Goodreads Choice Awards Book Club discussion

Anyone have suggestions for the remaining letters?
I'm drawing a blank... especially for the Y.

So, these are listed by author name (the first letter of either the first or last name to make it a little easier on myself).

Rating system:

[★☆☆☆☆] = bad, did not enjoy
[★★☆☆☆] = ok, not terrible but not great either
[★★★☆☆] = good, enjoyable, would recommend
[★★★★☆] = amazing! could not put it down!
[★★★★★] = I can't live without this book in my life!!

Most books get three stars. I rarely ever give out five stars.

---

Start date: January 1, 2014
End date: December 31, 2014

☐ = Not yet read
☑ = Read

Letters completed: 5/26
Books completed: 5/28

☐ A - The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams



☐ B - Epileptic, by David Beauchard (aka David B.)



☐ C - Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, by Carl Sagan



☐ D - The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas



☐ E -

☐ F - Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky



☐ G - The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman



☐ H - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter



☐ I - Gyo, Vol. 1 and Gyo, Vol. 2, by Junji Ito



☐ J - Ficciones and The Aleph and Other Stories, by Jorge Luis Borges



☐ K - Beautiful Creatures: The Manga, by Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, and Cassandra Jean



☐ L - The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow



☐ M - Very Casual, by Michael DeForge



☐ N - Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, by Noam Chomsky



☑ O - Scott Pilgrim Bundle, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

[★★★☆☆]
Delightfully quirky plot and full of hilarious one-liners! I'd recommend this to anyone with a love for video games, nerd culture, or a good laugh. This book is a thousand times better than the movie, and for any graphic novel fans out there, this is a must read!



☐ P - Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman



☑ Q - We3, by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely

[★☆☆☆☆]
This story is quite frankly a lot of guts and gore but very little meat, puns possibly intended. Despite Quitely's lovely art and genius paneling (Seriously it's masterful!), Morrison's story just fell flat. The original premise was already cliched enough (cyborg creatures, super soldiers, the whole overly militant future society shebang...), but even with such a premise, if Morrison had fleshed out the story a bit more--helped the reader connect with the characters rather than throw in a bunch of action scenes and gratuitous gore--it may have worked. The ending doesn't count. Everything was too condensed for the reader to care much and the gore overpowered any feeble attempts to pull at the reader's heartstrings. Even Quitely's beautiful art can't redeem this work.



☐ R - The Golden Apples of the Sun, by Ray Bradbury



☑ S - Hey, Wait..., by Jason (born John Arne Sæterøy)

[★★★★☆]
Wow, I'm speechless. 66 pages of pure genius. I would give this a 4.5 if they allowed half stars on GR. Seriously, everyone should read this, graphic novel veteran or rookie. The storytelling, the profundity of the message, the powerful brevity and use of negative space... Perfection in every panel.



☐ T - Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, by Neil deGrasse Tyson



☑ U - The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

[★☆☆☆☆]
Wow. So at the beginning, I was really into this book and close to tears at the end of every chapter, but then, by about midway through, I started getting really sick and tired of Sinclair's emotional manipulation--There comes a point when a tragedy becomes too heavily manufactured for the reader to continue suspending his/her disbelief. By the end of the book, Sinclair just gave up trying to write literature and decided to lecture the reader on socialism. Basically, this was 350 pages of socialist propaganda.



☑ V - Pride of Baghdad, by Brian K. Vaughan, Niko Henrichon

[★★★☆☆]
The art is breathtaking!! The story, not so much. It's not terrible but it's definitely lacking in many aspects, which is disappointing because the premise of this novel had so much potential. The dialogue and characterization is a bit clunky, and while I enjoyed the symbolism, everything was a little too in-your-face obvious. The plotline, even for those with no prior knowledge of these incidents, is much too predictable, and the story begins to feel like a bullet point list of analogies and events. If not for the beautiful art, I would have given this 2 stars. Still, I'd recommend it to any graphic novel fan to peruse, if only for the art.



☐ W -

☐ X - Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran, Julia Lovell (Translator), Esther Tyldesley (Translator)



☐ Y -

☐ Z - Chess Story, by Stefan Zweig

Welcome to the challenge, Di. Have fun searching for books and reading :)

I think that for C, Joseph Conrad can be an interesting choice. His Heart of Darkness is considered to be a classic masterpiece and frequently exploited in other pieces of writing and in movies.

Anima wrote: "I think that for C, Joseph Conrad can be an interesting choice. His Heart of Darkness is considered to be a classic masterpiece and frequently exploited in other pieces of writing and in movies."

Thanks for the warm welcome and the suggestion! :D
I actually tried reading HoD about a decade ago, as part of my middle school reading list, and I found it dreadfully boring. Perhaps I was too young at the time to appreciate Conrad. I read The Secret Agent by Conrad in college and I loved it, so I think I might have to give HoD another try sometime. I'm still pretty scarred by my first attempts to read it though, so I think I'll leave this novel for when I'm in a Conrad mood. Not brave enough to add it to this list, haha.