Book Recommendations VII (The Final Edition)

 

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I was able to start right away. That brings us to this point, the end.

This has been a VERY fun series for me to do. Serious to silly, I've enjoyed the interactions with you all. The biggest problem is that it was TOO successful. My Calibre TBR now stands at over 270 and I've got over 100 on my ereader, which if you do the math, adds up to almost 400 books. That's almost 3 years worth of books. So I am going to stop these posts before I get up to 500. There's no need for that.

Without further ado, here are the final recommendations and my reactions to them!

Recommendations & Responses

Firewater suggested A Simple Plan by Scott Smith. After glancing at the last sentence of the wiki entry, which was depressing as all get out, I'm going with a "No" on this one.

Joelendil recommended Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. One of those 1920's hardboiled detective novels. You can tell it is grim and gritty by the guy's mouth on the cover. Going to go with a big fat "No" on this one too.

Brian recommended Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Sadly, Brian faded from view before I got this post up, so I'm going to go with another "no" here.

Swords&Spectres recommended The Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman. He had reviewed one or two of them and they sounded very interesting. I'm going with "yes" on this.

Fraggle suggested High Vaultage by Chris and Jen Sugden. I read the synopsis and a review by another blogger and decided to go for "yes" on this as well. You can see why my tbr is growing with these posts!

My cousin Darren suggested The Deeds of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. I've read one other book by Moon and it was the typical woman writer blathering on about feelings and ignoring a good story that was passing the reader by. So I'm not going to tempt fate and subject myself to that again. No.

Nic suggested Wives and Daughters, an unfinished novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. I'd actually read it back in '13, based on the idea that Gaskell was similar to Austen. Not. Even. Close. I'll never try another Gaskell book again.

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Lashaan suggested Count Zero by William Gibson, a sequel to The Book That Shall Not Be Named. This gets him a Chartreuse Flag without even trying. That book was the worst book ever and left me in a reading funk for over a month, a MONTH! So I'd rather cut off my head then read a sequel to it.

Wrap Up

This series of 7 posts have been a lot of fun, I must admit. Thank you all who have participated. I'd like to also give a big shout-out to Nic for getting the ball rolling last year. I never would have thought of doing something like this on my own and I'm glad she pointed out the idea.

The only downside is now I have to be "creative" again and think of a new series of posts to write about once a month. Anyone have any ideas?

• Book Recommendations I
• Book Recommendations II
• Book Recommendations III
• Book Recommendations IV
• Book Recommendations V
• Book Recommendations VI

Book Recommendations VI (The Penultimate Edition)

 

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

Firewater made a suggestion of Ghost Story by Peter Straub. It's obviously horror, so I'm noping that like nobody's business.

Joelendil recommended Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain by Adolfo Martinez. He compared it to Despicable Me and Megamind in his review, so I am totally adding this to my TBR!

Joelendil also recommended a non-fiction book. He even reviewed The Siege by Ben Macintyre. All in vain. Because that's a hard no-a-rewski!

Snapdragon recommended To Journey in the Year of the Tiger by Heather Dickson. I wasn't sure what to I was going to decide. Then she reviewed it (Here) and I realized it was dealing with anthropomorphized animals and I decided on a "no".

Lashaan suggested the comic book series Tintin by Herge. I read these in my tweens and teens and have often wondered about re-reading them and recording my thoughts in a review. However, after my attempt at doing just that for the Asterix series, and having it whimper out, I have decided to simply let Tintin stay in my memory, for good or bad.

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Orangutan Librarian "recommended" (knowing full well what she was doing) the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. If you don't know, ol' Cassie used to write Harry Potter fan fiction, BAD harry potter fan fiction. Then she decided to publish it with changed names, etc to be a "new" series. There was a lot of outrage, especially at Devilreads and she was one of the bitches who clamored for censoring of reviews, shelves, tags, whatever it took, of the reviewers because they were just stupid peons and not a giant intellectual like herself. She specifically got the P2P shelf automatically deleted from users accounts, with no justification by the staff at GR. P2P "can" mean "pulled to publish" and refers to people who write terrible fanfiction trying to go legit and pretend they are real writers and not just total scumbag losers. HOWEVER, P2P has a lot of other meanings but that didn't matter to Cassie. P2P was deleted from GR and if you complained, your account was put under review and your reviews were 'hidden'. I dislike a LOT of writers and authors as people, but Cassandra Clare can burn in hell for the role she played in '13 in the censoring of reviewers on Devilreads. And I'm going stop there before I start writing things I will regret later. But suffice to say, she is one of the lowest of the low in my opinion and is an enemy to free speech.

The Most Important Part

Well, as you might have noticed in the title of this post, I am going to be winding this "series" of posts down with the next one. Honestly, when I started this I figured I'd get two or three posts out of it, but here we are, approaching seven. I am as pleased as punch about that and want to make sure I thank you all for your needed participation. I literally couldn't have done this without you. I'll be thanking you all again in the next and final post.

Because the next one will be the final post for this, if you have any recommendations, please limit it to just one in the comments here. I'd rather not have to add 33 more reactions all in one post :-D 

Book Recommendations IV

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

This will be a longer than usual list. People have really gotten into the spirit of things and so I need to up my blogging game as well.

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin was recommended to me by Film-Authority. While he had the temerity to suggest a Barbara Cartland romance novel in an earlier Book Rec post (thus earning himself the first diseased Chartreuse Flag), this was a serious recommendation. I hate Modern Lit and A Kiss is square in the midst of that time period. So I’m going to dive into it and see what I think. Added

The House on the Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson was recommended by Snapdragon. I have heard of Hodgson but never read anything by him. I’m totally up for trying out an old newtome author! And look at that cover? Is that just plain creepy or what? Added

The Mr Men series was recommended by Dave. Going to have to pass as I never experienced these as a kid and thus have no nostalgia factor to draw me to them. Pass.

Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud was recommended by Mallika. I’ve read this Trilogy and the Prequel back in 2009-2011.

The Stand by Stephen King was recommended by Firewater. Sadly for him, I’ve read that, back in 2008.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman was Mogsy’s recommendation. Now, you have to understand, Mogsy and I have a “history”, a book history that is. We read upon parallel SFF tracks and over the years have found that our tastes are VERY similar, but our bookish interests never quite converge. In fact, it’s become a running joke that if Mogsy absolutely loves something that I think sounds interesting, I’ll end up hating it. Because that’s how it has shaken out every single time. So this gets a hard Pass!

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Now we come to the part where I begin to wonder about all of you. Seriously.

Version 1.0.0

Jilly Cooper’s Polo was recommended by Nic. Based on that cover alone gets Nic a Chartreuse Flag of Shame. Good job Nic, you earned that flag! 😉

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

• Book Recommendations I
• Book Recommendations II
• Book Recommendations III

Book Recommendations III

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

MarzAat recommended The Joy Makers by James Gunn. Just to be clear, this is NOT the same James Gunn who directed some of the MCU movies. I have not read anything by this Gunn and so it was Checkaroo on this. Have added it to my “new books” folder which eventually will make it into Calibre and be categorized within my TBR list. So I’ll get to this in the next year or two.

Firewater had several recommendations, but I’m going to choose just one for this post. He recommended Legend by David Gemmell. Lo and behold, I have already read it! Gave it 3.5stars back in ’19 too. Sadly, I was only able to stomach up to the third book in the series, where the faux-philosophy became too shallow for me to continue. I think I would have loved Gemmell a lot more if I’d read his stuff about 20+ years earlier.

Joelendil recommended Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini, a Scarlet Pimpernel knockoff as far as I could tell. It is going to get a “Not interested” as I’m not a big fan of reading about the French Revolution, period.

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Unfortunately, you all have let everyone down. No one was brave enough to face the shame of getting a Chartreuse Flag and everyone played it safe. In one sense that is ok but really folks, people come to see Bread and Circuses and it’s hard to do so without some outrageous suggestions by you. So I need you to step up for next time and make some suggestions that you KNOW I’m going to excoriate you for. Don’t think of yourself and your sense of shame, throw all that out the window. Think of your fellow bloggers for goodness sake!
~ wrings hands~
Won’t somebody think of the children?!?

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

• Book Recommendations I
• Book Recommendations II

Book Recommendations II

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

Beaton recommended Murtagh by Christopher Paolini. Now, I have read the previous books in the Inheritance Cycle, but I’d rather cut out my eyeballs with a pickle than read another book by Paolini. But just to be clear, in case you missed that subtle context, that is a N-O-.

Snapdragon recommended Merlin: The Lost Years. She was upfront that it was Young Adult. So I gave it an extra 5 seconds of thought but decided that I just wasn’t up to facing YA at this point in my life. So no-go.

Lashaan recommended the comic book Batman/The Shadow: The Murder Geniuses. Given my penchant for reading the ultra-pulpy, ultra-awesome Shadow novels, this was a no brainer. YES!

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Now we come to the S-A-D part of these Book Recommendations posts. The part where someone has recommended something so egregious, so outlandish, so beyond the pale of good taste and common decency that I am forced to respond with the Nuclear Option. No, not banning them from my blog, but something even worse. I give them the shameful Chartreuse Flag. This flag of infamy will affect future generations and possibly destroy worlds. It’s that bad.

And Jennifer Mugrage has more than earned it. She not only earned it, she brought three shovels, one for each hand and a one for her mouth, to dig her own grave. She had the unmitigated gall to suggest I read a Miss Marple Mystery, knowing how I feel about them. For those who don’t know, Miss Marple is a small town busy body who sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong and solves crimes, without even being a real part of the story. She’s almost as bad as Poirot.

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

• Book Recommendations I