Aaron Schmid > Recent Status Updates

First story - The Magicians of Caprona - was good. I liked it. It's a boring 3 star review. Honestly, Wynne Jones is pretty underwhelming for me at this point. I want so badly to understand how these different dimensions work and what the significance of angels and higher order dimensions might be... but I mean, it's a Y/A Novel, so I'm just rolling with the punches, I guess. Maybe I'll read book 4 soon, maybe not.

That last one (The Street of the First Shell) was a little out of the norm, in that it wasn't so unusual, haha. The Street shorts are pretty good though. The dreamy fades between home and horror are very well done. It does seem like it's almost cliche at times, because it's just so exemplary. A symptom of foundational texts I think I'll probably wrap this up no. I was going to push it out another year, but it's time.

The Bible exists in this world, where an angel's song is the most powerful sort of magic. Of course it's in Latin, haha. Mario Andretti hasn't reappeared. Seems like Jones just cameoed him because she wanted to include an celebrity Italian kids would've known. Its predictability, so far, makes the book feel slow, as I'm just waiting for my presumptions to be confirmed. But Jones's endings are usually fast and tidy.

It's quite Italian, and different than the first two in the series so far. It doesn't focus on the different dimensions or Chrestomanci as much. I like it though, even if I feel like I can sort of guess what's going to happen. We'll see if it's as predictable as I think, by the end. It's weird how angels and the church mix with magic and songs, but not God? The cat lore is cool, but I want more creativity like that.

I went into this pretty blind, just knowing there were bull fights at some point. Pretty early on, I started cringing at the characters. Cohn and his fiancé, Jake and the prostitute, and Lady Ashley and Mike. Everyone is drunk all the time, cavorting, and fornicating - it seems so vapid. Juxtaposed to the backdrop of marvelous European scenes, the characters feel unworthy, sad, and small - The "Lost Generation."

I think Stickley is doing something weird with the frame. Never trust an omniscient narrator who points out their own omniscience I guess? I can't tell yet, but maybe this is a report of a story gathered from someone under hypnosis? It would explain a lot of the psycho-sexual Freudian stuff and the overblown dreamlike characteristics of many sections. I'm not sure if that helps or hurts the story, but it's something.

That was probably the best section of the book so far. But a huge shift has finally happened and, although there are more bad sermons, I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel - less than 100 pages left in this edition. I feel like we're running out of pages too quickly though. There's still quite a bit I expect to see. Obviously, I need the ending, and to think about it, but I don't know how to rate it.

I don't think this is meant to be antisemitic, but "The Consortium" of bankers and businessmen certainly feels a bit... familiar, haha. Surely, there is some Christian prosperity-gospel/manifestation nonsense that would espouse these bad ideas, but I think it's interesting that Stickley stamps his Baptist villains with the very conspiracy that his political antithesis might foist upon the Jewry. Same team? Haha!

Actual page: 290/326 - The listing is wrong, but this is the equivalent percentage of completion, accounting for the incorrect page count of 223, so... whatever. But it's maybe better than I expected, albeit not without it's quirks. Swift really is the master satirist. It's amazing how much still applies. It's better than Huxley, Orwell, or Bradbury, if you ask me. I loved the movie, but this is honestly better.

Reading this again as we prepare for our Disney Make-A-Wish trip. We'll probably end up visiting Diagon Alley, Kings Cross, and Hogsmeade on our 12th Anniversary. This is the book I was reading when Ava was diagnosed. They were coming out of the Shrieking Shack when I got the call. I don't think I'll ever forget that. I think this is the best of the series for me though. There are a lot of reasons to like this book.

All the characters kinda suck. Gaburdine is okay, but all she thinks about is Bradley and her sections are very short, respectively. The setting isn't really cohesive either, as I just can't imagine a southern uprising of this scale, during the Vietnam-era's social resistance, where "the north" is completely unresponsive. Also, Maxim's detachment devalues the "war" and his philosophising is just as bad as Bradley's.

Maybe I'm reading this at the wrong hour - or maybe it's because the book is often a bad sermon, in multiple ways at once - but there are sections that put me right to sleep. It goes on and on quite a bit. It's funny and clever at times, and it makes me want to read more from the author, just to see how he is outside of this southern context. But it's a slow read. I think Stickley is probably very smart. That's fine.

Helpful, convicting, Biblical. Brauns is doing a great job so far, and I think it's amazingly applicable and approachable, rather than technical. I was hoping it would sort of help with the "consequences" a little more, but who knows. I've still got a little way to go. I think it might help that the author is somewhat local to me. I assume there might be something "midwestern" about his language that I appreciate.

This book suffers the common ailments of Christian non-fiction. Each chapter tries to cover a big topic and most fail to address the most pressing questions men have. I understand length limitations, but some contributors come across as pedantic and inaccessible. Also, brother of mine wanted to go through this book with me, but the text is so broken by references and parentheses that his audio-book is intolerable.

Been reading this to the kids before bed, a chapter at a time, and the pictures are beautiful. Grahame's prose is so wistful and frolicking, it's lovely, but it does show its age sometimes - the sentences do tend to run a bit. It's a decent book for reading out loud, but it's not the easiest read. Some words are antiquated and unused by this reader, but the kids still follow along just fine. Excited to read the end.

I think this is the first time I've ever read a story that seems so mythological about America's south. The bit with the tar-baby felt like I was reading about a leprechaun or a cryptid. The parts about Russia and the Mexicans seem just as colorful and imaginatively outlandish. I often feel the urge to read this out loud because the language is so thick with southern accents, but man, do those southern boys drawl on.

I grew up loving the 1996 film adaptation of this (starring Ted Danson). So far, it turns out, it was a fairly faithful adaptation. Gulliver does come home after Lilliput though, gets rich off micro-husbandry, and has a couple of kids before leaving again and having more adventures in, or near... Tartaria? Lovely. I can't wait for parts 3 and 4. Brobdingnag is terrifying, but Laputa has always been so magical to me.

I appreciate the collaborative and multi-tonal approach of this collection. We'll see, but I've often found that by about 60% of the way through Christian non-fiction, a single author might have exhausted their contributions to a given subject, then fall into mostly to repetition or reiteration. I will say the varied contributors do make for an interesting kind of necessity to "code-switch" when reading each chapter.

This book is really good so far. It hammers home the really vital ideas, repeating definitions and theological necessities, challenging but reassuring readers, and accounting for the nuances in the many messy and unique situations of offense. Forgiveness is at the core of Christianity. It's so desperately needed, but it can be done poorly or falsely. The applications of this book are extremely broad and just as deep.

This book is Southern, in that its language is abundantly loquacious. Read it in a Foghorn Leghorn/Bonoit Blanc voice, a molasses drawl, it feels absolutely appropriate. Stickley seems simply virtuosic, definitely maximalist (to say it could be shorter is an understatement) but the pacing fluctuates quite a bit. Sometimes it's very fast reading. Mostly not. I like when his wit bends into comedy, but it feels angry.

It's fun to think about how this story might've been moralized and interpreted by its original audience. It's hard to say whether this is myth or fantasy. Did Homer's readers believe in Cyclopes or Athena's protection as much as Odysseus' ships, skepticism, and world-weariness? The Odyssey certainly isn't as exciting or violent as the Iliad, but it has some good moments. Lots of it just gets muddled as events fly by.

Crazy that this book has so many (50,000,000) copies in print. I know very few people who have ever heard of it. I imagine school teachers must like to use it, perhaps. Still, this is like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a philosophical novel, a few decades old, and I just cannot help but lament the loss of a culture capable of making this a best seller. The story is thin, so far, but the lessons are nice.

The city is a sad place. The country is too, but with a different brand of whistfulness. I really like the mix of anathema and the inversons of space and time, but it does sort of take over and obscure the characters a bit. Everything feels metaphorical and cryptic in some weird, unintelligible, occult/pagan, fairie way. Reminds me of The King in Yellow a bit. I'm hoping it ends well. I think it'll end in mystery.

I'm so torn by this book. Some parts are wonderfully brilliant. It captures so much essence: what it feels like to be a child, or a parent, an insomniac, a city-dweller, even an animal... This is a true mastery of language and artistic expression. It's magnificent. But it's also incredibly sad, lost, lonely, depraved, even destructive at times, or so it seems. I still feel like it's only just stopped beginning.

This book is almost a hundred years older than it feels at times. There's something very old and creepy and mystical about. It's reminding me of a lot of other fairy stories I've read (including 1Q84), but it also reminds me of Steinbeck and Garcia-Marquez. Timmy Willy has to be the most unfortunate name for a female character, haha, but I do love a lot of the other names: Daily Alice Drinkwater, Smoky Barnable etc.

Is Pynchon really dropping a D.L. Moody reference?! So bizarre, haha. This whole book is Bizarroland. Really funny and flowery and oddly endearing in a very Americana sort of way. Feels like Wallace might've take some cues from how Pynchon plays with the setting. Very cool alternate-reality-feeling version of Reagan era California, like White Noise too, kinda. I'm enjoying it but feel totally up in the air still.