Since We Are Nearing The End Of The Year, I Want To Start Organizing My Readings For 2024. I'll Post

Since we are nearing the end of the year, I want to start organizing my readings for 2024. I'll post one more review for sure for a comic book I read last week, and maybe two more from books I'm finishing this week.

(My three last books of the year probably)

So, my goals for next year are both broaden the type of books I read and practice more reading in foreign languages.

Send me a book you like and I'll consider it for my 2024 readings.

You get a prize if you also tell me why you like it (?

Don't open your gifts 'til midnight unless you want to be on my Naughty List...

Merry Christmas, I wish you all a wonderful time with your loved ones 🎄

3. (Humanized) Donald Duck, José Carioca & Panchito Pistoles (The Three Caballeros)

Feel free to ask about the extra-spicy version 🔞😘🔥

Book Review: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

My Review in a Tweet:

I haven't been this enraptured, this mesmerized, this captivated by a book in years, and I don't say that lightly. It's great on every aspect you could think of, and then some other you couldn't even conjure. Can't believe I neglected it for so long. Highly recommended if you like fantasty of any kind.

My Full Review:

I had it sitting on my bookshelves for months before I decided to start reading this book. It felt menacing, despite it being the pocket edition. The sheer volume, the brickness of it felt like a challenge I hadn't the courage to face.

But once I did, I realized the real danger was being unable to let it go: I was prisoner of the author, being held by his marvelous ability to thread the story of Kvothe in seamless chapters, that natural the flow of the story felt, you couldn't even tell where he jumped from present to past and back.

The vivid images still dance in my mind hours after I finished reading the book. I rushed past the other reviews I had pending so I could write this one because I neded to talk about it. My copy of the book was a present from a friend so I texted her inmediately, but that didn't suffice, I had to write longer than all caps screaming to each other.

The rich world the author builds feels vast and mysterious, with a lot of hidden things lurking just beneaht the surface waiting for both the writer and the reader to discover them. I really hope (haven't looked it up yet) that there are books in the vein of the Silmarillion and Tom Bombadil where the myths and tales of this universe are further expanded.

The prose of Rothfuss is so elegant, filled with clever descriptions and unexpected analogies that not even the most fictitious elements of his story remain ungraspable to the reader.

The characters are so diverse and interesting: each and every one of them leaves a perdurable memory, no matter how brief and casual their impact and presence on the story is.

Kvothe is our main character, but he gets to be a narrator of his own story whenever we dive into his past, becoming a somewhat unreliable narrator. The whole book feels like that: we as readers submerging in the story narrated by Kvothe himself, gasping for air during the interlusions where the omniscient narrator takes the job back to move the story in the present time.

A wonderful work of worldbuilding, characterization and narration only hindered by the bittersweet taste of finishing the book eager for more. I hope to get my hands on the sequel soon, but I probably should let this world rest a little before diving in it again.

9/10.

My other 2023 Readings.

Book Review: Historias de Cronopios y de Famas, Julio Cortázar

My Review in a Tweet:

Imagine you get a box filled with puzzle pieces, but they are all from different puzzles. You may see a familiar figure here, another face there, but no matter how you try to arrange the pieces together, you are sure it's not the meant image. Reading this book is like that.

My Full Review:

I became aware yesterday of my inappropriate lack of Argentinean authors in my reading list this year, and trying to mend that a little, I found this little book in a bookshelf while visiting my parents for the holidays.

While quite short, this book reminded me how much I ignore. I felt in a clear cultural disadvantage, where Cortázar (who some people may call the greatest Argentinean author) was playing a joke at my expense. I don't say this negatively.

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas is a collection of short stories, vague poems and... Nonsense. That's when the ignorance I felt started to creep in. I'm not sure of the exact literary current Cortázar belongs to, but this book read to me like an absurdist ramble without crossing over to dadaism.

I tend to believe that there are some clear themes of social and economic classes coating the short stories of the Cronopios, the Famas and the Hopes: they work as fictional and bizarre versions of Argentina's middle-to-low, high and (cultural) elite class respectively (I'm not sure about the Hopes). Cronopios are despised and treated condescendingly by the Famas, mocking their behavior and traditions, all too jovial and effusive and lazy; the Famas think too high of themselves and tend to use and abuse the other two; the Hopes seem to be trapped in an academic gasp, stunned by the lack of refinement of the Cronopios.

Even the short stories not directly related to the Cronopios and Famas act as a display of Argentina's idiosyncrasy, helped by the explicit mention of some elements, some places of this country (and more specifically, from Gran Buenos Aires).

But you have to remember that none of the stories really make sense. They are almost poetical, oneirical, nearing the realm of magical realism, very popular in Latin America.

The narration and writing themselves demand a lot of the reader's attention and time, forcing them to engage with the book to find some sense.

Again, I say all of this in a positive light: it's a challenging book in almost a literal sense, it presents itself innocently, like a bunch of nonsense, but soon you start to feel like there's something more underneath, like if under this outer coat of surrealistic and abstract tales laid a more tangible and grounded coat of the same color, merely a different tone but same color nonetheless.

I'm not sure how well this book would be received by non-argentinian or non-spanish speaking persons, but it's a good book anyways.

7,5/10.

My Other 2023 Readings.

Book Review: Batman. Dark Nights: Metal. Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jim Lee, Andy Kubert, John Romita Jr.

My Review in a Tweet:

It's so disorienting to read comics sometimes. I could follow the story but I had no idea where it came frome, because I don't even know what other comics I should have read before. Despite that, it was a good story with amazing artwork and really interesting character designs.

My Full Review:

I should clarify from the get-go that a friend lent me this book so I read it mostly out of curiosity. Having to fill in the gaps of the previous issues of this comic can be a difficult task if you have no idea what to read (I went in blindly, fearing spoiling myself) and have no access to the comics.

Despite all those (clearly personal) obstacles, I found the reading quite interesting, at least beacuse of the intrincancies of the plot and the flashy new designs some of the characters were sporting. I knew secondhandly the Batman who Laughs, but I wasn't sure why he was here. I enjoyed his presence nonetheless.

Seeing Baby Darkseid was great, I saw that design before but I didn't know it was from this specific comic:

The other highlight for me was Dream from the Eternals:

A fun comic that I didn't quite understand but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. The artstyle was a delight to me, with more interesting compositions and framings.

7/10.

My Other 2023 Readings.