Author: Nicky

Unstacking the Shelves

Posted July 2, 2016 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

This week was a good week for reading, as you can see! And for only the fifth time ever, I have no new books to showcase and can instead show off the ones I’ve finished reading. I didn’t even feature the full covers this time as I normally do for an Unstacking week cause there’s just so many! Twelve of these have been on my TBR for at least a year before I finally got round to them, so it really is good progress.

So please don’t tell me to enjoy my new books! Let me bask in being good.

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:

–Hasty Death, by M.C. Beaton. Fun enough, but it really isn’t anything special. 2/5 stars
–So You Want to Be a Wizard, by Diane Duane. I think I came to this at the wrong age — I’d probably have loved it when I was younger. 1/5 stars
–Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional, by David Waltham. Solid science and an interesting discussion of whether life is likely to be common or not in the universe, but I think we really don’t have enough data at all to actually come to a conclusion about how lucky or not we are. 3/5 stars
–Saga Volume One, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. A reread so I can get on with the series! Love it pretty much the same as before, especially the art. 4/5 stars
–Blood Trail, by Tanya Huff. Fun and brings in more supernatural creatures, etc. It’s fairly light comfort reading for me. 3/5 stars
–All For Love, by Jane Aiken Hodge. A good Heyer-esque romp, with some nice touches (the perfect switch isn’t perfect after all, etc). I enjoyed it a lot and will be reading more of Jane Aiken Hodge’s work. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The Song of Rhiannon, by Evangeline Walton. This book isn’t as powerful as the previous book, which is a bit of a relief after how harrowing that was. There’s a lot of good stuff here, and Manawydan remains an awesome character. 4/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Books I Was Forced to Read. It was a freebie week, so I mined for an old theme and covered books I had to read for class or research.
–ShelfLove Update. My update on the reading challenge I’m doing, which also includes my TBR for this month, as usual.

How’s everyone been? Good reading week? Anything exciting joined your piles?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

ShelfLove July Update

Posted July 1, 2016 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

ShelfLove Update!

Hello, everyone! June’s been an eventful month, with my wedding date now set (5th August) and a honeymoon booked (we didn’t choose Dublin because there’s a bookshop I want to visit there, nope)… and the UK deciding in a referendum, incomprehensibly from my point of view, to leave the European Union. Honestly, I kind of hope the last part is a bad dream.

Still, I’ve got a fair amount of reading done, woohoo!

The goals where I’m ahead are in blue; bang on are in green; behind by up to five books are in orange; anything else is in red. I now have a running total to show where I should be for the month too (e.g. by June I should’ve read 182 books overall).

Targets:
- 250 or less books bought;
- 366 books read overall;
- 200 books read which I owned prior to 2016;
- no more than 10% of income on books per month.
Books bought this year so far: 101/120.
May books bought: 8/20.
May budget: £0/£30 (purchases were with vouchers).
Owned books read this month: 23/16.
Books read this month: 34/30.
Owned books read overall: 95/100 (5 books behind).
Books read overall: 175/182 (7 books behind).

The discussion question for this month’s post is:

Why do you read the books you read? Explore why you gravitate towards certain genres and/or authors. How do you pick the next book you will read?

And the answer is, mostly whim. SF/F has always been the main genre I read; probably because my mother does. And I pick the next book I’ll read by whim, or by asking everyone what I should read next and then doing something opposite, because I’m contrary. Or sometimes I’ll just pick something off a shelf and accidentally consume it.

And a to-read list for July, since I do find having the guidance useful, even if — cough — I don’t stick to it all that well. I’m carrying over the books left from last month, as they’re part of series I’d like to get finished. The others are ARCs or books from the backlist I’ve been meaning to get to.

Peter S. Beagle, Summerlong.
Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, The Tempering of Men.
Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, An Apprentice to Elves.
Diane Duane, The Door into Sunset.
Marie Brennan, In Ashes Lie.
Tanya Huff, Blood Pact.
Tanya Huff, Blood Debt.
Sarah Kuhn, Heroine Complex.
Laura Lam, False Hearts.
Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit.
Juliet Marillier, Tower of Thorns.
Naomi Novik, Uprooted.
V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows.
Jen Williams, The Iron Ghost.
Jen Williams, The Silver Tide.

Here’s hoping it’s a productive month for all of us.

Tags: #ShelfLove, TBR

Review – The Song of Rhiannon

Posted July 1, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Song of Rhiannon, Evangeline Walton

Originally reviewed 1st June, 2011

The Song of Rhiannon, a retelling of the Third Branch of the Mabinogion, isn’t as powerful as The Children of Llyr, which is a relief, in a way. There’s a time of healing for the characters, as well as what they suffer during the action of the story, and there’s a happy end for them as well. It continues to follow the characters of Manawydan, Rhiannon, Pryderi and Kigva. There are actually few other characters in the story, fleshed-out or not, but the character of the Bogey made me smile quite a bit, as did his interactions with Manawydan.

Once more, Evangeline Walton brings the characters to life. I can’t remember anything in the Mabinogion about some of the elements she introduces, e.g. about Pryderi’s father, but they all seem to belong quite naturally.

If I didn’t already care about Pryderi, Rhiannon and Manawydan, though, I don’t know how much I would have loved this book. The retelling of the Second Branch is the strongest so far, and can stand alone, but this can’t, to my mind.

I have serious love for her version of Manawydan, in all his wisdom and dignity and his love for his land.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Evangeline Walton, Flashback Friday

Review – All For Love

Posted June 30, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

All For Love, Jane Aiken Hodge

If you’re a fan of stories like Georgette Heyer’s and Mary Stewart’s romances, Jane Aiken Hodge’s All For Love should be right up your alley. Featuring a historical setting and context, it follows two cousins, alike enough to be twins, who switch places while one executes a madcap scheme to rescue Napoleon, while preserving her reputation and giving herself an alibi in the form of her cousin’s presence. Of course, it stretches credulity a bit, as all such plots would — but it doesn’t stretch it too far; actually, a fair number of people figure out that Juliet is only impersonating Josephine.

The process of Juliet’s relationship with Josephine’s husband is sweet; the way he carefully provides for her without ever pushing boundaries too much or letting her know that he knows she’s not Josephine, and the way they come to care for each other and refuse to do anything about it, because of course, he’s married to Josephine. Then, of course, someone from Josephine’s past shows up to overturn things once more…

It’s all reliant on heaps of lucky coincidence, of course, and Josephine is such an unpleasant person in some ways that you know, really, how it’s going to end — I never really had any tension that it wasn’t going to work out, though I did find myself wondering how it would work out. The writing isn’t as witty as Heyer’s, nor is there a sense of place evoked as in Stewart’s work, but all the same I got quite invested and very much enjoyed the read.

Oh, and if duels and secret plots entertain you, there’s plenty of that alongside the romance.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, romance

Review – Blood Trail

Posted June 29, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Blood Trail, Tanya Huff

The second book in the Vicky Nelson series introduces more supernatural beings — this time werewolves, although the lore isn’t 100% traditional. (For example, werewolves are born, not created; if you aren’t a werewolf, you won’t become one.) It deals again, and more directly, with the problems that occur for supernatural beings living in a human community. The plot itself is reasonably obvious, and the ingredients make the outcome obvious: the way they get there and the characters surrounding them are more important, really.

Ultimately, I find this a comfort read; not too heavy on substance, more representative of real life than you often find (i.e. with Vicky’s disability, Henry’s sexuality, etc), and easy to read. There are some meaty things here — Celluci’s relationship with Vicky, and how that shapes his relationship with Henry; Vicky’s insistence on being independent, her certainty about her own skills and instincts despite her disability; prejudice against people that aren’t like you — and even some questions about justice and how exactly it can be enforced in special situations the law doesn’t cover (e.g. if someone killed a werewolf in their wolf form, so it’s not apparent that it is murder). But it’s treated with a fairly light hand, which keeps it highly readable.

I do wish Celluci would get with the program and grow up, though.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, Tanya Huff

Review – Saga Volume One

Posted June 28, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 12 Comments

Saga Volume One, Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples

The first volume of Saga had me hooked right away: something about the clean lines of the art, the way it perfectly brings across character and expression, to begin with. Also the quirkier details, like the pictures that show on Prince Robot’s monitor. But also the story: the offbeat narration by a character who has only just been born at the start of the story, the set-up of the worlds fighting, the Robot kingdom assisting, etc. Alanna and Marko’s relationship is believably silly: they’re ridiculously in love, they’re not always best-suited for each other, but they’re muddling through anyway.

It’s also funny in general — not always in the most “tasteful” or “refined” way, as some of the sex-related humour shows, but believably. You can like these characters, it says, because even though one has wings and the other has horns, they’re dweebs like you.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics, romance, SF/F

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted June 28, 2016 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie week, so I mined the past topics for something interesting, and grabbed “Top Ten Books I Was ‘Forced’ To Read”. Which I shall interpret as meaning books read for class, rather than books people pressed upon me in a friendly manner…

The Decameron, Boccaccio. Technically I don’t think I had to read this, but doing so definitely helps to understand the context of stuff like Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. And it is, in fact, a darn good read; some of the stories get repetitive, but there’s a lot of fascinating stuff going on.
The Annotated Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien and Douglas A. Anderson. Normally I probably wouldn’t be interested in an annotated edition, but this has some really fascinating stuff.
Cwmardy, Lewis Jones. Or basically all the Welsh literature I read for class, because it was all pretty eye-opening for me.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. My love affair with this poem didn’t really begin until I read it in the original, at a painstakingly slow speed, with a really intelligent tutor at the helm.
Njal’s Saga. I just love that you can sum it up as “John Grisham for ancient Iceland”.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie. No, really! It was a class on crime fiction and it was awesome, and while Christie’s writing could get formulaic, reading this one alone was pretty awesome.
Country Dance, Margiad Evans. Or was it Turf or Stone? Either way, this deserves a special mention alongside Cwmardy because the introduction just hit me in the gut with oh, I recognise this… I forget who it was, but someone wrote about not knowing anything about Welsh literature as they grew up, and thinking there was none, and yeah, I’ve been there.
The Mabinogion. Else what kind of Welsh person would I be? But I didn’t really ‘get’ it or dig into it until I had to read it and relate it to other texts and dig into research and scholarship.
Postcolonialism Revisited, Kirsti Bohata. The birth of my understanding of Wales as a colony, and our literature as postcolonial. Not that non-Welsh classmates tended to appreciate this point of view.
Richard III, William Shakespeare. I honestly did not ‘get’ Shakespeare at first, so never bothered to read the history plays. Which turned out to be my favourites.

English Lit degree: useful for something, at least.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Lucky Planet

Posted June 27, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional, David Waltham

For the most part, I found Lucky Planet interesting enough, though at times there were gaps when it comes to the possibilities for life elsewhere — and no mention at all of the idea that there could be life somewhere else on Earth which uses molecules of the opposite chirality to us, suggesting more than one separate origin of life. There was nothing about the Viking biological experiments, which per Michael Brooks’ pop-science books are still thought by some to have shown evidence for life on Mars — the experimenter, Levin, still thinks so, and he’s not alone.

I think the problem with all these theories is that they rely on a gut feeling of how likely life is to arise and, once arisen, to become intelligent. Obviously, as Waltham points out repeatedly, because we exist, conditions are possible in which we can exist and observe (a condition called the anthropic principle). That tells us nothing in itself about how likely life is to arise, though. In fact, with everything that might indicate how likely life is to arise, we have a sample size of one.

It’s really impossible to scientifically judge, I think. It depends on whether you decide life is likely or unlikely, and follows from there. Waltham does discuss all the factors that make Earth a rarity, which may constrain life. But again, sample size of one, so how do we know that a planet’s satellites or seismic activity or atmosphere or predominant minerals are important or not? Life doesn’t have to look the same as us (but if it did, that would go a fair way to confirming Waltham’s point; we require very specific circumstances to have arisen, after all).

So, if you’re looking for an answer, I don’t think Waltham has one for you (though nor does anyone else, by the same logic).

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – So You Want To Be A Wizard

Posted June 26, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

So You Want to Be A Wizard, Diane Duane

I’ve been told to try these so often that I more or less assumed the recommendation would be apt, and got a bundle of the whole series in one of Diane Duane’s website sales. Unfortunately, something about this doesn’t work for me — I guess it feels too random and immature? Stuff like ‘Fred’, the ‘white hole’, who is the opposite of a black hole, and some of the logic of how magic worked just… I didn’t feel hooked by it. Once I got to the white hole burping up whole cars, I was more or less done; I just skimmed the rest.

I do actually like parts of the set-up: the idea of the book that starts the main character’s journey is pretty neat, for example, and I didn’t read the characters as just default white kids from the start — even if Kit Rodriguez’s name wasn’t a probable giveaway. I think maybe if I’d first read it when I was younger, and had that flexibility of imagination, I wouldn’t have questioned it so much and could have enjoyed it now if I was rereading it. Unfortunately, I come to this as a 27 year old about to get married, and so I just can’t engage with it on that level.

Not something I would recommend to someone my own age, but I might very well pass it to a kid young enough to feel the magic of waiting for your Hogwarts letter, or scanning the library shelves for books about what you can be when you grow up and finding a mysterious book which at first might seem like a joke, but turns out all too real…

Rating: 1/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – Hasty Death

Posted June 25, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Hasty Death, M.C. Beaton

Hasty Death is very much like the first book in tone, style and mystery. A series of coincidences seems to be all that keeps the characters from disaster — one particular chain of lucky coincidences involving a corpse who becomes unidentifiable before being found constitutes a whole side plot which just doesn’t feel satisfying, because it relies so much on sheer luck. Likewise, the detective skills of Harry Cathcart and Lady Rose are about on that level: it’s a wonder they manage to get anything done, but fortunately they’re a bit more intelligent than the police superintendent, Kerridge, so they do propel the plot along somewhat.

Despite that negativity, it is quite fun to read. I knew it was paper-thin the whole time, of course, and even the will-they-won’t-they of the love story is conducted with the same chain of coincidences (this time involving misinterpretation and misunderstanding, of course). And yet. It’s light enough fun.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, mystery