Karl's Reading List

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company: New York, New York, 2014. One of the first reviews I posted on this blog was for internet cartoonist Randall Munroe's book How To , a book where the author took common real-life problems and provided scientifically reasoned bizarre solutions for them. The example I mentioned in that review was crossing a river by such means as freezing or boiling the river, or flying over via kite. This book, which Munroe wrote earlier than How To, takes the opposite approach: Munroe answers the bizarre and absurd questions written by his viewers with straight-forward scientific logic. Topics in this book include whether swimming in a pool that has nuclear radiation stored at the bottom would be safe, how much power Yoda has, and what would happen if all of the rain from a rain-storm fell in one giant drop. Even slightly more straightforward questions, such as how high a human could throw something, are run with to their most ridiculous-an...

Published by Penguin Books/Penguin Random House: Australia, 2024 (2023). Book 2 in the 'Ernest Cunningham' series. Preceded by ' Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. ' Followed by 'Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret.' When I wrote my review last year about the first book in this series -  Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone  -  I made the note that I enjoyed the comedic-meta elements of that book, and hoped that the author would focus more on that in later books, rather than the occasional grim/gory aspects that occasionally crept in. Well, it seems as though author Stevenson (as opposed to the main character, Ernest Cunningham, who is also an author) listened to me! This second entry still retains the comedic flavour, but the murder mysteries are a little less grim overall in tone.  Ernest Cunningham, who in the first book survived a snowed-in reunion with his murderous family, is now a published author, thanks to his book Everyone in My Family Has ...

Published by Harper & Row Jr Books/Evil Eye Music, Inc: New York, NY, 1974. Elise, Ezekiel and I were recently house-sitting for my parents, and I came across it on one of their bookshelves. It is a book I first read when I was five (this particular copy of the book, as well, which has a written dedication to my family in the front from the person who gave it to us), and I loved it, and learned a lot of it by heart. I can still quote numerous poems from it verbatim. I don't read a lot of poetry. By now, anyone who has read my reviews regularly will have picked that up! This book, however, is a favourite of mine. How come I love this so much, when a lot of poetry leaves me cold? Well, Shel Silverstein is a very funny poet, along with being quite witty, and at times, surprisingly deep. So, we get a silly poem like 'The Battle', which in its entirety, reads: "Would you like to hear Of the terrible night When I bravely fought the -  No? Alright." And we recognise ...

I have officially decided to give up my Bookerworm quest. I still intend to at least try to read the majority of the books, but after truly disliking some of the Booker books, I have also decided not to bother pushing through ones that I begin to get 'funny' feelings about. This is also tied a bit to my faith; I want to grow in my sensitivity to the voice of God, and that does at times meaning walking away from worldly things. I'm sure this will be an ongoing conversation I have with God, but for now, this plot is to acknowledge which books I have begun and subsequently have decided not to finish, along with a (much smaller, as I want to at least give books a chance to surprise me) number I have decided not to bother with in advance. I will also give brief reasons why these books have made this list, rather than my actual 'completed books' list. Ironically, although I felt to give up on the books I'm going to list below, most of them weren't as bad as som...

Published in an omnibus edition by Penguin Classics: London, England, 1998. First published individually 1865. 'The Centenary Edition' includes 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' with commentary and short stories. You know, I've never read Alice in Wonderland before!  The closest I've come is a memory I have of a relief teacher in primary school reading out an excerpt from the chapter 'A Mad Tea Party', including the unanswerable riddle about a raven and a writing desk, a clock that tells you what day it is, and a story about sisters in a treacle well who draw treacle. It is very odd, but I remember thinking that the puns were clever, and thus, my impression of the Alice stories have been - from childhood - just that: odd, but clever. Maybe I had built it up too much in my imagination. This first Alice story is certainly odd! But clever...? Maybe...? The edition I read has many endnotes, many of which try to ti...

Published by Penguin Books/Penguin Random House New Zealand: New Zealand, 2024. This is kind of an odd book, with a bit more language in it than I would usually read. It is, however, also quite quirky in one particular way. The book, written by husband and wife duo Gareth and Louise, follow a married couple who run a bookshop in Havelock North. The couple previously used to be detectives in England, and over the course of the book, get embroiled in a mystery in New Zealand. The name of the couple: Garth and Eloise. If you think the names of the main characters bear a striking resemblance to the names of the authors, you should also note that Gareth and Louise also run a bookshop in Havelock North, and also have a background as detectives in England, although it remains to be determined whether Gareth and Louise have also helped solve mysteries in New Zealand! Garth and Eloise also, like Gareth and Louise, have a large rescue dog that they love, and have a number of eccentric employees ...

Published as an audiobook by Dragonsteel, LLC., 2023. Narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Originally published 2023. As the title might suggest, this is a humorous book about a modern-era man who ends up posing as a wizard in a medieval-style England. As we dig into the story a little, we learn that he's not technically in the real medieval England, but rather a parallel dimension that resembles medieval England. He's also not technically a modern-era man, with the book being set a little into the future (allowing for dimension travel, as well as minor technological augments and nanites). This is smart writing from Sanderson, as it allows him to create a world that seems medieval, without needing to do too much worrying about absolute historical accuracy. In terms of story, our hero awakens in a field, surrounded by scorch marks and the scattered pages of a half-burnt copy of the titular handbook. He has amnesia, which is a great way for us to learn about him as he lea...

Published by Naxos Audiobooks, 2006. Narrated by Juliet Stevenson. First published 1815/1816. Emma is the final work published by Jane Austen during her lifetime, and is very well written. Apparently Austen spoke about creating a protagonist that no one but herself would much like, and in one sense she accomplishes this: Emma Woodhouse is spoiled, has a high opinion of herself, and is quite ready to meddle in other peoples' affairs whether they want her to or not. And yet, in another way, Austen fails, because Emma is somehow immediately likeable, despite her obvious flaws. We groan when she makes an obviously bad decision, and yet we still understand her rationale, and wait for her to start learning the error of her ways. The plot, in true Austen style, is all about relationships, but the foreground relationships in Emma are not even 'real' relationships at all! Rather, Emma is trying to be a matchmaker, and is convinced that her choice of a husband for Harriet Smith (her ...

Published as an audiobook by HarperFestival, 1 November 2002. Narrated by Eric Idle. Followed by 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.' First published 1964. We found this audiobook to put on the background while we washed dishes. I think we finished it about a week later. Roald Dahl and Eric Idle - what a match! The narration being done by a member of Monty Python really highlights the ludicrous nature of Dahl's writing. This is one of Dahl's most popular stories, for a reason. The scaffold of the chocolate factory tour and the slowly reducing number of contestants helps to focus in some of the author's more eccentric story-telling habits (something that is much more on show in the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator ,  that Elise and I are now listening to!), and even the bizarre additions to the story are all quite on theme - like the 'square sweets that look round'. Having not read the story in years, I forgot how much the early half of the boo...