Tag: books

Review – Zoomigurumi

Posted December 12, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Zoomigurumi, Amigurumipatterns.net

I gather that my sister demanded I be bought this, so I could make her the admittedly adorable monkey on the front. The cat, donkey and monkey patterns are all cute and well done, particularly — the same basic model basically lies behind all of these, and none looks difficult. If you have the basics of crochet and sewing projects together down, you should be fine to make just about anything in here. It has the usual sort of introduction showing how to do basic stitches and explaining abbreviations, etc, too. The patterns are all in text; no need to have any skill in learning how to read a pattern.

I’m mostly surprised my mother hasn’t bought me the third in the series, which has a really cute hedgehog on the cover, and a hippo pattern allegedly inside as well.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crafts, non-fiction

Stacking the Shelves

Posted December 12, 2015 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

A quiet week, since I haven’t gone to the library (yet)! I got a few books from Robert, but most of them I either had already in ebook or left at my grandmother’s house for now. I also got my early Christmas present from Robert, and that looks really interesting — fantasy/mystery set in Cardiff!

What’s everyone else been grabbing? And don’t forget, I still have a giveaway running here to celebrate my blog’s new home!

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves

Review – The Graveyard Book

Posted December 11, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Originally reviewed 26th December, 2008

I got The Graveyard Book for Christmas, yesterday, and devoured it in a single day despite also reading other stuff, watching movies, going shopping, seeing friends and all those things you do when you’re home for Christmas. It’s lovely. I like some of Neil’s other books, like Neverwhere and American Gods, better, but at the same time this one has its attractions. It feels more… bite-size. Easily digestible.

I haven’t actually read The Jungle Book, so I can’t make comparisons with that original inspiration, but I do love the idea of this: a boy gets raised, in a graveyard, by ghosts. In some ways, I wish there’d been less Bod and more Silas, but on the other hand it was quite nice to feel that there was a whole world of stories there and we got glimpses into many of them. I liked the episodic sort of form; I wish there’d been more episodes, though. I also liked that although we are given many, many hints about Silas, the word “vampire” is not used once.

The strength of this book for me was the voices. The narrative voice included. The dry little comments about Silas, the parenthetical dates of births and deaths… it all added up to make me smile often and giggle a few times. Silas’ character was lovely, and the glimpse we got into his feelings in the last chapter was fascinating. The Owenses were good, I could virtually hear their voices as I read their lines — helped, of course, by having listened to the recordings of Neil Gaiman reading this aloud.

Not my favourite book in the whole wide world, but nonetheless a keeper, something easy and smooth for when I’m not feeling up to a mammoth undertaking.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, Neil Gaiman, SF/F

Review – Code Name Verity

Posted December 10, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein

I really liked Wein’s books about Mordred and his children, at least as far as I remember them (it was a few years ago), so I was quite hopeful about this one. I’ve tried to read it once before, actually; I think I even got a review copy from Netgalley. But I really didn’t click with it. For one thing, the tone is too casual, Verity’s gambit too obvious. Parts of the unreliable narration are done really well, but it remained impossible for me to imagine that a German officer trying to get information would really allow Verity to keep writing about picnics and the exact details of civilian life in such a mundane way.

I ended up skimming this a lot, so any emotional impact was also lost on me. I know a lot of people really loved this, but it did not work at all for me. And I couldn’t really imagine a young female spy in WWII saying things like “dead embarrassing” about ending up crying.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: book reviews, books, historical fiction

Review – At the Edge of Uncertainty

Posted December 8, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

At the Edge of Uncertainty, Michael Brooks

I picked this up after attending the New Scientist “instant expert” workshop on consciousness. Michael Brooks introduced the lecturers and such, and chaired the Q&A session, and it was mentioned one of his books mentions epigenetics. Well, that’s possibly even more my thing than a workshop on consciousness, so of course I picked it up.

It’s an overview of the parts of science where we don’t quite know what’s happening. Where the story becomes blurred and you definitely don’t teach it in GCSE Physics, because even eminent scientists aren’t sure what to believe. It makes things we take for granted — the Big Bang, hereditary diseases mostly through DNA itself — a little shakier. So Brooks’ account is understandably speculative, just giving us a look at current thought in the field — the big ideas which could change the way we look at the world.

It’s reasonably easy to read, despite the big concepts, and I quite enjoyed it. If New Scientist works for you, then this is about the same level, to my mind. It covers a lot of areas of science and goes in-depth on none, so you certainly don’t need to be an expert. If you are finding the concepts a little difficult, I would suggest reading one chapter at a time and giving yourself time to digest the ideas — I did that with a couple of chapters.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted December 8, 2015 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

This week’s theme is the top ten new to me authors I’ve read this year. So, with the help of Goodreads, here goes!

Kerry Greenwood. Actually technically not new to me, because I’d read Cocaine Blues before. But I hated it, for some reason, and didn’t read the whole thing the first time. This time, I devoured it and went on to eat up the rest of the series too (something I’m still in progress with). So I’m going to pretend the first time didn’t happen. I was clearly cranky at the time.
Leigh Bardugo. I know I’m late to the party, but I finally read Shadow and Bone, and found myself unexpectedly riveted.
Ann Leckie. Again, rather late to the party, but at least it meant that I got to read the whole trilogy more or less at once, with just a couple of months waiting for the last one!
K.J. Parker. I’m not just late to the party, I crashed in after several hours. But I read the Tor.com novella and now I know I need to get round to more of Parker’s work.
Freda Warrington. Her vampire novels are just ridiculously addictive. Hurrah for Titan rereleasing them so they came to my attention.
Patricia Briggs. I have some problems with her books, but they’re also dead fun.
Elizabeth Bear. Rather late to the party again, but Karen Memory made me want to read more of her work.
Seth Dickinson. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was awesome.
Zen Cho. I enjoyed Sorcerer to the Crown.
Greg van Eekhout. I really need to get round to the third book in his trilogy, Dragon Coast.

I’ll be interested to see what other people have discovered this year! A couple of mine were actually debut authors, but as you can see from where I’ve been late to the party, a lot of them were discoveries of authors who’ve been going a while.

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Ancillary Mercy

Posted December 7, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie

For a while, I wasn’t sure how this book would or could wrap everything up, given the scale of the struggle that we began to see in Ancillary Justice. But I think, in the end, that comes down to the fact that the story isn’t actually about that struggle; this isn’t a never-ending epic struggle, it’s about one person — one fragment of a person, even, slowly becoming a person. It’s about Justice of Toren, and Breq, and then also about the people she interacts with: Seivarden, Ekalu, Ship, Station, Sphene… It’s about people and tangled loyalties and learning.

This makes the small stuff — the tea, the bureaucracy, Tisarwat’s purple eyes, Medic’s attempts to help Seivarden — all-important. So it’s great to see the bit where Seivarden and Breq negotiate mutual comfort; great to see the part where Seivarden struggles to apologise to Ekalu — and then later manages to really apologise to Ekalu. This passage was just so important, because it’s such a sign of how far Seivarden’s come, and such an important thing for people to realise:

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I still don’t understand exactly why what I said hurt you so much. But I don’t need to. It hurt you, and when you told me it hurt you, I should have apologised and stopped saying whatever it was. And maybe spent some time trying to understand. Instead of insisting that you manage your feelings to suit me. And I want to say I’m sorry. And I actually mean it this time.”

Now that’s the way to apologise, sincerely, even when you still don’t understand.

Also, this book does include glimpses of the wider world, beyond the Radch — mentions of the aliens, the presence of another Presger translator, etc. If you’re in this to see Anaander Miaanai go down, then I think you’ll be disappointed with the way the trilogy ends; if you’re in this for Breq and Seivarden and the people gathering around them, then this is an excellent ending.

Well, not an ending, but a good place to stop. You know that Breq will carry on, Seivarden will carry on, and they will still struggle and Anaander will still scheme and Tisarwat has a long way to go. But, “In the end, it’s only ever been one step, and then the next.”

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Ann Leckie, book reviews, books, SF/F

Review – The Tombs of Atuan

Posted December 6, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula Le Guin

This always used to be my favourite of the series, both for sheer atmosphere and because it featured a female-centred world, in complete contrast to the first book. It’s almost the opposite, in that way: Ged isn’t the POV character anymore, and instead we follow Arha/Tenar, seeing her experience in a different land, seeing Ged as an outsider. That latter is especially fun, because though he talks about not learning Ogion’s lessons, it seems that he really has. And there was always an attraction for the dark rituals, Arha’s dance in front of the Empty Throne, the drums struck softly at heart-pace. Le Guin didn’t just blindly throw together a bunch of superstitions and fake rituals: it hangs together as a cohesive whole, and the fact that even the characters find the rituals meaningless, strange, the significances lost in time… that also works for me.

One image that always sticks with me is that of Ged asleep on the ground, the small thistle by his hand. That image somehow epitomises the book for me: his serenity and trust, his link to the world around him, and also the way Tenar sees him, truly sees him, alive and in the world and not at all a part of the dark existence she led before… it’s hard to put into words, but that image does it.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, Ursula Le Guin

Review – Raisins and Almonds

Posted December 5, 2015 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Raisins and Almonds, Kerry Greenwood

In my thoughts on Urn Burial, I wondered if one of Phryne’s lovers was ever going to be really exposed to danger, so that you don’t feel as if everyone around her lives a charmed life. Well, this one has a bit more threat to it — the confrontation chapter, in particular, was tense and a little shocking. I had the sense that it could’ve gone either way, and the desperation of other characters around Phryne who clearly believed that helped. The lengths they were prepared to go to, to save the character in question… yeah, I felt that more than I have for several books.

As for the plot itself, well — it’s typically dramatic, with Phryne getting tangled up in race issues again: this time not Chinese, but Jewish. I know that some people would probably call her a “Mary Sue” for being so adaptable to other people’s customs, but it makes sense with the character: her background, her generally accepting habits, the fact that she is definitely a lady.

One of the scenes was borrowed whole-cloth from Dorothy L. Sayers, which bothers me a little. I think often the homages are deliberate, but taking one of Harriet Vane’s lines to her future husband and putting it in the mouth of a character who will appear in one book, if the pattern holds? Hm. I don’t know if it was deliberate reference, unconscious plagiarism, or what, but it stood out like a sore thumb — Miss Lee joking to Phryne that she will always find her at home, when of course, she’s in prison and can’t leave. That line, in Sayers, tells us so much about Harriet, and yet here it feels wasted. Sigh.

Still, that’s a minor quibble, and for the most part this is a solid outing for Phryne.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Dorothy L. Sayers, Kerry Greenwood, mystery

Stacking the Shelves

Posted December 5, 2015 by Nicky in General / 26 Comments

First things first! You’ll no doubt have noticed that the layout of the blog has changed. Well, so has the host — The Bibliophibian is now self-hosted, courtesy of the amazing Lynn O’ Connacht (who provided the hosting and did the migration for me)! So you may find that you need to resubscribe, if you haven’t already. If you have any issues at the moment, that might be due to the DNS redirect still percolating through the system. If there’s anything wrong with the layout, please let me know so I can try to fix it — at the moment it’s been optimised based on my mother’s visual needs, as she has macular degeneration, but I want to do my best to make it accessible in general.

Anyway, to celebrate the new hosting, and the fact that I can now embed Rafflecopter, there’s a giveaway! There are several options for joining in, including following the blog, tweeting, commenting on a post and a freebie. So please do join in!

Back to the original purpose of this post. I’m still doing okay on not buying books for myself — two big boxes of books have come in for family members, though! I love getting ready for Christmas and buying people the perfect book.

Despite the buying ban, I did get some preorders arriving. These don’t count, since I ordered them before the ban came into place! (And with Amazon vouchers, at that.)

Excited to read Laura Lam’s books finally, and The Masked City should be a lot of fun too. I did also get a couple of library books, though not as many this week as sometimes!

Cover of The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean Cover of Charm by Sarah Pinborough

I’ve been reading Sam Kean’s books one by one, so here’s the latest I’ve picked up. And I read Poison, so I wanted to pick up Charm. Annoyingly, the library had Beauty as well, but my library card was “maxed out”…

What’s everyone else been picking up? And it can’t just be me that “maxes out” their library card, right?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves