Tag: books

Review – Annihilation

Posted February 23, 2015 by in Reviews / 8 Comments

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

This review could easily just be: what the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

As I was just saying to my partner, who is reading these books at the same time as me, the concept isn’t that strange in many ways. You can explain it as a straightforward SF or horror story. It’s just the way VanderMeer writes it: it’s so insidious, so sideways; it creeps up on you. The depersonalisation of the nameless characters helps with that, and the half-said things. The contradictions and confusions and the way that you can never be sure anything has happened. In most SF stories, at least you get a solid answer: this character is controlled by aliens. This character is an alien. This character is turning into an alien. This character is going to have an alien burst out of their chest.

But VanderMeer makes you consider all possibilities at once. They could all be true. Or none. Or something else even weirder. It’s that thing that effective horror/suspense can do, where it’s more scary because you can’t define exactly what the discomfort is.

I’ve said all that and not even touched on the characters, which are normally the most important thing for me. But when it comes to a lot of New Weird type stories, I’ve found that the places in which the action occurs are often characters in themselves, in some weird way. Sometimes more vivid and alive than the characters themselves. There’s definitely a sense of the characters here being more roles, archetypes, cyphers, than real people. And yet there are things you can hold onto: the biologist, her husband… to an extent, the surveyor: I wanted to know what she was thinking, how she was coping.

If you don’t like mysteries and you don’t like weird, this is absolutely not your kind of book. But it is very intriguing, in a slow building kind of way. I want to know.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Jeff VanderMeer

Review – Remnant Population

Posted February 22, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Remnant Population, Elizabeth Moon

Remnant Population is a quiet sort of SF book. It’s more along the lines of, say, Ursula Le Guin than Lois McMaster Bujold or David Weber: at least, there’s very little by the way of epic space fights, and much more about people. Mostly just one person, alone. I loved that the protagonist is an old woman; the ending, with the recruitment of old ladies, seemed like a bit of a joke even so, but I liked that this is very much a defence of the worth and importance of the elderly, and particularly elderly women.

I liked that the aliens really are weird and nothing like us — that all our exo-scientists’ assumptions were just way out. I think if we do find other life out there, it might be like this: we might not even know what we’re looking at. They might learn in radically different ways (sorry, Pinker, Chomsky); they might mature at different speeds. We base our assumptions on carbon based mammals…

Perhaps the unrealistic thing is how easily it’s settled. You require a set up like Le Guin’s Ekumen for that, and this seemed more like a society run primarily by corporations. It didn’t seem like cooperation would be so easy… But even then, there’s a hint at how that can be done; the People join in the commercial enterprises of the rest of the universe.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one; it’s not going to be a new favourite, but it was a good read.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books

Review – The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

Posted February 21, 2015 by in Reviews / 3 Comments

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy L. Sayers

It’s fortunate for me that these books are so familiar to me by now, because I got distracted by other books in the middle of this. It’s not my favourite of the bunch, which helps to explain why; I do like the conflicts between Parker and Peter that’re brought out by the nature of the story, the awkwardness between them as Peter has to suspect one of his own friends. That’s perhaps the best part of this: the characterisations of those two as they try to balance friendship and duty; Peter’s struggle with himself and his own honesty.

The ending is one of those awfully convenient, gentlemanly ones where Peter could bring the person to trial, etc, etc, and then warns them and offers them suicide instead. I can never quite decide what I think about those endings: they give Peter a kind of out, so that he doesn’t have to do the ungentlemanly thing. Which is a bit unfair, really.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Dorothy L. Sayers

Stacking the Shelves

Posted February 21, 2015 by in General / 15 Comments

Quite a busy week! But I’m still sticking to my goals, fear not.

Bought

A Darker Shade of Magic was, of course, a pre-order; I had Half a King as an ARC and never got to it, so now I have the paperback; my sister bought me Impulse because we both love a bit of space opera. Obviously it sounds rather Star Trek-ish, but it could be fun anyway.

Received to review

One word: eeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Library

I’m going away! I had to stock up! Annihilation is so weird; I had to grab the next two to see if there are any answers… Susanna Kearsley, I read and liked The Rose Garden not long ago, so I’ve grabbed some more of her work.

Comics

Tell me again about the lack of female superheroes?

So there we go! Quite a busy week for me… How’s everyone else been doing? Any exciting acquisitions?

Tags: books, comics, Marvel, Stacking the Shelves

Review – The Man Who Went Into the West

Posted February 20, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Man Who Went into the West, Byron Rogers
Review from June 8th, 2013

This was… honestly, a bizarre read. R.S. Thomas seems to have been a man of contradictions — funny, stern, hard, tender, quiet, garrulous. At one moment he’s refusing to answer questions about his poems and the next, this:

‘Anyway, they wanted this scene in which Thomas came out of his church and walked down the path. Everything was set up and he appeared in a full surplice. But whether he’d become fed up, I don’t know, for he suddenly raised his arms and started to run towards them, shouting, “I’m a bird, I’m a bird.” It’s not on film. Either the cameraman was too stunned or Thomas was running too fast.’

This is a chatty sort of biography, and not a strictly organised one. I don’t think Byron Rogers even tries to present some kind of unified view of Thomas. He makes it seem impossible, even. He made me laugh at Thomas and feel sorry for him, sometimes in the same moments, and he opened up his poetry to me that bit more in the ways he selected sections to quote.

I loved reading this, and I have a bizarre, amused love for R.S. Thomas. I don’t know whether it would have appalled or tickled the man to know that a little English-speaking Welsh twenty-three year old like me feels this way about him: it’s a tough call to make, it could go either way.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, non-fiction, Wales

Review – The Iron King

Posted February 19, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Iron King, Maurice Druon

G.R.R. Martin refers to this as the original Game of Thrones, and you can see why. The same types of characters populate it, to a large degree — except I’m not sure I found any of Druon’s portrayals to have many redeeming features, whereas I’ve liked a couple of characters in what I’ve read so far of Martin’s epic. This is, of course, not a work of fantasy, but based on real history; how closely, I’m not sure, as my knowledge of the period is mostly based on British politics, and this largely takes place in France. It offers a convincing world, anyway: just the way you would want the period to be, with torture and curses, weak princes and calculating counsellors.

I have seen quite a few fairly negative reviews of this, which I think might come from people expecting something more fantastical based on Martin’s comment, and possibly also from people who can’t stand the translation (it’s very workmanlike and functional, I think). But I quite enjoyed it: I don’t know if I’ll pick up the rest of the series, simply because there are so many books and so little time, but I enjoy reading it. If there’s anything lacking, for me it’s more sympathetic characters, or at least more of an inner life beyond who they want to sleep with.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, George R.R. Martin

Review – Creation

Posted February 18, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Creation: The Origin of Life/The Future of Life, Adam Rutherford

This book has kind of a fun design: the two sections are separated by flipping the book upside down. It’s a gimmick, but it’s kind of a cool design anyway. The topics are pretty interlinked, but you can read one half of the book without the other, or read them in either order; whatever you like. One half covers how life came to be, and one half covers the attempts to create life (or should that be recreate?), via genetic engineering, etc.

It’s an interesting bunch of issues, and Rutherford handles it well. His tone is informative, without being stultifyingly boring: he has some moments of humour which, while not laugh-out-loud funny, did provoke a snort or two. He writes engagingly, and those it is definitely an overview of the topics not really meant for a professional audience, he doesn’t shy away from discussing the complex ideas and different theories. None of it was really surprising or groundbreaking to me, because biology and genetics are big areas of interest for me, but it would make a good introduction for the intelligent reader, or a refresher to bring you up to date.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

No Book Buying Challenge: Finances

Posted February 18, 2015 by in General / 4 Comments

I promised an update on the #ShelfLove challenge today, so here it is! The discussion this month is around budgets, which means I can pretty much stick to the same format as my extra updates for last month.

7/51+ already owned books read
Spent: £21 out of ~£30 budget (budget is 10% of my income) for January
Spent: £5 out of ~£25 budget for February

As for my other resolutions:

No books impulse-bought
Read every day
Bed before midnight… mostly
Up before ten every day
Only bought one book from a series at a time
Posted to the blog every day
Commented on at least one other blog every day
Tithed 10% in January, February tithe not done yet
Done 18 hours volunteering total
Reading/reviewing books from NG/etc… in progress

As for the money I save, mostly it’s going to my savings account. I am planning a slightly more complex budget so I can also save up separately for my next games console, but the main goal is just to build up my reserves a bit. It’s working well so far; I’ve shunted at least £200 into my savings so far this year, which may not be a lot for everyone but certainly is a respectable amount for me!

Tags: books, Shelf Love

Review – The Rose Garden

Posted February 17, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Rose Garden, Susanna Kearsley

I didn’t have to read much of this to realise that Susanna Kearsley’s work is going to be the perfect replacement for the comfort reading I got all the way through in the last two or three years (Mary Stewart’s romance/adventures). It has the same sense of place, the beautiful descriptions of landscape, and the same sort of heroine: female, curious, about to be swept up in bigger events than she’d ever have expected. And better: this is explicitly fantastical, where most of Mary Stewart’s books were more mysteries, sometimes with hints at fantasy.

And better again, whew, we don’t have first cousins getting married at the end.

It does start off with kind of a slow pace, and Eva is only rarely involved in actual action, despite the backdrop of free trading and other such types of derring-do. And it is indeed a romance, so the ending is a happy one for most of the characters (though there’s a sadder note, too, with Eva’s sister’s husband; I was glad there was some closure at the end of story with him as well, even if it was a sadder story), and there’s plenty of romance going on — not just for Eva, but in the background. And yeah, I think Fergal and Daniel take the time travelling woman a little too lightly. They’re curious, but not curious enough to feel realistic. They both just decide to protect her right away.

But I enjoyed it anyway: it has a great atmosphere, and the writing flows well. It’s a bit like The Time Traveler’s Wife, I guess, in that I wouldn’t want to examine how the timeline works too closely lest it fall apart, but it was the ideal fluff, and it had enough substance that I cared about the characters.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Mary Stewart, romance, SF/F, Susanna Kearsley

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 17, 2015 by in General / 12 Comments

This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is “top ten book related problems I have”. This is, ahaha, not at all difficult for me.

I had to modify my ereader to fit more books on it. No really, I even made a post to show other people how.
I have over 1,000 books on Mt. TBR. I don’t actually dare count. And that doesn’t really include ARCs and library books.
I don’t have enough shelves. See #2.
Nobody ever knows what books to buy me because I might’ve got them already. Though now I have a wishlist, so there’s no excuse.
I really like lists. This can sometimes get in the way of actually reading the books on said list.
There are some books I daren’t share with my partner in case she hates them. This is rare, but she doesn’t, for example, share my love for Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot and Hellbent, and it makes me pout.
My books are never in the right place. I travel a lot. You know I’m gonna want to read something as soon as I leave it somewhere for a few months.
Why isn’t it out in ebook? I like instant gratification, and ebooks are the easiest way. What do you mean I can’t get most of Patricia McKillip’s books on Kobo?!
Why isn’t it out yet? Impatient!
I preordered it, I was really excited… and a year later, I haven’t got to it yet. Um. Oops.

What’re your problems, guys?

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday