Reading Challenge 2024

RobMCFC said:
Oh, wow, you lucky boy! I'll look forward to reading any comments you have when you've finished.

Had a Kindle for nearly 10 years now. I resisted for a while, thinking that I loved going into a bookshop browsing/buying books and the act of reading a book. But a Kindle has two major advantages to me:-

1. The backlight means that you can read anytime/anywhere, regardless of light conditions.
2. It stops me hoarding loads of books that I say I'll keep because I'll definitely re-read (and in about 99% of cases, don't).
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Yeah I was the same! But with work and then a 5 year old to look after, I normally only have time to read in the evenings so the backlight was big in deciding it for me.
 
WickyWain said:
Yeah I was the same! But with work and then a 5 year old to look after, I normally only have time to read in the evenings so the backlight was big in deciding it for me.
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Also, I don't generally read in bed, but on the occasions when I do, even aside from the light factor, it's far easier to manage a Kindle than a clumsy (and potentially heavy) book in bed.

At the end of the day, it's the words that matter, not how they are presented.
 
  1. Fairy Tale – Stephen King - 5/10
  2. Wolf Pack – Will Dean - 7/10
  3. A Small Death in Lisbon – Robert Wilson - 6/10
  4. A Man Called Ove – Fredrick Backman – 8/10
  5. Tomorrow's Children – Daniel Polansky – 3/10
  6. The Mobster’s Lament – Ray Celestin – 8/10
  7. Priest of Crowns – Peter McLean – 9/10
  8. Get It On: How the ‘70s Rocked Football – Jon Spurling – 9/10
  9. The Effigy Engine – Scott Lynch – 7/10
  10. The Ferryman – Justin Cronin – 8/10
Ferryman.jpg


Before talking about The Ferryman, I have to say a bit about why I was looking forward to this.

In 2010, I read something online about an upcoming book called The Passage. It sounded great and when I finally got hold of it, I was absolutely enthralled by this modern take on vampires. None of this social-vampire-seducing-young-women malarkey – these vampires were like wild animals who’d tear your throat out and not bother to quote poetry or engage in philosophical debates before moving on to their next victim.

The first 250 pages of The Passage is some of the finest, pulse-poundng, heart-wrenching writing that I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. This section of the book paints a nightmare picture of a world in meltdown, how it started (which was a great explanation in itself) and how it turned out for an FBI agent with a young girl in his care. The rest of the book jumped forward hundreds of years to show how the world had moved on and was followed by two further books taking the total page count to well over 2000 (from memory).

The fact is that what followed felt a little disappointing considering the incredible set-up, but it showed me that Justin Cronin can write and in certain areas, there are few that can match him. So now you see why I was so excited to read his first work after The Passage trilogy.

The Ferryman has an intriguing setup: an archipelago of three small islands separated from the rest of the world. We don’t know what’s happened to the world, but it wasn’t good. The privileged few spend their lives on the island of Prospera, whilst the workers who serve them live on the overcrowded and slum-like Annex. Then there’s the Nursery.

Life on Prospera seems comparable to any sunny place – you can go down to the beach for a swim, sit on the patio at night and go to work in a high-rise building, but there are three things that are odd about life. First, nobody has children: they are shipped in from the Nursery and assigned to wards who look after them. Secondly, everybody has a monitor built into their arm that displays a percentage representing a person’s life satisfaction. Thirdly, when the monitor shows 10%, you are “re-iterated”, which means carted off to the Nursery where you will come back as a child and the whole cycle starts again.

So once again, Justin Cronin has managed to come up with a fabulous set-up that asks a lot of questions and keeps you reading. The protagonist is Proctor Bennett, a ferryman whose job it is to escort people down to the dock to catch the ferry to the Nursery for their re-iteration. The set-up to all of this is in chapter one and in chapter two, something happens that changes Proctor’s life. Again, this single chapter is a staggering achievement from Cronin who manages to get the reader’s pulse racing from just an emotional exchange between two of his characters.

There’s a lot of questions that you as a reader want answering, and you do get all the answers that make sense of everything you have read. Whilst I’ve only given this 8/10 because once again, I felt like it drifted a bit after the reveal and towards the end, it’s still a book and author that I’d recommend because of the ideas and the way it’s all executed. You can guarantee I will read whatever Mr Cronin comes up with next, and I’ll probably get around to what he wrote before The Passage.
 
RobMCFC said:
  1. Fairy Tale – Stephen King - 5/10
  2. Wolf Pack – Will Dean - 7/10
  3. A Small Death in Lisbon – Robert Wilson - 6/10
  4. A Man Called Ove – Fredrick Backman – 8/10
  5. Tomorrow's Children – Daniel Polansky – 3/10
  6. The Mobster’s Lament – Ray Celestin – 8/10
  7. Priest of Crowns – Peter McLean – 9/10
  8. Get It On: How the ‘70s Rocked Football – Jon Spurling – 9/10
  9. The Effigy Engine – Scott Lynch – 7/10
  10. The Ferryman – Justin Cronin – 8/10
View attachment 129107


Before talking about The Ferryman, I have to say a bit about why I was looking forward to this.

In 2010, I read something online about an upcoming book called The Passage. It sounded great and when I finally got hold of it, I was absolutely enthralled by this modern take on vampires. None of this social-vampire-seducing-young-women malarkey – these vampires were like wild animals who’d tear your throat out and not bother to quote poetry or engage in philosophical debates before moving on to their next victim.

The first 250 pages of The Passage is some of the finest, pulse-poundng, heart-wrenching writing that I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. This section of the book paints a nightmare picture of a world in meltdown, how it started (which was a great explanation in itself) and how it turned out for an FBI agent with a young girl in his care. The rest of the book jumped forward hundreds of years to show how the world had moved on and was followed by two further books taking the total page count to well over 2000 (from memory).

The fact is that what followed felt a little disappointing considering the incredible set-up, but it showed me that Justin Cronin can write and in certain areas, there are few that can match him. So now you see why I was so excited to read his first work after The Passage trilogy.

The Ferryman has an intriguing setup: an archipelago of three small islands separated from the rest of the world. We don’t know what’s happened to the world, but it wasn’t good. The privileged few spend their lives on the island of Prospera, whilst the workers who serve them live on the overcrowded and slum-like Annex. Then there’s the Nursery.

Life on Prospera seems comparable to any sunny place – you can go down to the beach for a swim, sit on the patio at night and go to work in a high-rise building, but there are three things that are odd about life. First, nobody has children: they are shipped in from the Nursery and assigned to wards who look after them. Secondly, everybody has a monitor built into their arm that displays a percentage representing a person’s life satisfaction. Thirdly, when the monitor shows 10%, you are “re-iterated”, which means carted off to the Nursery where you will come back as a child and the whole cycle starts again.

So once again, Justin Cronin has managed to come up with a fabulous set-up that asks a lot of questions and keeps you reading. The protagonist is Proctor Bennett, a ferryman whose job it is to escort people down to the dock to catch the ferry to the Nursery for their re-iteration. The set-up to all of this is in chapter one and in chapter two, something happens that changes Proctor’s life. Again, this single chapter is a staggering achievement from Cronin who manages to get the reader’s pulse racing from just an emotional exchange between two of his characters.

There’s a lot of questions that you as a reader want answering, and you do get all the answers that make sense of everything you have read. Whilst I’ve only given this 8/10 because once again, I felt like it drifted a bit after the reveal and towards the end, it’s still a book and author that I’d recommend because of the ideas and the way it’s all executed. You can guarantee I will read whatever Mr Cronin comes up with next, and I’ll probably get around to what he wrote before The Passage.
Click to expand...
On my list to get. Enjoyed The Passage a great deal. TV adaptation was average at best
 
Out on blue 6 said:
On my list to get. Enjoyed The Passage a great deal. TV adaptation was average at best
Click to expand...
I thought it was pretty good in parts but couldn't possible cover the scope of the books without a big commitment from somebody Game of Thrones-style.
 
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