Posted October 9, 2014 by in General / 4 Comments
This week’s prompt from Ok, Let’s Read:
October 9: Reader Probs – What are some of the “whiny” problems you find yourself coming across as a reader? Do you deal with book hangovers often? How do you react when a character you like is killed off? Do certain books you might be reading effect your daily life? Do you catch yourself day dreaming about characters in your books? In other words, how is the magical world of reading ruining your life?
I have a problem with all media, and that’s that when I come to care a lot about a character, I then get reluctant to read/watch when anything bad happens to them. So I am several seasons behind on Supernatural, never made it past Kill Ari part two in NCIS, etc, etc. (Sometimes I get through this by reading spoilers.)
I wouldn’t say reading is really ruining my life, though. Unless it’s through procrastinating from transcription to read, so I end up transcribing at 3am instead of sleeping — or spending all the money earned through said transcription work. The daydreaming and so on does happen, and it keeps me interested while I have to stand and work at the clinic, or when I’m volunteering at an event. It’s even better when I’m volunteering at the library!
My main problems are just making sure I’ve got a book to hand at all times, and a light to read by…
Tags: books, Thursday Thoughts
Posted October 8, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments
What have you recently finished reading?
The Younger Gods (Michael R. Underwood). I wasn’t really impressed, sadly. Before that I read Venomoid (J.A. Kossler), which was similarly unimpressive. Both books for review, alas.
What are you currently reading?
Fair Game (Josh Lanyon), in preparation for reading the sequel for review. I’m at least sure that that’s going to be fun; Josh Lanyon is like my brain’s cheesecake. I’m also reading The Old Ways (Robert Macfarlane), because the title makes me think of The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper), and Galapagos (Kurt Vonnegut), because that’s on my list of 101 sci-fi books.
What will you read next?
ARC-wise, I need to catch up with the Flavia de Luce books and review the most recent, so that’ll probably be soon. New book-wise, either Clariel (Garth Nix) or Maplecroft (Cherie Priest), because I’m excited about both. Library-wise, probably The Bone People (Keri Hulme).
My life is complicated, y’all.
Tags: Alan Bradley, books, Josh Lanyon, reading meme, Susan Cooper
Posted October 7, 2014 by in General / 24 Comments
This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is “Ten Books For Readers Who Like Character Driven Novels”. I thought this one would be easy, initially, since characters are really important to me when I read, but it’s actually tougher than I thought.
- Pretty much anything by Guy Gavriel Kay. Even where his writing was less polished, more derivative, I fell completely in love with the characters. He’s one of the few authors who can reliably make me cry.
- The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb. Sure, there’s a lot of plot too, but Fitz’s voice is the most important aspect of the story, and you just want to reach in and bang his head against something to force the sense in, sometimes.
- Sunshine, Robin McKinley. Not only is it vampires-done-right, but it’s first person narration, and everything Sunshine is as a character shapes the way the plot turns out.
- The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern. If you count the circus as a character almost on its own (I do), then yeah, this one definitely counts.
- Seaward, Susan Cooper. I need to reread this soon. I loved it so much, and despite the shortness of the book, Cooper built up a relationship between the two main characters that I genuinely loved and wanted to follow.
- The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers. Actually, as far as being character-driven goes, you’re best reading the whole series chronologically, to get a feel for the way everything fits together, for the way the characters develop. I don’t even think I’d necessarily say I’d start with this one. But it’s the one that really made me understand Lord Peter.
- Chime, Franny Billingsley. To say much about this would be to spoil it. A brief excerpt from my review: “Briony isn’t an easy narrator, and she isn’t reliable either, as she constantly tells us. The narrative isn’t a straightforward quest, it’s a maze, it’s full of funhouse mirrors.”
- Heart’s Blood, Juliet Marillier. This is the book where me and Marillier really clicked — I tried some before this one, and wasn’t impressed. But I got really involved with this, with the characters and their problems.
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin. The narration is brilliant, the way it all slowly comes together, and I love what Jemisin does with her main character, and with the characters of the gods around her. Particularly when it comes to the child-god, Sieh, who has to act in accord with his nature, or he suffers.
- Among Others, Jo Walton. I strongly connected with this because I connected with Mori. Watching her grow up and begin to understand her world better over the course of the novel is a delight.
Wow, that actually took a lot of thought. Veeeery keen to see other people’s picks for this one!
Tags: books, Dorothy L. Sayers, Erin Morgenstern, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jo Walton, Juliet Marillier, N.K. Jemisin, Robin Hobb, Robin McKinley, Susan Cooper, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted October 4, 2014 by in General / 10 Comments
Good morning, folks! Shortly after this goes live, I’ll be on the way to Belgium again, whoo. So I’ll be around to check out your posts later than usual. This one is a short one by my usual standards, anyway — just three books to review!
Yep, that really is it. I’ll be buying a few more books for my Kobo before I set off, but I haven’t picked ’em yet, and I don’t have time to add them later. So they’ll be in next week’s post!
Tags: Alan Bradley, books, Elizabeth Bear, Stacking the Shelves
Posted October 2, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments
This week’s prompt from Ok, Let’s Read is about bookish fandoms…
Do you have any experience with fandoms in the bookish world? What fandoms do you consider yourself to be a part of? Have you ever created something pertaining to your favorite books as a part of the fandom (i.e. artwork, music, fanfic, cosplay)? Can you share your creation with us?
I’m less into bookish fandoms than I am into stuff like the MCU, the Young Avengers comics, Captain Marvel, etc. I can’t think of any strictly bookish t-shirts I have, for example — I’ve got two Captain Marvel shirts, some Avengers and Captain America ones, etc, but it’s mostly comics and games. I do like getting involved in events, like The Dark is Rising readathon that happened last year, and I’d have loved to go to the recent anniversary celebration of The Fionavar Tapestry and so on.
If you count Arthuriana as one big fandom, well, I know all the Arthurian songs of Heather Dale off by heart, and have written a bunch of stories and poetry based on the Arthurian legends (usually taking them and skewing it, so I’ve written about Tristan and Isolde from Mark’s point of view, etc).
Tags: Arthurian, books, Marvel, Thursday Thoughts
Posted September 30, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is “Top Ten Books That Were Hard For Me To Read”. Which… it should be an easy one for me, because I get embarrassment squick really easily, and there are various topics that don’t do my brain any good. My mind’s gone blank as I type this, but let’s see what I can do.
- Assassin’s Quest, Robin Hobb. Stop hurting Fitz! That’s pretty much a universal in Hobb’s books, but still. The books are great but oh my god, stop hurting Fitz.
- Hold On, Alan Gibbons. I read this way back because my sister asked me to. Both of us were bullied pretty badly in school, so it was difficult to read both because it’d happened to me, and because I knew it was still happening to my sister.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling. Yeah, I doubt this one is going to show up on many other people’s lists. But it’s true. I’ve studied it 2-3 times in English Lit, and between that and the massive hype, I have difficulty picturing myself enjoying it now. Or I did: I think I’m starting to feel like giving the series another go now.
- Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Solely because I read it too much.
- The Mermaids Singing, Val McDermid. Rape, torture, gore, violence, suicide, all kinds of triggers. It upset me very much back when it was a set text for a Crime Fiction module, to the point where I actually requested in the end of term feedback that the lecturer put a warning about it on the syllabus, particularly for the benefit of people who have been raped or have the kind of gender issues described. (The lecturer said no and called me a fragile flower in front of the entire lecture hall, but that’s another story.)
- The Farthest Shore, Ursula Le Guin. I never used to like going past the first two books of the Earthsea series. I didn’t like how Le Guin developed the world, and the way her concerns within the world changed from fairly typical fantasy tropes to something much more examined. I’d like them better now, I think, particularly now I’ve read the final book and seen how it all comes together.
- The Double Helix, James Watson. I have actually enjoyed more recent work by Watson, but this memoir of the discovery of the structure of DNA drove me nuts. He’s so dismissive and awful about Rosalind Franklin and her achievements, with numerous comments on her appearance and how a bit of makeup would improve her. Ugh.
- The Innocent Mage, Karen Miller. I loved what Miller did with building up characters, even with world-building. But it was so slow, and her villain was practically a cartoon. I expected him to say “mwahahahaahaaa!” any moment.
- An Evil Guest, Gene Wolfe. Gene Wolfe is a really clever writer, but this book seemed like a mess. I can’t even really remember much about it; I certainly didn’t enjoy it. Sadly!
- Revealing Eden, Victoria Foyt. It may be possible to do justice to this idea, in the hands of a very good writer. Flipping racism around so that white people are the ones without privilege… it could make for a really interesting story, I guess. But oh man, did Foyt not think it through.
Looking forward to seeing what other people pick!
Tags: books, Gene Wolfe, Robin Hobb, Top Ten Tuesday, Ursula Le Guin
Posted September 27, 2014 by in General / 12 Comments
I haven’t gone on such wonderful buying sprees this week, but I did go to two different libraries (go on, guess how many library cards I have). So it is not particularly a small haul, all the same. And I did get some books — my partner spoils me.
Ebooks
I read Graceling a few years ago, and liked it well enough, but I wasn’t bowled over. I’m going to give Kristin Cashore another chance, evidently; my ex-housemate Ru will be pleased with me. The Language of Spells was a somewhat random choice, while Fair Game is necessary for me to read last week’s review copy of Fair Play.
Review copies
I tried to have restraint this week, see?
Library books
More Heyer, which surprises no one; I keep meaning to read Sarah Addison Allen and since I’ve misplaced Garden Spells, I may as well start there; archaeology! paleontology! and… Matt Fraction. My usual hectic mix.
What’s everyone else been up to?
Tags: books, comics, non-fiction, SF/F, Stacking the Shelves
Posted September 25, 2014 by in General / 1 Comment
This week’s prompt from Ok, Let’s Read is about novellas.
What are your general opinions on novellas or short stories in a series or otherwise? Have you read any novellas? Do you always make sure to read the novellas in a series? Do you read them where they belong (i.e. between the correct two books) or are you not too bothered about that sort of thing?
They can be interesting. Sometimes they drive me mad because they’re in some obscure anthology, which I only want for that one story. Or they’re just not available anymore. Still, they can add something interesting to a series, and I do try to read them where they belong in a chronological order. Sometimes, that really doesn’t work — I read The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, by Sarah J. Maas, for example, back before the first novel was released, and I didn’t really care enough. It’s an interesting method of trying to whet people’s appetites, but you have to make it really good if you’re going to do that.
I have a lot of opinions about short stories because I like to write them. You can’t just think of them as a watered down novel; they’ve got to have all the elements of a good novel, but concentrated. You’ve got to tighten up the writing until every word is important, every paragraph advances something. I don’t mean just plot-wise; a good paragraph could help build up the world, the characters, or yeah, the plot.
For sci-fi fans, I’d definitely recommend Alastair Reynolds. I loved Troika, which is a 100 page-ish novella, and I remember being very enthusiastic about Diamond Dogs, as well. Reynolds has that knack of taking an idea that could fill a whole novel and focusing in on it, staying with it without getting distracted, and delivering something really powerful.
Tags: Alastair Reynolds, books, Thursday Thoughts
Posted September 25, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments
What have you recently finished reading?
FF: Fantastic Faux, by Matt Fraction. Which is heavily linked to the Fantastic Four title in the Marvel Now lineup, which I haven’t read, so made very little sense. On the other hand, Fraction deals very deftly with a transgendered character, making it so normal and the transition so well done that it barely registers as a big issue at all.
And you’ve gotta love the line “All of you pale before our hetero-normative cisgendered classification of family!”
What are you currently reading?
The Fellowship of the Ring. Oh, Tolkien. Oh, Frodo.
The Enchantment Emporium (Tanya Huff). Can’t remember if I mentioned this last week, but so far it’s very fun. I do have to switch my brain onto the Mary Stewart/Georgette Heyer cousin-marrying-is-okay frequency, but I do have that frequency, so that works. Casually queer, all kinds of family stuff, interesting magic.
What will you read next?
Well, Tolkien aside, I’m gonna dig back into We Are Here (Michael Marshall Smith) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Thomas Sweterlitsch), since I’m halfway through both and certainly owe a review for the latter.
Tags: books, comics, Marvel, Michael Marshall (Smith), reading meme, Tanya Huff
Posted September 23, 2014 by in General / 4 Comments
This week’s top ten list prompt from The Broke and The Bookish is “Top Ten Books On My Fall To-Be-Read list”. Which is a little difficult for me, because I don’t really sort my books into appropriate seasons or anything. I just have a perpetual, massive, glorious to read list. But here are some books I’m looking forward to getting round to…
- Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is actually a reread of a book I wasn’t wild about the first time round, but now I have this urge to reread it and read the rest of the series, and I suspect I’ll like it more this time around. We’ll see, but I’m hopeful.
- Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett. This is a reread, too. I know I’m going to love this one because I always have before, though I somewhat over-read it so that I could virtually quote it, and thus have given it a couple of years’ rest.
- River of Stars, by Guy Gavriel Kay. I’ve had this since it came out, but it’s at the end of a long list of rereads of GGK’s work, so I can watch his craft developing. I started pretty well but stalled on A Song for Arbonne, which is funny, because I do like that book and it covers exactly the sort of historical period I’m very familiar with and have done work on. So hopefully I’ll get through them all and get onto this new one sometime this fall.
- Friday’s Child, by Georgette Heyer. Because I haven’t read it yet, and it’s Heyer.
- Blindsight, by Peter Watts. Because it’s been recommended to me a couple of times, I got a free copy, and it’s been mentioned quite a bit in one of my book groups.
- Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. Because it’s about bloody time.
- Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean. Ditto. And the opening, with starting at university and settling in and all of that, it seems a good time of year for that, even if I’m not a student this time.
- Possession, by A.S. Byatt. Speaking of scholarship and stuff, I’ve been meaning to read this for a long time.
- Little, Big, by John Crowley. I’ve had this book around far too long, and I’ve been meaning to read it. I just… never seem to have found the time. About time I fixed that.
- Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson. I generally enjoy Sanderson’s work, and this one includes superheroes. So very sold.
What about everyone else? Comment, link me, you know the drill.
Tags: Ann Leckie, books, Brandon Sanderson, Georgette Heyer, Guy Gavriel Kay, Mary Robinette Kowal, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Top Ten Tuesday
