Weekly Roundup

Posted August 24, 2019 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Good morning, folks! I’m back from Worldcon, and as ever I think I need a holiday to recover from my holiday. (Which I worked through, also as ever, though I did do reduced hours!)

I met some lovely folks, got a couple of books, and also won a proof copy of Garth Nix’s new book. Not bad! I also had my 30th birthday, and though I joked I needed 30 books (one for each year), I only got nine, so I guess nobody should be serving me in a bar… 😀

Books acquired:

Cover of Angel Mage by Garth Nix Cover of A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian Cover of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall Cover of Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

Cover of A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland Cover of To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers Cover of The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite Cover of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Cover of Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee Cover of The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton Cover of Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Parker Cover of The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book by Neil Gaiman

Cover of Conan Doyle for the Defence by Margalit Fox Cover of Symphony in C by Robert Hazen

Almost all fiction, but quite a few wildly different genres there. Just another week on my TBR…

Books read this week:

Cover of The Pleasures of Reading in An Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs Cover of A History of Life in 100 Fossils

Cover of Die Laughing by Carola Dunn Cover of Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews Cover of A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian

Reviews posted:

The Pandemic Century, by Mark Honigsbaum. Not revolutionary in any way, but there are definitely new titbits of information here. 3/5 stars
Dread Nation, by Justina Ireland. This wasn’t 100% for me, but it’s a fascinating setting. I had some questions about the characters — relationships don’t work like that! 3/5 stars
Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers. This had some of the emotional punch of the first and second book, but it didn’t quite add up to a satisfying story for me. It’s a fascinating exploration of a particular corner of Chambers’ world, though. 3/5 stars
In the Labyrinth of Drakes, by Marie Brennan. A lovely instalment of the series, which solves some mysteries and involves a lot of the lovely partnership between Tom and Isabella. 5/5 stars
Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells. Not quite what I hoped for, but a good conclusion for Murderbot nonetheless. Looking forward to the novel! 4/5 stars
This is How You Lose The Time War, by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar. It didn’t work for me that well, but you gotta appreciate time-travelling multiple-dimensional lesbians. 3/5 stars
Mistletoe and Murder, by Carola Dunn. Fairly standard for this series, but as always it makes a good cosy mystery. 3/5 stars
Heartstopper, volume 2, by Alice Oseman. It’s just so goddamn cute. 4/5 stars
The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black. I was told that this gets better if you hold on to the end, which shakes things up, but… I was so bored. I DNFed it. 1/5 stars
Gene Machine, by Venki Ramakrishnan. I found this disappointing in two ways. 1) The secrets of the ribosome aren’t really unlocked, only the structure. That will tell us a lot more in time, but it doesn’t yet. 2) Ramakrishnan’s obvious antipathy to one particular competitor, of whom he says hardly a kind word that isn’t loaded with begrudging “I’m saying this to be fair, but I don’t really mean it”. She’s a woman; that is now how he treats male scientists. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

WWW Wednesday. The pre-Worldcon roundup…
WWW Wednesday. And this week’s roundup.

So how’s everyone doing? Reading anything good? Got your hands on an awesome book? Share! (The news, not the book. At least not till you’ve read it. I’m not a monster.)

Tags: , ,

Divider

8 responses to “Weekly Roundup

  1. I’m currently reading Gideon the Ninth and after a slow, struggling start, it’s starting to finally get good! I’m curious to hear what you will think of it. And I’m so excited for Angel Mage, grats on getting a copy!

  2. I’ll be trying out Becky Chambers before the year ends, probably in November when I do my SF challenge! I’ve heard good things about the characters in her books. Hopefully I’ll enjoy it. It feels like ages to wait for the Murderbot novel!

  3. I’m very curious about Angel Mage, I’ve actually never read Garth Nix! I had to stop myself from requesting it because I’m drowning in ARCs, but look forward to seeing what everyone thinks! I’m working on a reread of THE THOUSANDTH FLOOR right now, it’s just good soapy teen drama with a sci-fi twist.
    Caitlin G. recently posted…One Year Blogaversary!!My Profile

Leave a Reply to Nikki Cancel reply

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.