Harry Shaw > Recent Status Updates

I should be able to finish this by the year end. Then I will have Spanish heritage award and hit 30 books read.

The story is very well written. The saga has gone from mother to daughter and just passed onto granddaughter. Clara has just passed away of old age which is a surprise considering her curse. I guess her parents being decapitated was enough punishment.

Very well written. I would have never thought I would enjoy this story had I been given a synopsis of the whole book. Isabel Allende's writing is so compelling with enough quirks and strangeness to her characters to keep it very entertaining.

Really well written. Characters are fleshed out. Not sure where the actual plot is going but I'm along for the ride.

Wow, the second chapter really picks up. What a bastard Esteban is. But also provides for the peasants. I haven't read something as detailed as House of the Spirits in ages.

I'm setting myself up the challenge of reading House of the Spirits before new year's day to round out my total books for the year to 30 and to also get the Hispanic heritage award on Goodreads for this month.

Additionally, this is Crouch Ends Waterstones book club reading for January and is at the end of the month which will suit me better for my surgeries healing.

The Frontiers of Pandora comic is by far the strongest. Soleks story is like a Navi Rambo recovering from PTSD. But gets roped back into using his skills to help the resistance. Also the panels are actually coherent and easy to follow. I also think his story has the strongest artwork so far. Hopefully it translates to the DLC when I play.

Tsu'tey's Path. Basically a play by play of Tsu'tey's interactions with Jake Sully in the film. A few additional scenes but nothing major.

Great pallet cleanser for a shite run of novels I've been reading. Amazing Artwork as usual. Brutal and slightly even unsettling with the creepiness of the creatures

Ironically, the structure of it being written in verse is what is pulling me through the book. When I heard it was in verse at book club I thought it would be a chore but without it's rhythm it would have been a brutal read. The content however is trite. I absolutely hate the main character, her self pitying and lashing out with her own misery and bitterness at others.

Yuck, the content of the Poet is everything I dreaded about women's romance fiction. Narcissistic, finger-pointing and unfocused. I hate it when a lead character is so infatuated with another character that it feels as if they are in their own story as an outsider. A third through, and I find the book is almost written in the second person by how captive she is to her "successful academic university professor lover".

Again, getting through this slowly. Partly savouring it and partly because I was expecting deeper dives. It gets very repetitive. Saying how much effort they put into everything, how close Fortiche Studio worked with League of Legends, but that's all that is said, repeated over and over again. It doesn't really go into the how, which is what I would find more interesting.

I actually got much further than my last update before I put Scaramouche, The King Maker, Down. I intend to pick it up again and finish it. It's definitely inferior to the first. Two-thirds in, and I am still "waiting" it felt like. Whereas the first had the three inner books that were so fun to get through.

I am enjoying the book, but I thought I'd blast through reading. It's not the deep dive I was hoping for. It doesn't provide the behind-the-scenes technical knowledge or breakdowns I hoped for. More just explosion diagrams showing the initial concepts to the final. Not much of the "How".

Started this yesterday. It's easy to read because it's simple. I think maybe some of this may have been lost in translation to English because it is very frank and literal like the Finnish language but I don't have the nuance to know how it is different to English.

I would never have read this myself but I am going to finish it because it is my Waterstones book club for December.

Again, I'm really enjoying reading the source material as a recap for season 4s release. I actually think the show has fleshed out a lot of the plotlines. Slightly sad that I will reach where the show is up to soon and stop reading. The art style is amazing as well.

Really enjoying reading this as a recap before season 4. I think the show has actually enhanced a lot of the plot lines. Some stuff in the book is funnier, maybe because I am imagining the delivery.

Up to issue 17 so far. I'm into season 2 of the show now. I'm really enjoying reading invincible. It's my first time reading a supporting comic for a show I've already watched. So far I'm very impressed with how the show has fleshed out the storyline from these panels and the reveal of the who dun it is far superior in the series. That being said I've found the comic far funnier where I've actually laughed out loud.

Very much enjoying this book. Some of the nuances Peter discovers about Chinese life I realise I have observed as well in the manner of international students at university. It would have been more useful if I'd read this prior to studying.

Read a lot more last night. A very interesting book on somebody experiencing China and communism for the first time at a boots on the ground level. My favourite chapters are the journalistic ones describing his time there. My least favourite are the bridge chapters in between those describing the history I find them boring, I don't think they're particularly well written compared to his recounts.

Started this alongside scaramouche. It's fun so far and I needed some sort of contemporary break from scaramouche. Sometimes that 1920s literature can get too flowery in how it's written especially at the moment where they've been stuck in the same place for the first 100 pages. I will go back to it as I remember Sabatinis takes quite a while to set the foundation of his stories. This however has been very funny.

Always a pleasure to be back in Raphael Sabatinis world. Funny, intelligent and fast paced. So far it is a direct continuation of the ending of Scaramouche which I still remember very well. Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker "I am your father!" Comes to mind 😂. Looking forward to where this goes. The king has just been executed in the French revolution.

Read the second part of Letters From Zedelghem. Was my favourite story in the first half and is still my favourite now Excellently written. My copy of Cloud Atlas is 529 pages. I am on the final chapter so will update when finished. Goodreads only has the book listed as 509 pages.

Again, the second part of half lives Louisa Rey mystery was great. The stories are reminding me of other pieces of media or fiction I've consumed in the same lane. I mean that in the most positive way possible, this last chapter heavily reminded me of The fugitive with Harrison ford when he's trying to expose the pharmaceutical company, whereas Louisa is trying to expose clean nuclear energy government scam.

Wow, Cloud Atlas requires discipline to get through but once you've invested the time it pays off. Really enjoyed the middle bridge chapter Slooshas Crossing. The following chapter Sonmi (which I mentioned previously I did not enjoy particularly.) was amazing as well. Thoroughly enjoying the second parts of the initial stories now. Ghostly tale of Timothy Cavendish was very funny as well.

The middle chapter of the book, before the initial chapters are revisited, is Slooshas Crossing. It is my favourite chapter so far, and I am interested to see where it goes. It reminds me of Horizon Zero Dawn's Plot, where human technology has backslid due to a massive extinction/ fall event, and older, more advanced technology is being rediscovered.

The stories I am reading aren't particularly interesting at the moment. Halfway into the book I hope the chapters that revisit actually make them better. I found the Sonmi chapter particularly tiresome the sentient robot or replicant in this case has been done to death and better. The chapter really dragged for me. My favourite so far was letters to Zelghelm or however you spell it.

Just started the third story. Still have no idea where Cloud Atlas is going tho. The second story only had a very brief link to the first.