What are you reading Wednesday

Posted December 10, 2014 by in General / 4 Comments

I keep forgetting to post this lately — which is odd, since normally I love my routines. Still, I had it on my to do list for today, so fortunately, I didn’t forget!

What have you recently finished reading?
Heart’s Blood, by Juliet Marillier. Review goes up in the morning, I think; this was a reread, and I enjoyed it a lot. Though maybe not as much as I did the first time: some things were far too obvious on a reread, and I already predicted them the first time round.

What are you currently reading?
I’ve picked The Just City, by Jo Walton, back up. I stalled because I just felt like reading old familiar stuff (including Walton’s Tooth and Claw!) but I definitely want to hurry up and finish this. I’m also reading The Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron, which is light and fun. Comparisons to Locke Lamora and Vlad Taltos are quite unfair, given the lightness of it, though I can’t help but think of them… Non-fiction-wise, I’m also partway through Crow Country (Mark Cocker), which is kind of fascinating, not least because I didn’t know there was so much fascination to be found in the Corvid family, and also The Language Wars (Henry Hitchings), which is a little bit dry but still interesting.

What will you read next?
Probably more of the Rachel Aaron books. After that, maybe I’ll finally get round to The Girl with All the Gifts (M.R. Carey), or maybe I’ll just reread The Goblin Emperor… Or start on something else by Sarah Monette.

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Review – The Thief

Posted December 10, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Thief by Megan Whalen TurnerThe Thief, Megan Whalen Turner

I remember feeling somewhat ambivalent about this book the first time I read it, but I was sure it wouldn’t be that way this time: over the course of the other books, I came to love Gen and appreciate the world. Well, I still do love Gen and I appreciate the world, the set up for the twist that comes near the end of the book, the way Gen’s voice works as a narrator. But I still wasn’t that in love with the world in this book; I still didn’t get that attached to the characters. This is a series where I think the middle books are the strongest, but I was surprised that the familiarity of a reread didn’t make me appreciate this more.

One thing I do like is that while you might initially expect it to be something like pseudo-medieval Europe, based on the limited details you get at the beginning, it quickly becomes clear that this is a Greek-based world — although there’s plenty about it that’s unique, as well. I liked the fact that the geography of the place mattered a lot, too: where things are in relation to each other, how you get from A to B, where you have to pass through on the way.

This does set up a fun world, but this story still felt simplistic to me, easily guessed and so not as absorbing as I’d hoped.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Fellowship of the Ring

Posted December 9, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Fellowship of the Ring by TolkienThe Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Sorry, J.R.R.: I am going to review the three volumes separately, but it’s really more of a running commentary of what’s on my mind. I don’t actually see The Lord of the Rings as three separate books; the volumes just provide a good place to pause and take stock. And there’s always a lot to take stock of, when you’re reading these books: Tolkien made sure of that. This isn’t the first time I’ve read them for pleasure since my Tolkien module during my MA, but that aspect of my reading is maybe a bit further behind me right now. Still, I can’t not appreciate the extra richness that reading gave me, the breadth of Middle-earth. There’s so much I want to know more about — the Barrow Downs, the world Tom Bombadil first walked in… and not as glimpses, but the way we see them through the eyes of the hobbits or other members of the Company.

One thing that’s easy to forget is the sheer scale of the landscape they cross. People complain that it takes whole pages to get anywhere, but rarely the opposite: that the whole journey between Rivendell and Hollin is done in a page, that Hollin is just a stop on the way to Caradhras and Moria, when again, there’s so much more we could know about Hollin. Two things contributed to me thinking about that this time: one, I play LOTRO. Now thankfully, Lath has a war steed now, so I can cover a lot of ground, but the first fetch quests in the Shire drove me nuts. So much running! And even that is necessarily scaled down, else you’d have to sit back and take literally a day to run across the Shire. Not ideal for an MMORPG. Secondly, I’m part of a Walk to Mordor challenge, and wow. The miles it takes us to get anywhere — we’re barely progressing faster than the Company did, despite the fact that we’re adding everyone’s miles together.

One thing I do feel is the lack of a real Welsh influence here. This is “a mythology for England” (or is it “of England”? I’ve forgotten the exact quote now), not Britain, and all the focus is on the Anglo-Saxon kind of world. You can tell me about the Welsh influences until you’re blue in the face, but what gets me about Tolkien’s world is that absence. The troubled Welsh background is pushed aside — perhaps there in the Dunlendings’ struggle with the Rohirrim, but it’s not like that is a major theme, or that they’re treated with much sympathy.

Which is fair enough, but it does make me sad that Tolkien didn’t fold those issues into his mythology. I would’ve liked to see more of those tensions, that complex history, echoing through Middle-earth as it still does through modern Britain.

Rating: 5/5

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted December 9, 2014 by in General / 26 Comments

This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is top ten new-to-me authors I read in 2014. Hmmm…

  1. Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette). If you haven’t noticed how I loved The Goblin Emperor, well, wow.
  2. Brandon Sanderson. Yep, I know, I’m way behind. But I think The Rithmatist was the first thing I’ve read by him.
  3. Rainbow Rowell. She can certainly write an absorbing story!
  4. Francis Pryor. Yes, an odd one out so far, but man, absorbing books about archaeology, how could I not love?
  5. Richard Fortey. Too bad I managed to read most of his books just in this one year.
  6. David Quammen. Purely on the basis of Spillover, without even having to think! I’m not sure about getting his book on ebola; I don’t know how much it overlaps.
  7. Steven Brust. Okay, technically I read a collab of his with Robin Hobb long, long ago, but this year saw my introduction to his solo work.
  8. Ilona Andrews. Really didn’t expect to like the Kate Daniels books so much, but I do.
  9. Ngaio Marsh. I need to get back to gorging on these, I think. At least there’s a lot!
  10. Kameron Hurley. I still haven’t read her non-fiction, but I loved her non-fiction collection.

What about you? Anything you think I’m missing from my life?

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Review – The Galápagos

Posted December 8, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Galapagos by Henry NichollsThe Galápagos, Henry Nicholls

This isn’t a very substantial book, really: each chapter is fairly brief, and focused on a fairly broad swathe of the creatures living on the famous islands, often focusing on one or two representative examples when it’s a large family of critters. This works quite well for the layperson, avoiding going too in depth on any one subject that might become boring, while still offering an introduction to the wealth of variety and beauty in the Galápagos islands. A lot of it, of course, is related to Darwin and his theories, which are what have made the Galápagos so iconic for anyone with that kind of interest.

I did like the chapters which focus on the way humans have affected the islands. He seems fairly ambivalent about it, in a way: he hesitates to say that tourism is damaging the islands (probably because he’d be a hypocrite if he did!) but at the same time, he makes the impact quite clear.

Sometimes I do wonder about whether we can or should preserve species that are going extinct. In one sense, it’s often our own fault. We’re as much of a natural disaster as a massive meteorite strike. But maybe there should be a test applied first: if humans back off (after some captive breeding and releasing if necessary), can the population once again support itself? Or has the world just changed too fast for them? We can’t foresee all the ramifications, how and whether a species even can adapt. We could risk making a species that we value for its place in the wild into a species dependent on us, like the animals we’ve bred for food and convenience. If we do that, have we really saved the species after all? I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder; certainly I don’t think it’s unequivocally the right thing to do, and so some of the conservation aspects of this I disagreed with. Not the sentiment, but the practicality.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Still Life

Posted December 7, 2014 by in Reviews / 3 Comments

Cover of Still Life by Louise PennyStill Life, Louise Penny

I have quite mixed feelings about this one. It was enthusiastically recommended on Twitter by a couple of authors I do like, but from the very first page it felt clumsily written to me. A little overwritten — “Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec knelt down; his knees cracking like the report of a hunter’s rifle, his large, expressive hands hovering over the tiny circle of blood marring her fluffy cardigan, as though like a magician he could remove the wound and restore the woman.” It just reads all wrong to me, and put me off right there — and that’s in the second paragraph. The same sort of style continues throughout, and extends to the characters as well — if there are two more florid and clichéd gay men in all of fiction, I’d almost be surprised, and it’s not as though that gives them life. It’s like a world of cardboard cut-outs, springing up to attention when the reader looks, but flattening down the rest of the time. Some of them were even ridiculous, like the young detective Yvette Nichol: she doesn’t seem capable, trained, adult — she seems like a child having a sulk, most of the time.

This is meant to be a ‘cosy’ mystery, apparently; though it doesn’t really feel like it, with the intrusion of the police into a small rural community, with an old woman killed by someone in that community… Normally in a cosy mystery, I guess I expect there to be a different sort of crime. Someone we sympathise with less, maybe even someone who we feel deserves it. The disruption of a small tight-knit community like this one is supposed to be is pretty much the antithesis of cosy, to me.

The one thing I did really like about this was the domestic partnerships. Gamache is far from the stereotyped lonely detective with a drinking problem, with a wife and a harmonious home to return to. Other characters in the book are married as well, and these relationships are presented as natural, symbiotic, fulfilling. Those were the moments where Penny shone, for me, because for that moment her characters did show a spark of life.

Ultimately, though, I found this really disappointing and just skimmed it. It’s cosy in the sense that it’s not gritty Ian Rankin/Val McDermid style crime, full of sexual abuse and the like. It seems to try and be more in the genre of Mary Stewart or Alan Bradley — the only writers I’d forgive that ending with the snakes — and, well, fails. I’m sure there’s an audience for it, but it ain’t me.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Posted December 6, 2014 by in Reviews / 8 Comments

Cover of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy FowlerWe Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler

I hurried up about reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves because my aunt talked about reading it, and since she doesn’t seem to be a big reader, I thought it’d be interesting (and maybe add to dinner table conversation the next time she visits). She told me about the twist in a somewhat oblique way that had me wondering how the facts fit together. When I hit the apparently infamous page 77, though, it does all make sense; if I hadn’t needed to return this to the library for the next patron who reserved it, I’d have reread the first 77 pages and figured out where there’s subtler foreshadowing and so on. I wasn’t looking for it in the right places, so if it was there, it passed me by.

All in all, it’s an interesting story, based on the idea of raising a chimp among humans and seeing how much we can humanise them, which has been done in various experiments. It’s hard to say more about the themes of the book without spoilering people for page 77, because the whole way the plot comes together relies on that reveal, and whether it works for you. For me, it did. I got the book out of the library at 5.30pm and finished it by 11pm; I feel that the voice is engaging, the unchronological way of telling the story works well, and the mystery/twist combined with that narrative voice worked for me, because Rosemary (the narrator) speaks to the reader. It’s like an oral story in some ways — you’re being told a story by someone who finds it difficult, who is feeling their way into telling it.

There are things I didn’t like very much about this book, even so; some of the plotlines/characters didn’t seem to add much. Some of it was all part of the red herrings, of course, to lead the reader astray. But I was unsure about the whole character of Harlow — her later appearances seemed unnecessary, and that first performative scene with her the best and most revealing thing about her character (revealing both herself and Rosemary, I mean). The lost suitcase plot… shrug? The puppet… what?

So needless to say, given how fast I devoured it, I did quite enjoy it. I haven’t a clue what I’ll have to say about it when my aunt visits again, though; I’m still thinking about it all.

(Mum, this book is very anti-animal experimentation, it’d drive you nuts. Squirt, don’t read it, it’ll upset you.)

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves

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

Cover of The Very Best of Kate Elliott Cover of H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

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

Cover of The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron Cover of The Spirit Rebellion by Rachel Aaron Cover of The Spirit Eater by Rachel Aaron

Cover of 7 Wonders by Adam Christopher Cover of The Iron King by Maurice Druon Cover of Starfish by Peter Watts

Cover of Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery Cover of Still Life by Louise Penny

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

Cover of Ladies of the Grand Tour by Brian Dolan Cover of The Galapagos by Henry Nicholls

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

Comics (single issues)

DIG029097_2 DIG031290_3

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?

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Review – Chime

Posted December 5, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Chime by Franny BillingsleyChime, Franny Billingsley
Review from March 3rd, 2013

Where do I begin to talk about Chime? It’s a magical story and it’s not: the plot revolves around magical beings, around what are essentially soul-sucking vampires, around a girl who is a witch. The plot revolves around a stepmother, and illness, around a girl who is made to believe that she’s a bitch. Sorry: Chime makes me want to play with words, makes me think a little like Briony (which was, by chance, almost my own name).

I can quite see why some people don’t like it. It requires thought, patience, and a willingness to tread out new brain-paths. 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.

I loved this. I found the culmination of it all satisfying, and I happily followed the maze through to the end. I loved the friendship that turned into love and also remained friendship, so much more solid-feeling than the kind of romances that fiction is enamoured of where there’s a spark and then a flame without any time in between. I loved the characters, and I would prefer to read them again.

But if you read fifty pages and you’re not intrigued, if you read fifty pages and you would like to kick Briony, if you’d like to stop reading, then stop. It probably isn’t going to magically turn out to be the book for you.

Rating: 5/5

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Flashback Friday

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.

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