Posted December 6, 2014 by in General / 29 Comments
I’m doing really well and not buying books at the moment! But that doesn’t stop me going to the library (dun dun dunnn) or picking up comics. Though honestly, I picked these issues up a couple of weeks ago and forgot to include them then, so I thought I’d drop them into this post.
Review copies

I haven’t actually read anything by Kate Elliott yet, so this seems like a good place to start! As for H is for Hawk, I keep getting curious about it, but not curious enough to buy it… and then lo and behold, I get it on Netgalley. I’m quite interested to get round to reading it ASAP.
Library fiction



Rachel Aaron and Adam Christopher have actually been on my TBR for ages, but that’s in ebook form, and sometimes I’m not in the mood for that. So I thought maybe getting from the library would kickstart me. As for the others, they come recommended by various people, and Emily of New Moon by my love of Anne of Green Gables, though I gather Emily’s a bit more saccharine than Anne.
Library non-fiction

I think a friend read Ladies of the Grand Tour recently, and The Galápagos has an obvious draw for me…
Comics (single issues)

Jessica Drew is awesome.
That’s it for me, and you may well add that that’s plenty for one person. What’s anyone else been getting their hands on?
Tags: Adam Christopher, books, comics, Marvel, Rachel Bach/Rachel Aaron, SF/F, Stacking the Shelves
Posted December 4, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments
Hey folks! I’ve decided that each week, instead of uploading a whole new review on a Friday, I’m going to pick out one of my old reviews from before I had this blog, and post it up here in all its glory. This does three things: it gives me some extra content, giving me chance to spread out my new reviews more; it lets me archive some good reviews from Goodreads, which I’m steadily coming to dislike as a platform for reviewing; and it gives you the chance to see reviews of mine you may not have seen before.
I’ll start doing this from tomorrow; I promise that it’ll always be clear when it’s an old review and when it’s from, in the same way as I make it clear when I’ve received a review copy. Consider this advance warning that I can dig all the way back to 2007, and I was totally a brat at 17…
If anyone else would like to join in on this, maybe we could make a thing of it? I’m open to suggestion.
Tags: books, Flashback Friday
Posted December 2, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments
This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is “top ten books you’re looking forward to in 2015”. Now, I actually don’t keep a very good track of this, so I might not manage the full ten, but we’ll see how I do…
- Jo Walton, The Just City. Yeah, I know I have an eARC and I’ve borrowed someone else’s ARC, but I’m still looking forward to it being out and getting to discuss it more widely.
- Maria V. Snyder, Shadow Study. More Yelena! I still need to do my reread, but these are totally my popcorn books and it’ll be nice to have more to look forward to. I might actually manage to read the Avry trilogy when I know there’s more awaiting me…
- V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic. I don’t know that much about it, but it sounds awesome, and I keep being recommended Schwab’s work.
- Joe Abercrombie, Half a World. I still need to get round to reading Half a King, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy it, and this is another in the same world.
- Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance. From reading the summary, I’m not quite sure about it, but I adore Valente’s way with words, so it’s going to be worth a try.
- Naomi Novik, Uprooted. I remember enjoying the Temeraire books, and I love reading retellings of myths/legends/folktales/fables, so this sounds right up my street.
- N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season. Gimme! Gimme!
- Marie Brennan, The Voyage of the Basilisk. I need to read the second book, but still. Still. Badass Victorian lady!
- Nicole Burstein, Othergirl. Just spotted this on someone else’s list of upcoming 2015 books. Sounds like fun, and there’s superpowers, sooo. I’m a sucker, I know.
- Brandon Sanderson, Firefight. Another one where I still need to read the previous book, but shush. Superpowers!
Oof, I managed it. What’s anyone else looking forward to?
Tags: books, Brandon Sanderson, Catherynne M. Valente, Jo Walton, Joe Abercrombie, Maria V. Snyder, Marie Brennan, N.K. Jemisin, Naomi Novik, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted November 29, 2014 by in General / 24 Comments
This week looks quite busy, but I have excuses, I promise…
Library


I’ve been meaning to pick up Bitter Greens for a while, and my sister loves Elizabeth Moon, so that’s why those two — and the non-fiction, well, they were fairly random picks from the library non-fiction section. I do love having random non-fiction to read.
Bought


This looks fairly busy, but I spent less than £5 myself — a friend from a book group bought me Native Tongue, after a discussion went pretty nasty in the group, which picked my mood up greatly. The Terrorists of Irustan was a rec that came out of that, too. And then I spotted Damaged Worlds, which contains those four books plus a short story by Cecilia Tan for under £1. So I thought I might as well give them a go.
So, not a bad haul for me, and pretty cheap too! What’s everyone else been grabbing?
Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves
Posted November 27, 2014 by in General / 17 Comments
What are you currently reading?
If Walls Could Talk (Lucy Worsley) for non-fiction, which is pretty fun for light reading.
For fiction: Fever (Mary Beth Keane), which I started reading last week, read half of, and then haven’t picked up since for no apparent reason. It’s interesting, though, because it tries to take the perspective of Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. I keep meaning to look up some of the details to see how much of it is accurate and how much total fiction. Also The Hollow Hills (Mary Stewart), and The Just City (Jo Walton), but work seems to be coming in sufficient profusion to stop me actually finishing anything at the moment.
What have you recently finished reading?
The Eerie Silence and The Goldilocks Enigma (Paul Davies). He loses me a bit when he goes into string theory and the like, and I know that some smaller aspects are gonna be out of date since it was written before the Large Hadron Collider was up and running, but for the most part I hung in there. The Eerie Silence leaves me very sceptical about the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, but then The Goldilocks Enigma seemed more positive again… Odd, from the same author!
What will you read next?
I agreed to do a buddy read of The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison), this weekend; other than that, I’m not looking beyond the stack of half-read books at my bedside!
Tags: books, Jo Walton, Mary Stewart, reading meme
Posted November 25, 2014 by in General / 20 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is books on the winter TBR. I’m not very specific about stuff like that, and I’m dreadful at getting round to books on time, but here’s more or less what I’m planning…
- Mary Stewart, the Merlin trilogy. The first book was a reread, but with The Hollow Hills I’m breaking new ground. And enjoying it, thankfully; I still think Rosemary Sutcliff has just about everyone except maybe Steinbeck beat, but I’m enjoying Stewart’s work more than I remembered.
- Jo Walton, The Just City. I got distracted from finishing this off by family visiting, and because I can’t take it to clinic with me (I’m only allowed my ereader because it’s quite discreet!). So I’m planning to finish it… probably before the start of December, really.
- Tanya Huff, The Enchantment Emporium. Also been on the go for a while, whoops. And it’s fun!
- Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer. Because omgggg.
- Garth Nix, Clariel. Because I’m dreadful and still haven’t got round to it after I wasn’t able to read it on the Eurostar on my last trip.
- Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart. Because superheroes! And it’s about time.
- Samantha Shannon, The Bone Season. I’ve been meaning to pick this up for a while, and with the next book out soon, it seems like it’s about time.
- Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan. I’m still working on reading all his books in chronological order (by publication), so this one’s up next.
- Henry Marsh, Do No Harm. I’m starting the long road to becoming a doctor, in theory. Marsh’s topic (brain surgery) fascinates me, and I feel like I should be learning everything I can and just soaking up the knowledge in that way I have of gaining things by osmosis. (Ask my mother. I don’t know how to pronounce a lot of words because they just slipped into my vocabulary via books, without me ever hearing them. She thinks it’s funny.)
- Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King. Because there’s no better time, with a title like that, right? But also because the Mary Stewart re/read is putting me in the mood for other historically based versions of the story.
What about everyone else? Share!
Tags: Ben Aaronovitch, books, Brandon Sanderson, Garth Nix, Jo Walton, Mary Stewart, Tanya Huff, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted November 22, 2014 by in General / 10 Comments
This week has been a library week…
Fiction





I don’t think I actually ever got round to reading The Hollow Hills, so I’m looking forward to it after enjoying The Crystal Cave more than I used to. I do actually own the whole trilogy, but it’s a massive hardback, so I got the library book for reading convenience. The Savage Knight sounds interesting; I think Abaddon books probably deserve a prize for the fake manuscript-provenance story around the story, which has seemingly caught some other reviewers out. Arthuriana, yay! Tooth and Claw, The Hero and the Crown and Labyrinth are rereads of varying quality; my brain seems to need something familiar right now.
Poetry

Padel is a great-great-great granddaughter of Darwin, so this was an interesting read, even if I didn’t love it. And I liked the idea of Carol Ann Duffy’s anthology, too — modern poetry in conversation with older. I’d been meaning to grab these for a while.
Non-fiction

Not exciting in the traditional way, perhaps, but it is nice to be preparing myself…
Tags: Stacking the Shelves
Posted November 19, 2014 by in General / 4 Comments
What have you recently finished reading?
Tooth & Claw, by Jo Walton. I had this vague impression of not being a big fan of it, but I think it must’ve caught me at a bad time originally, because actually, I love it. Ah, the benefits of rereading. I can’t help giggling every time I see a review complaining about the cannibalism, too… “Oh no, these dragons don’t act enough like humans!”
What are you currently reading?
Reread of The Hero and the Crown (Robin McKinley) — I’ve been needing familiar things. I need to finish The Just City (Jo Walton); it’s on my bedside table, but I haven’t wanted to be venturesome the last couple weeks. Not a good brain-week, this.
What will you read next?
I’ll finish up The Just City (Jo Walton) and Shadows (Robin McKinley), and then I want to get round to rereading Heart’s Blood (Juliet Marillier), before I lose the thread of my Beauty and the Beast themed reading.
Tags: books, Jo Walton, Juliet Marillier, Robin McKinley
Posted November 15, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments
This week, I have been super restrained. No, I really mean it!
Review copies

I didn’t even request Brood — I’m not sure why Bookbridr sent me it, because it sounds like it might be a bit too gory for me. Maybe I clicked something by accident? But I’m glad to have an ARC of The Wicked + The Divine; I actually have a pre-order for the TPB anyway, but now I get to read it sooner.
Bought

I’m guessing I’m going to see a lot of Foxglove Summer around in the next couple weeks; it just came out on Thursday. I’m excited! And Do No Harm was something I spotted in the bookshop and ended up getting with what I had left of a book token: it’s all about brain surgery, which both icks me out and fascinates me. I can’t see myself as a brain surgeon, but neurology is fascinating…
Comics

Captain Marvel #9! I’m not caught up at the moment, but hey, it’s nice to support the Carol Corps.
What’s everyone else been getting?
Tags: Ben Aaronovitch, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marvel, non-fiction, Stacking the Shelves
Posted November 11, 2014 by in General / 28 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt from The Broke and the Bookish is “top ten characters you wish would get their own book”.
- Verity Farseer (Realm of the Elderlings, Robin Hobb). Or maybe his wife, Kettricken. Either way, they’re both great characters, I love the idea of “Sacrifice”, and I wish we’d seen more of Verity being awesome. I don’t think there’s really space for a Verity book in the series, and arguably his crowning achievements are in the Fitz books anyway, but for dreaming about, there’s all the time before Fitz is born, or the time Verity spends alone in the mountains before Fitz and company catch up.
- Faramir (Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien). I had the biggest literary crush on Faramir; I think he’s one of the strongest characters we see in Middle-earth. He’s as worthy as Aragorn in his way — both consciously resist the Ring — and he had pretty short shift from his father. He deserves more!
- Jane Drew (The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper). Arguably Greenwitch is her book, but it’s so short! She’s the only girl in the Six, and it’d be great to see more of her.
- Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis). She deserved more than being dismissed as too interested in “lipsticks and nylons”. As of The Last Battle, she’s still alive and there’s room for redemption or reinterpretation of what’s going on with her. I don’t think Lewis could ever have really handled her with subtlety, but you can dream…
- Ysanne (The Fionavar Tapestry, Guy Gavriel Kay). We only briefly see what Ysanne is like and get hints of her history. A story set entirely within Fionavar that ties up some of that would be lovely.
- Mel (Sunshine, Robin McKinley). There’s so much mystery around that character that was never resolved. It adds an interesting background to Sunshine, but I think everyone wants to know more about him.
- Jasper (A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin). He’s just a plot element, really, to set Ged on his path. He vanishes out of the story and we never really know why he leaves Roke, whether he ever gains some redemption. He’s presented a little too simplistically — I want to know more, even though he’s not a pleasant character.
- Calcifer (Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones). Because Calcifer.
- Anafiel Delaunay de Montrève (Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey). We know a little about his past, and enough about him to sketch in what we need to know, but I’d like to get to know the character close-up, rather than through Phèdre’s eyes.
- Prim (The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins). We see her through Katniss’ eyes, but it’d be fun to know what Prim’s thinking, what drives her — what little rebellions are in her, against Katniss and for her, as they’re growing up and Katniss is doing all this self-sacrificing. She’s presented as pretty much totally cute, but there’s gotta be more complex things going on.
What about you guys?
Tags: books, C.S. Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones, Guy Gavriel Kay, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jacqueline Carey, Robin Hobb, Susan Cooper, Top Ten Tuesday, Ursula Le Guin