit. Both get rescued by a group of other women who've had similar problems (heroines of previous books), and both learn to live with their new conditions. It's just cute and silly. One or two of the characters are like ones I'd write, but others are really not. Some of them are totally obsessed with fashion and like, girly shit, which is why I've only read these here and there.

Points earned: 2

Total points: 36

[helvreads]

High Magic, by Frater U:. D:.

This is one of the ones that's been sitting half read and I finally got around to finishing it. This is honestly a fairly good introduction to ceremonial magic and Western occultism, especially if you can't be arsed to read through Crowley's b.s. It's also written from the perspective of a chaos magician, so you get a lot more of the whys and hows than you might otherwise. It's very readable and includes a host of exercises and rituals for the budding magician, many of which are not for the faint of heart. Honestly it would be a good guidebook for a serious group. There are two sequels, neither of which I plan to read because ceremonial magic is not my jam. Still, I do recommend the author, who is very readable and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, most of what's in this one is stuff I'd already encountered in other sources, which is why it say half read for so long.

Points earned: 1

Total points: 34

[helvreads]

Roots, by Alex Haley

This one has been on the shelf for a while, and this is going to be a lengthy review. I’d like to start with my initial introduction to this book, which was many years ago in high school.  The summer before my junior year, we had to participate the accelerated reader program; basically we had to read so many points worth of books and then take a computerized test on them when school started back up.  Now, I read fast, but I don’t always remember a lot, so I planned to do my reading close to the deadline, which was within a couple weeks of the start of the year.  I had picked out my books from the list, gotten them from the library and was ready to get through my 50 points worth of books.

I failed to account for one thing: American literature is generally awful.

My initial plan was to read Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (I couldn’t get through the first chapter), The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (the Scarlet Letter was okay, how bad could this one be?  Very), and the Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (the only time I ever got the Cliffs Notes, and I couldn’t make it through those).  In retrospect, this was probably one of those occasions that was really a red flag for me having ADHD, but at the time, I was just absolutely bored to death and couldn’t make it through what looked like the best options to get my points.  Everything else on the list looked even worse, and the deadline kept creeping closer and closer.  Finally, I had four days left and 50 points to get.

Roots was the only book worth 50 points.

I spent every minute not in class or asleep reading it, got through it, took the test, and got my points just in time.  It was highly readable, and frankly, an amazing story.  For many years, I meant to get a copy for my personal library, but kept getting sidetracked by other things.  Now, I’ve finally got that copy and I’ve finally given it the reread it deserved.

This brick of a book is, as the cover of my 30th anniversary edition announces, the saga of an American family.  It covers six generations of a single African American family, beginning with an African ancestor kidnapped and sold into slavery, and ending with the author, a free, college educated man in the 60s-70s.  While many of the individual details are fictional, the family line is not, and Haley actually did a shit ton of research including several trips to Africa to find out the name of his African ancestor.  He also did exhaustive research on the slave trade, and while exact conversations and events may be fictionalized, it is stuff that happened.  So it’s biographical fiction, which is why you’ll find it in a couple different places at the bookstore.

We open up with Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka tribesman in the Gambia.  We get to watch him grow up, learn how to read and write in Arabic (he’s muslim).  We meet his parents, his brothers as they’re born (he’s the oldest of four), numerous villagers, and all in all, I’m down for his adventures here because it’s just cool.  Life is promising and full.  One day he goes out to cut some wood and never comes back, at least that’s where the story his tribe has ends.  But on Kunta’s end...he is kidnapped by slavers, tortured, shipped across the Atlantic, and sold as a slave.  No detail is left out, and Haley truly depicts the absolute horror of such a crossing.  The squalid, inhumane, diseased, and torturous conditions that Kunta travels in are historically accurate in a way that really strikes home the horror of the Transatlantic Slave trade.  Like, we know it was awful, that humans were treated like cargo.  But Haley’s depiction really brings it to life, and this is the hardest part of the book to read. It will have any sane person raging anew at those slave traders, and frankly, this passage alone would make Horror a reasonable section to shelve the book in.  Kunta survives (many others do not), and is sold into slavery at Annapolis.  Like any sane and intelligent person, he tries to escape four times, finally getting caught and crippled by slave catchers.  He gets bought by a relatively decent master, at least as decent as anyone who thinks it’s okay to own another human can be.  He eventually learns English, and gets the lay of the land from other slaves, learning how truly fucked he is.  There’s more, but he winds up marrying, and has a daughter, Kizzy.  He tells her where he came from so she knows who her people are, and teaches her some of his language.  Kizzy fucks up and gets sold away to a piece of white trash shit, and we get what I found to be the second hardest part of the book.  I won’t go into detail because triggers, but Kizzy winds up having a son by her master, and I think we all know how that happened.  Her son gets into cockfighting (that’s how their master made his money) and actually does quite well for himself, gets married, has a ton of kids, then he and the master push their luck too far and lose everything.  His family gets sold off, he gets loaned out for a few years, the civil war starts, and before his grandkids get too old, the emancipation proclamation happens, everyone gets freed, and the clan moves to Tennessee.  With each generation, Kunta’s story gets told and passed on.  Then we get the story of how the author’s grandparents met, then his parents, then he gets born, and it wraps up with him explaining how he did the research, eventually finding his ancestor (who eventually became The African) and verifying the rich oral tradition of his family.

The first time I read this, I learned a lot I didn’t know about slavery and how it happened.  This time, it really got me thinking about the ramifications of that period of history and exactly how damaging it was.  Haley was extremely fortunate to be able to trace his family back that far.  Most slaves were lucky if they knew one of their parents.  The physical, mental, emotional and other types of torture aside (because I think we can all agree that absolutely none of what happened in that time period to folks of African descent was acceptable in any way, shape or fashion) you have a massive chunk of people completely divorced from their ancestral heritage.  The sheer amount lost is staggering, and the length of time it went on, well, no wonder race relations are still a bit shitty.  Like,really look at the time line.  It’s not been 200 years since the emancipation proclamation.  What the fuck.  What the fuck.  The amount of damage that was done was so huge, honestly, it puts a lot in perspective for me.  We’re paying more attention to things now, and that’s the kind of horrific torture that will take a couple hundred years for a society to fully recover from.  In many ways we’re very fortunate to live in the times we do, but there’s still a lot of progress to be made.

All in all, I would say this is probably the best piece of American literature there is, and I think it’s definitely among, if not the most significant one.  Honestly, it probably should be required reading in schools (definitely high school, there’s a lot that’s not appropriate for younger kids).  As Americans, we should be aware of the mistakes that our country has made, not just the successes, so that we can learn from them and do better.  It was interesting to see what I took away this time, with the different perspective that time has given me, and it will be interesting to see what I get the next time. 

points earned: 1 total points: 33

[helvreads]

One Good Knight, by Mercedes Lackey

The second book in her Five Hundred Kingdoms series (I listened to the first one), One Good Knight tells the tale of a princess who “accidentally” gets set out as a virginal sacrifice to appease an angry dragon and the knight who rescues her. This was super fun, and I look forward to working through the rest of this series.  The world Lackey has built here is based on fairy tales and The Tradition, but smarter characters are able to twist the the tradition to serve them instead of being controlled by it.  It really plays off tropes in a fun way, and you get some fun twists on classic tales.  In this case, we’ve got the Dragon and Sir George story, and I don’t want to spoil it, but it takes both expected twists and a couple of unexpected ones.  It was really fun, and I’m really glad I’ve finally started getting into Lackey’s books.  Took me long enough. points earned: 1 total points:32

[helvreads]

Fire Season, by Stephen Blackmoore

The latest volume in Blackmoore's Eric Carter series sees our favorite necromancer in deep shit and once again dealing with the repercussions of his actions. For those unfamiliar with the series, it's a fairly solid urban fantasy in a similar vein to the Dresden Files, except a whole lot darker. Previous volumes saw our hero dealing with ancient Aztec gods, which resulted in him going back on a deal with Quetzalcoatl. Well, the feathered serpent is back for revenge, and L.A. winds up on fire more than usual as a result.

We get loads of magic and action, more bloodshed than you can shake a stick at, and in the end Eric winds up with a Persephone like deal to help run Mictlan, the Aztec realm of the dead and the bottle of a very powerful djinn. Fun times!

Points earned: 1

Total points: 31

[helvreads]

Women With Attention Deficit Disorders, by Sari Solden

I’d seen reviews on this one that kinda went both ways, but I found a secondhand copy and decided to give it a go.  It was honestly really helpful.  There was a lot I could identify with, and based on the notes of the previous owner, I think she and I would probably get along quite well.  Some parts of it did feel dated (it is an older edition, but frankly even for that copyright some of it seems a bit dated), but at the same time those dated things are largely the so called “women’s work” that we somehow are still expected to do in spite of everything (housework, etc).  I think the biggest thing that helped me with this was the repeated reminders that what I’ve thought of as character flaws and failings my entire life aren’t--they’re the ADHD.

points earned: 1 total points: 30

[helvreads]

Home From the Sea, by Mercedes Lackey

This one was part of her Elemental Masters series, which I have been quite enjoying in audiobook format.  In this one our heroine is a water master who’s family has a historical pact with a local clan of welsh selkies (the Selch).  She finds out on her 18th birthday that she has to marry one of them and does some bargaining of her own to at least do it on her terms.  This one had some really fun side characters, and I quite enjoyed the attention paid to the various Welsh fairy folk.  It’s not something you see often.

points earned: 1 total points:29

[helvreads]

Migraine, by Oliver Sacks

My edition of this was rather dated, but it was still very interesting and honestly if nothing else a good history of the diagnosis and treatment of migraines.  Sacks goes into incredible detail about all of the various symptoms and wierdness that is migraine, and honestly it was kinda cool to read about some of the examples he had.  Migraines are so fucking wierd, man.  I kinda wish I’d gotten a more recent edition, it would’ve been nice to see his analysis of some of the more recent treatments.  But, I picked it up used and honestly, even a new edition wouldn’t have the latest class of medication that just came out last September.  He does go into some technical stuff, so maybe not for everyone, but still an excellent read. points earned: 1 total points: 28

[helvreads]

The Society and Hunter, Healer, by Lilith Saintcrow

This one is a twofer because both were fairly slim and the second one was a sequel to the first.

Anyway, Lilith Saintcrow has been a favorite author for years, ever since I happened to find a copy of the first Dante Valentine book at Walmart, of all places.  So, when I happened to find a literal heap of older books by her that I didn’t even know existed at the Habitat Restore, you know they all had to come home with me.

The Society introduces us to a world in which psychics are real, and fighting for their liberty.  A black ops government organization called Sigma “recruits” psychics via kidnapping and drug addiction, often breaking them in the process. This is where the Society comes in--the Society is a group of free psychics fighting against Sigma, trying to remain free and to liberate others who get picked up and brainwashed.  In our first volume, we meet Rowan Price, an exceptionally strong psychic unaware of her own power, and the race is on.  The Society finds her first, in the person of one Justin Delgado, a former Sigma agent.  Rowan gets trained, and at the end, Sigma finds the Society’s headquarters, and we leave on the cliffhanger of Delgado back in Sigma’s custody. Hunter, Healer picks up a few months later.  Delgado is back working for Sigma, pretending to be a good boy while he waits for a chance to escape.  He’s blocked his own memory so he can’t give up Rowan, the woman he’s fallen in love with.  In the meantime, Rowan is worried sick and desperately trying to find.  She and the Society are also running circles around Sigma.  Of course, Delgado escapes and they’re reunited.  Things happen, yadda, yadda, peril happens, eventually Sigma is defeated and we get a happy ending.  Good stuff. points earned: 2 total points: 27

[helvreads]

Storm Cursed, by Patricia Briggs

Patricia Briggs has been among my favorite authors ever since I found a copy of The Hob's Bargain at the library many years ago. This volume is the latest in her Mercy Thompson series, which is about the adventures of a shapeshifting daughter of Coyote named Mercedes who is a Volkswagen mechanic and also married to an alpha werewolf. Mercy has come a long ways over the course of the series, and this recent volume is full of fun. Our setting has the human government preparing for peace talks with the rulers of the fae with Mercy and the pack right in the middle. However, a rogue group of powerful witches move into their territory, murdering the existing one. They don't stop there, either, putting in motion a plot to stop the peace talks altogether. It's up to Mercy to save the day, and with a rag tag team of fae and a wizard/witch vampire as well as her husband, she does exactly that.

It was a blast, and Ms. Briggs if you ever trip over this, thanks for being such a good writer.

Points earned: 1

Total points: 25