Finished up White Teeth and Gilead over the holidays, then just wrapped up The Underground Railroad a few days ago. Just picked up and started on The Sellout, which I got for Christmas.

Finished A Brief History of Seven Killings a couple weeks back and loved it. Once I got used to the voice of it, I couldn't put it down and was sad to see it end. After that I read Ragtime since it was on the shelf at my library. Fairly quick read, and fairly enjoyable what with all the historical folks bouncing in…

Recently finished up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi. Station Eleven started off slow for me, and reminded me too much of MaddAddam, but it surprised me by the end. Even though I knew Boy, Snow, Bird was a retelling of Snow White, it still surprised me as I realized it was…

Finished off The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay last week, and now I'm kicking myself for taking so long to get to it. The story kept moving in ways I didn't expect yet somehow felt like it ended up exactly where it should, even if the ending caught me off guard.

Also finished off Dead Wake by Erik Larson last…

Recently finished A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, the companion to Life after Life, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Missoula by Jon Krakauer. Really enjoyed A God in Ruins, and Missoula just made me angry - especially at prosecutors and the victim blaming that seems to be run-of-the-mill for them.

Just started The Sense…

Within the last few weeks I've finished up:

Moby Dick, which took way longer than I'd care to admit;
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which other than a handful of horrific passages during the POW chapters, was a little boring;
Krakatoa by Simon Winchester, which reminded me of a hybrid Erik Larson & Bill Bryson by…

Getting close to finishing Moby Dick which is taking much longer than I would like. There's definitely a lot of riveting passages, especially when they are actually in the hunt, but the long slogs through whale anatomy are a bit tough, especially when reading with sleep in your eyes.

Next on the list is one of the…

Do yourself a favour and save some time I'd say. It was doubly disappointing since I'd just read Stone Mattress, Atwood's recent short story collection, and I thought most of them were great. Just dipping back into that well one too many times I think.

Wolf Hall is just wall to wall fantastic. It takes some time getting used to the way she refers to Cromwell as "he" in dialogue, but once you get past that it's next to impossible to put down. I wish modern day politics was even half as intriguing.

Finished up Bring up the Bodies a few weeks back. I found it much more readable than Wolf Hall as she seems to have cleaned up the tricky dialogue she used in the first book. The third book cannot come soon enough. Has anyone checked out the BBC series yet?

Also just finished MaddAddam last week, which was a major let…

That's definitely reassuring. It took a few pages to realize that "he" was "Cromwell" all the time, and not just the last speaker. Glad to know the struggle is worth it.

I read The Chrysalids in high school as well and have also been grateful it was in my curriculum ever since. I think reading that book as a 15 year old helped shape how I felt about that genre of fiction ever since.

Finished up Unbroken before the release of the movie in December. It definitely made you feel some strong feelings towards Japanese prison commanders and the entire story of his survival throughout the ordeal was more than enough to make me never want to enlist.

Working my way through Wolf Hall at the moment, only…

I know what you mean. I remember getting tired when reading that part and when I started reading again the next day I had no idea what was going on and had to go back about 10 pages.

After finishing 2666, which took about 3 months, I read The Year of the Flood, Colourless Tsukuri Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time in rapid succession.

Tsukuru Tazaki was a breeze to get through and one of the least challenging Murakami's I've read, but I liked…

The Bully Pulpit was a bit of a slow drag at points, but Taft gets more interesting as it goes on and you realize he's fairly inept as a straight-up politician. The stuff in the Philippines is rather interesting too, but Teddy will always be more interesting

I finished that off last month too. "The Part about Fate" was my favourite I think, though the feeling of finishing "The Part about the Crimes" and moving onto something less horrific and more narrative made me like "The Part about Archimboldi" quite a bit too.

Finally finished 2666 which I will freely admit took me way too long to read. I found parts 1, 3 and 5 pretty exhilarating, especially part 5 after how much part 1 teased about the mystery behind Archimboldi. Part 4 was so bleak that it was hard to get through, but the story weaved through all the gruesome murders was…

By the time you get to Roosevelt and Taft you can knock em both off the list with The Bully Pulpit. The fact that it bounces back and forth between stories about the two of them means it never really has the chance to get dry. That mixed with the journalism aspect makes it a really intriguing read.

That book is pretty interesting in what it's trying to get across and it's definitely a plausible argument, but so many times when I was reading it I felt I was reading a high school essay. Every chapter uses the exact same structure and it can get a little annoying.