reading a bit mor

I just left NYC af­ter a love­ly ex­pe­ri­ence in the Strand Book Store. I have set a goal to read 200 books be­fore I write my own. Right now – in­clud­ing … my … last … posts – I’m at 78.

Ex­cit­ed for read­ing this year – last year, I read only about half of what I had hoped (28/50), but go­ing for­ward, I will try to pri­or­i­tize it.

Non­vi­o­lent Com­mu­ni­ca­tion: A Lan­guage of Life by Mar­shall B. Rosen­berg, Deep­ak Chopra
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
I found this book to be ex­treme­ly help­ful and am look­ing for­ward to em­ploy­ing the skills I’ve learned to de­vel­op a more com­pas­sion­ate form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I read this book in prepa­ra­tion for en­coun­ters I would have with my fam­i­ly mem­bers, and was ac­tu­al­ly able to dif­fuse sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions about pol­i­tics by us­ing some of its tools. The most im­por­tant thing I learned was the Four Part Non­vi­o­lent Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Mod­el [PDF]: Ob­serve sit­u­a­tion – ex­plain Feel­ings – ad­dress Needs – make spe­cif­ic Re­quests then to have this re­peat­ed back, and hear the per­spec­tive of the oth­er per­son.
I took a lot of notes on this book, so that if it was ever nec­es­sary I could run a work­shop on the con­tents – and I wish I would have known about many of its con­tents ear­li­er in life.

The In­va­sion (The Call, book 2) by Peadar Ó Guilín
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
**SPOIL­ER ALERT** It was very pleas­ant to be back in the hor­ri­fy­ing world of Ire­land, in the black and white fae world as The In­va­sion threat­ened the “many col­ored world.” Ahh, this se­ries. I love how will­ing the au­thor was to be hor­rif­ic and gorey with their imag­i­na­tion.
This book was fast paced and cap­ti­vat­ing, just like the first one. The only thing I didn’t like about was the char­ac­ter Liz Sweeney. It didn’t seem like her con­tin­u­ous bul­ly­ing pres­ence added much to the sto­ry ex­cept to re­mind the read­er that these char­ac­ters were teens and – there­fore – need­ed to be­have in a ju­ve­nile, frus­trat­ing way.
In con­trast, I en­joyed that Aoife Mac­Mur­rough was promi­nent­ly fea­tured as a char­ac­ter. I re­mem­bered ap­pre­ci­at­ing that in the first book we got to read about her over­com­ing dev­as­tat­ing loss and here we get the chance to see her sur­vive the wreck­age of her life and be brave. =) As for The Sid­he, I ap­pre­ci­at­ed how the au­thor made their vic­tims so dis­gust­ing­ly hu­man – with the cen­taur apol­o­giz­ing as he hurt the chil­dren, as the small lep­rechaun fae begged to be killed, the whole thing es­ca­lat­ed epi­cal­ly and the fact it in­clud­ed huge flesh golems made of over 100 bod­ies was epic. Over­all, I loved this se­ries and ap­pre­ci­at­ed the macabre hor­ror a lot.

Good Omens: The Nice and Ac­cu­rate Prophe­cies of Agnes Nut­ter, Witch by Ter­ry Pratch­ett & Neil Gaiman
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
A plea­sur­able and amus­ing read. I keep en­joy­ing the ideas Neil Gaiman seems to have about demons.
The char­ac­ters in this book were ex­treme­ly nu­mer­ous and the book it­self didn’t take it­self too se­ri­ous­ly, but I liked the idea with­in that a per­son could choose to be­have how he thought was right in­stead of go­ing long with a des­tiny writ­ten up or poor­ly record­ed by ce­les­tial agents. It spoke a lot about one’s abil­i­ty to make choic­es while they are live that make oth­er people’s lives bet­ter in­stead of get­ting hung up on the af­ter­life. I also rather en­joyed the nar­ra­tive about the De­vice fam­i­ly and the witch­es. It was quite eclec­tic and sil­ly as was the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Crow­ley and his an­gel coun­ter­part.

The Book of Atrus (Myst, #1) by Rand Miller, Robyn Miller, David Wingrove
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    AU­THOR    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅    (this a 3.5 but I am round­ing it up in­stead of down)
**SPOIL­ER ALERT** What I en­joyed most about this book was the de­scrip­tions of the worlds that Atrus and his fa­ther en­coun­tered. It was love­ly to hear about the places they vis­it­ed and to think about how they could cre­ate such places with just words. It was a neat way to in­tro­duce my­self to the Myst se­ries, since I had not played the game but knew they were pre­cious to sev­er­al friends of mine. I thought parts of the plot were re­al­ly en­gag­ing and that the vil­lain was par­tic­u­lar­ly well done – watch­ing him try to con­trol and grab pow­er was an in­ter­est­ing strug­gle.
I also re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed the char­ac­ter of Anna and the way she brought her craft­ing to things. Her em­bell­ish­ing and dec­o­rat­ing of every­thing she could was re­al­ly charm­ing to me. It was love­ly how she taught Atrus to see, and to ob­serve with a ques­tion­ing heart.
I would rate it a 3.5 be­cause I did not par­tic­u­lar jam with the pro­tag­o­nist – I found him to be some­what ba­sic.

Horse­rad­ish by Lemo­ny Snick­et
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ³⁄₅
This was an amus­ing col­lec­tion of apho­risms from Lemo­ny Snick­et. I re­mem­ber vo­ra­cious­ly read­ing his books as a child, and it seems like some of these quotes came from his se­ries. Over­all it was in­ter­est­ing and a quick read which re­mind­ed me of Snicket’s sar­don­ic and unique­ly dour voice when writ­ing.

Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun by Guiller­mo del Toro, Cor­nelia Funke
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    AU­THOR    5/5
Beau­ti­ful and el­e­gant, this sto­ry weaves to­geth­er myth and re­al­i­ty in a de­light­ful and en­tic­ing way. So few books have held the nar­ra­tive pow­er this one does and I loved it to pieces. Es­pe­cial­ly the char­ac­ter of the Faun. The de­tails in this sto­ry were so poignant and I want­ed there to be so much more than there was. The un­der­ly­ing sto­ry pulled my heart­strings, es­pe­cial­ly the tale of the king and the clock­mak­er. I was in­cred­i­bly lucky to have this book read aloud to me, which en­hanced it great­ly. Weird­ly enough, this book also suf­fered wa­ter dam­age- which seemed ap­pro­pri­ate to the sto­ry of the drowned witch.
It’s hard to re­view some­thing that I find as en­chant­ed as I found this, like try­ing to clas­si­fy myths. It was a beau­ti­ful, heart­break­ing sto­ry that brought me more to life to read.

Kill 6 Bil­lion Demons, Vols. 1 + 2 by Tom Parkin­son-Mor­gan
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
I am con­stant­ly im­pressed with the lev­el of char­ac­ter de­sign, de­tail in world build­ing and nar­ra­tive in­ter­est this sto­ry has been craft­ing. Su­per awe­some!

So at Strand, I found more for my read­ing list :

Lady Killers: Dead­ly Women Through­out His­to­ry by Tori Telfer
How to Hide an Em­pire: A His­to­ry of the Greater Unit­ed States by Daniel Im­mer­wahr
The Silk Roads: A New His­to­ry of the World by Pe­ter Frankopan
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Sto­ries of the Wild Woman Ar­che­type by Claris­sa Pinko­la Es­tés
Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) by Tam­syn Muir
The Um­brel­la Acad­e­my (Apoc­a­lypse Suite #1) by Ger­ard Way, Gabriel Bá
Foucault’s Pen­du­lum by Um­ber­to Eco
Dhal­gren by Samuel R. De­lany
What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End #3) by David Wong

If you have any re­al­ly strong read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions let me know. And if you’re around Berlin on the 1st of Feb­ru­ary, please in­quire as to my home­com­ing par­ty.

 

—car­nelian king

Flom­mist Car­nelian King is a per­form­ing artist, prod­uct de­sign­er, toy mak­er and non­bi­na­ry clown cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Berlin. Copy­right © 2020 Car­nelian King.

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