Category: General

Top Ten Tuesday

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…

  1. 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.
  2. 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…
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season. Gimme! Gimme!
  8. Marie Brennan, The Voyage of the Basilisk. I need to read the second book, but still. Still. Badass Victorian lady!
  9. 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.
  10. 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?

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 29, 2014 by in General / 24 Comments

This week looks quite busy, but I have excuses, I promise…

Library

Cover of Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon Cover of The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings Cover of Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth

Cover of Creation by Adam Rutherford Cover of If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley

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

Cover of Native Tongue, by Suzette Elgin Haden Cover of The Terrorists of Irustan by Louise Marley Cover of The Glass Harmonica by Louise Marley

Cover of A Seed on the Wind by Cat Rambo Cover of Queen & Commander by Janine A. Southard Cover of Hive & Heist by Janine A. Southard

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?

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What are you reading Wednesday

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!

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Top Ten Tuesday

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…

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Tanya Huff, The Enchantment Emporium. Also been on the go for a while, whoops. And it’s fun!
  4. Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer. Because omgggg.
  5. 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.
  6. Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart. Because superheroes! And it’s about time.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.)
  10. 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!

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 22, 2014 by in General / 10 Comments

This week has been a library week…

Fiction

Cover of The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart Cover of The Savage Knight by Paul Lewis Cover of Dangerous Women ed. G.R.R. Martin

Cover of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley Cover of Labyrinth by Kate Mosse Cover of The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

Cover of The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross Cover of Osama by Lavie Tidhar Cover of Fever by Mary Beth Keane

Cover of Tooth & Claw by Jo Walton Cover of Ghost King by David Gemmell Cover of Last Sword of Power by David Gemmell

Cover of A Taste of Blood Wine by Freda Warrington

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

Cover of Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel Cover of Hand in Hand, ed. Carol Ann Duffy

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

Cover of UKCAT for Dummies

Not exciting in the traditional way, perhaps, but it is nice to be preparing myself…

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What are you reading Wednesday

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.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 15, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments

This week, I have been super restrained. No, I really mean it!

Review copies

Cover of Brood by Chase Novak Cover of The Wicked + The Divine by Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen

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

 Cover of Do No Harm by Henry Marsh Cover of Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

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

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?

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Top Ten Tuesday

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”.

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. 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.
  4. 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…
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. Calcifer (Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones). Because Calcifer.
  9. 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.
  10. 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?

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On Requires Hate

Posted November 8, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments

Shortly after I created this blog, there was a whole kerfuffle on Goodreads and Twitter about reviewers who noted author behaviour in their reviews. There were many sides to the argument, about whether it was fair to judge the book by the author’s behaviour, whether these people were becoming as bad as the behaviour they were calling out, etc. I generally occupied a medium ground: I won’t buy anything by Orson Scott Card, but I did really enjoy Ender’s Game back when I read that. Given authors’ expressed attitudes to homosexuality, race, gender, mental health issues, etc, I’ve quietly avoided some of them, even if I’ve thought before their work was pretty good.

I don’Cover of The Archer Who Shot Down Suns by Benjanun Sriduangkaewt think any of it has ever been on the scale of Benjanun Sridungkaew, aka Winterfox, Requires Hate, etc. I was interested in reading her work and I’ve included her book covers in a fairly recent Stacking the Shelves post. I didn’t know about her other identities then. I’m sorry if that gave anyone any unpleasantness: I didn’t know.

I did actually come across Winterfox back on LiveJournal, and because I’m an unabashed fan of N.K. Jemisin, I caught the edge of some of the hate. Never anything particularly severe, but enough that I dropped out of sCover of Scale Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaewome communities, avoided participating. I didn’t really know back then the sheer scale of what was happening, but there’s no excuse now. There’s a report here which I suggest you read, in that it relies on data as best as possible, and presents evidence, etc. It definitely contains a lot of graphic threats of violence quoted from the original blog, however, so be warned.

I’m not saying Benjanun Sridungkaew’s apology isn’t genuine, because I can’t judge that. Maybe she’s trying to atone for the harm she’s done, even. I haven’t seen that, either. I’m not saying other people have to make the same decision, publicly or privately. I do know that I remember the bullying tactics, and I’m not going to read Benjanun’s work. It sounds great, it sounds right up my alley, but I can’t maintain interest in the face of the behaviour described in the report. I can always go back to it if circumstances change, but as of right now I’m drawing a line.

If you’ve been targeted by Requires Hate, then let me say: I believe you, I hear you, we’re with you now.

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 8, 2014 by in General / 28 Comments

It’s been a very acquisitive week for me, even though I keep telling myself I mustn’t go over 365 books bought this year. Not that my book-buying urge has ever listening to such logical things, so there y’go. There’s been a fair amount of yarn buying, too, so I am predictably pretty broke already, even though it’s just the first week of November. Anyway! Some awesome stuff, this week.

Review copies

Cover of The Just City by Jo Walton Cover of Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers Cover of Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

Cover of Myth and Magic, ed. Radclyffe and Stacia Seamen Cover of World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters Cover of The Midnight Witch by Paula Brackston

I was actually kindly lent a print copy of The Just City, which is in my Top Ten Books I Don’t Own and Want To Read post, by Robert. Then naturally Tor approved me for the ARC on Netgalley as well, even though they’ve never approved my requests before… Ah well, I’ll probably read the print copy anyway. I’ve heard mixed things about Robin LaFevers, but I thought I’d try. And queer fairy tales are right up my street.

Print books

Cover of What Matters In Jane Austen? by John Mullen Cover of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North Cover of Dark Entries by Robert Aickman

Cover of Fearsome Magics, ed. Jonathan Strahan Cover of The Sleeper and the Spindle, by Neil Gaiman Cover of Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir

Cover of Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter

I couldn’t resist getting The Sleeper and the Spindle, especially because of some of the art I’ve seen inside it. Claire North is apparently another pseudonym of Catherine Webb/Kate Griffin, whose work I’ve been following since she published her first novel. Excited! The other stuff is a mixture of random choice and stuff I’ve been meaning to pick up. I had an ARC of Elizabeth of York, and my guilt induced me to finally just buy it…

Anyway, as this goes live I’ll be heading out to the local Comic-Con. Looking forward to seeing what the dealers have! What’s everyone else been getting?

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