This weeks Weekly Geek challenge (courtesy of Dewey at The Hidden Side of a Leaf) is to get caught up on book reviews with help from other bloggers. Here are the instructions from Dewy:
1. In your blog, list any books you’ve read but haven’t reviewed yet. If you’re all caught up on reviews, maybe you could try this with whatever book(s) you finish this week.
2. Ask your readers to ask you questions about any of the books they want. In your comments, not in their blogs. Most likely, people who will ask you questions will be people who have read one of the books or know something about it because they want to read it.
3. Later, take whichever questions you like from your comments and use them in a post about each book. I’ll probably turn mine into a sort of interview-review. Link to each blogger next to that blogger’s question(s).
4. Visit other Weekly Geeks and ask them some questions!
At first, I worried I didn’t have any books to review, but I finished two this weekend. I also am going to copy something from Andi at AndiLit.com — posting books I read awhile ago that I really enjoy, and opening those up for questions and reviews.
These are books that I have read and not reviewed, or a favorite book I would like to blog about. Those in bold are books I have finished reading this year, but not reviewed. The rest are just old favorites 🙂
- All the Fishes Come Home to Roost by Rachel Manija Brown (memoir)
- Stardust by Neil Gaimain (fiction)
- Blankets by Craig Thompson (comic book)
- Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres (memoir)
- Convergence Culture by Dr. Henry Jenkins (nonfiction, cultural studies)
- The Falls by Joyce Carol Oats (fiction)
- We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oats (fiction)
- Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (memoir)
- Eragon/Eldest by Christopher Paolini (young adult fiction)
If you have questions about any of these books, leave them in the comments and I’ll write up answers/a review of them later this week!
Comments on this entry are closed.
Two questions for you:
What did you think of Stardust? Everyone raves about it so much that I feel like my mediocre reading of it might be something about my life at that moment rather than the book.
As for Eragon, what is the book like? I hear good things about it and liked the movie – but I hear the movie pales in comparison to the book.
I’m also anxious to hear your thoughts on Stardust. It’s been several years since I read it, but I thought it was interesting and surreal. How did you feel it stacks up to other works by Gaiman?
Aha, Reading Lolita in Tehran. I’ll ask you some of your own questions! Did reading this book change your perspective on Iran and/or make you want to learn more about it?
What was the most surprising or shocking passage in the book?
Have you read all or any of the books that were read in the Tehran book club (Lolita, Daisy Millar, etc)? Did knowing those texts inform upon your reading of Nafisi’s text?
My question is – did you enjoy Eragon and Eldest enough to be excited about the forthcoming Paolini book, Brisinger? I haven’t yet managed to read Eragon, I am a bad children’s librarian.
Hmmm, I mention Reading Lolita in my last post. And you just read Stardust, too. Did you see the movie? (I saw the movie which made me want to read the book.)
And as a follow-up to the above question – if you have seen the Stardust movie, is there anything you feel the movie handled better than the book, or vice versa? And have you read a lot else by Gaiman? What would you recommend to someone who has only read Stardust, but who hasn’t ever particularly liked Terry Pratchett? 😛
Thanks for all the questions! I just posted my review of Stardust, and will have the other questions ready for tomorrow.
I’m interested in the technique and art of storytelling itself so anything along that line would interest me. My questions are for any or all of the fiction titles in your list:
How was Point-of-View handled? Was there a single POV character or did it alternate among two or more. Was it always clear whose eyes and mind were filtering?
How was language used to set tone and mood?
Was the prose dense or spare? Were sentences generally simple or complex?
How was metaphor used? Were associations fresh or did they tend toward cliche? Did they add to your understanding of the theme?
What was the central or organizing theme?
How does the title relate to the story? Was it fitting?
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BTW I’m hosting a book giveaway this week. Four copies of Still Summer by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Four chances to enter until Saturday 3PM PST.