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Last Book Foo of 2015!
Dec. 31st, 2015 12:14 pmBefore I start, I would like to wish a Happy New Year to anyone reading this, and, in addition, a happy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liabrown!
Since we've also got end-of-year-book-foo-wrapup to do, I won't waste time talking about TV/movies (maybe another post soon though) and just get right to the last of the reviews of the year:
Finished: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Kirby Mizrachi was attacked and left for dead by a vicious killer that had never been caught, a killer she thinks is may be a serial killer, and she gets an internship at a Chicago newspaper mostly so she can investigate on her own.
What she doesn't know is that she's right, the man who attacked her is a serial killer, responsible for murdering nearly a dozen other women... throughout the twentieth century, leaving strange and occasionally impossible artifacts on the bodies. For the killer, Harper Curtis, travels in time with the help of a house he stumbled upon in his ordinary life in the 1930s, a house that already has his victims listed. ( Read more... ) I liked it, and I think it's worth reading, but for my particular tastes, it doesn't land quite as well as I'd hoped.
Finished: The Phoenix Code by Catherine Asaro
Robotics expert Megan O'Flannery joins a project to produce artificial intelligence in an android body, and begins making quick strides in making the prototype more intelligent and emotive. Meanwhile, she also becomes close with another expert in the field, the strange but brilliant Raj. But then things start to go wrong as the android develops a fixation for Megan.
The book started okay, but my interested started to wane fast. ( Read more... )The book's not completely horrible. I did like that there was a romance plot with a person who didn't seem like a typical romantic lead, full of strange habits and insecurities, and there are a few genuine surprises that I liked, but, on the whole, the book misses it's mark.
Finished: Lock In by John Scalzi
Chris Shane suffers from Haden's Syndrome, a disease that struck in our near future and left millions around the world "Locked In" to their bodies, unable to move or do much to interact. The crisis did however, spur some technological development to help those suffering... while they can't cure the disease, there are brain implants that let people telecommute into robot bodies, or even bodies of specially trained humans, and experience something close to a normal life, and also creating a new minority. Where there are new minorities, there is discrimination, and where there is new technology, there are new crimes, and Shane has to deal with both while working for the FBI, as a murder suspect is a human Integrator, who rents his body out to Hadens, and a wave of terrorism is about to break out.
The premise might be a little bit out there, but Scalzi instantly gets to work selling it to the reader as a believable development in human society. ( Read more... )I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars... but in thanks for the good dreams, I'll put it at the low end of the 4 side
Finished: Other Worlds Than These (short story collection)
"Go then, there are other worlds than these," is one of my favorite quotes from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, subtly evoking the sense of wonder inherent in the idea of a multiverse. So it's appropriate to draw from it for the title of this collection, themed around other worlds and people from worlds like ours who travel to them. It contains both stories that are both sci-fi takes (usually called parallel universe stories, drawing mostly on quantum physics theories), and fantasy (generally called "portal fantasies" because they typically involve some kind of a portal that takes a person from our world to another)( Read more... )I felt somewhat let down nonetheless, like I expected to be wowed more given the theme. So I'm giving it a two. That said, there are a few great stories in here, and if it's something that might interest you, certainly worth giving a try.
Finished: Touch by Claire North
There are ghosts in the world, but not like the ones most people think about. These people live in human bodies, swapping from one to the other with the touch of skin on skin, taking over another person's body completely and living in their life. When they leave, the former host remembers nothing since they were taken. The narrator of Touch is one of these ghosts, who has lived this way for 200 years, jumping from body to body, sometimes for seconds, sometimes for years. But when his most recent host is killed, he must use the killer to try and track down a group targeting his kind, and hopefully escape alive in the process.
One of my favorite books I read this year was North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which was well-reviewed and lived up to it... and although descriptions of this story didn't have as much attraction to me as the other, I decided to give it a try on the strength of my previous enjoyment.( Read more... )On the whole? This wasn't as good as North's debut (which wasn't even her debut, of course, as she's a prolific author and this is just a new pen name), but it was still solidly enjoyable. I do wonder, especially looking ahead to North's next upcoming novel, if this pseudonym is either intended to or accidentally working towards a formula: stories of a main character who is one of a small group of people in the world with the same "super power", one that is part curse but also allows for some wondrous opportunities. If so, at the very least, it's a formula that I find I really enjoy, and I do want to read her next book, The Sudden Appearance of Hope already. More so because in that case the "power" is one I used to play with myself long ago, with a character on a superhero MUSH.
Finished: Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey (Expanse #4)
Description cut because it's 4th book in a series and necessarily may be spoilery for previous books. The short version is, either my favorite of the series or second favorite, hard to say for sure.
( Read more... )So yes, there's no reason to stop reading here, even if it may be a bit formulaic (it is, after all, a series that seems designed to be a good TV series), it's thoroughly enjoyable and rises far above where you'd expect.
Still Reading: Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (short story collection)
Tentatively about to start: Planetfall by Emma Newman, Aliens: Recent Encounters (short story collection)
That means my official count this year is.... 71 books! Wow, that's a record for me! According to Goodreads, that's 27937 pages, which makes the average book size 411 pages, and means that for every hour I was alive this year, I read 3 pages. That's one page every 20 minutes of I was breathing, awake or not.
The complete list (very roughly in order):
1. The Martian, by Andy Weir
( Read more... )
71. Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
Now, I had two additional goals for this year. One I made partway through the year when I realized I'd accidentally been holding to it. That was my "No Rereads" goal. And I accomplished it (not counting a few short stories I reread in a new collection)!
The other goal was just to try to read more women authors. My methodology was simple, to introduce a very small positive bias, a slight inkling towards "what the hell let's give it a try", whereas normally, (male or female) when I read a book's description, either the premise wows me and I have to get it immediately, or I think, "That sounds kind of interesting... well, let's see if it gets really well-reviewed maybe or I find it in a used bookstore for cheap". Or it's an author I already love. But those conditions can already be skewed against women, so a positive "what the hell let's try it" bias helps counter that. And look at the results. Leaving out the multiple-author short story books (but including single-author ones), I read 68 books, of those, I read 34 by female authors, which works out to exactly half. Just from one tiny bias. I wasn't even GOING for "half", I was going for more, it just happened to be a happy accident. I think that serves, for me, as a good concrete object lesson about something I'd already suspected... how tiny unintentional biases can magnify each other and add up to a dramatically big effect. Last year, only a handful of novels written by women were on my reading list. This year, one tiny bias, and it's almost even. That's just for me. When you get into society at large, well, it's easy to see how things can snowball even with people who genuinely and earnestly believe they're treating everyone equally.
Next year, I think I'll be keeping that goal, and that bias, but unfortunately I suspect I won't be near parity, because I won't be doing the "no rereads" rule, and a lot of my favorites, the regular rereads, are still stacked heavily on the male side. I found one that I suspect might make it into this category (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August) and a few others that I might reread once or twice, but, well, that is the other problem with a "what the hell" bias, you read plenty of books that just a little less likely to be your thing. But I feel better for trying it nonetheless, and want to keep trying.
Other statistics of note, I got 5 physical books free, 5 from netgalley, and a handful from paying for membership in a group that gives out awards and gives free ebook copies of the nominees to voters, which really isn't free but really isn't buying. ANd a few that were in bundles of course. But still, free books rock, yo.
liabrown! Since we've also got end-of-year-book-foo-wrapup to do, I won't waste time talking about TV/movies (maybe another post soon though) and just get right to the last of the reviews of the year:
Finished: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Kirby Mizrachi was attacked and left for dead by a vicious killer that had never been caught, a killer she thinks is may be a serial killer, and she gets an internship at a Chicago newspaper mostly so she can investigate on her own.
What she doesn't know is that she's right, the man who attacked her is a serial killer, responsible for murdering nearly a dozen other women... throughout the twentieth century, leaving strange and occasionally impossible artifacts on the bodies. For the killer, Harper Curtis, travels in time with the help of a house he stumbled upon in his ordinary life in the 1930s, a house that already has his victims listed. ( Read more... ) I liked it, and I think it's worth reading, but for my particular tastes, it doesn't land quite as well as I'd hoped.
Finished: The Phoenix Code by Catherine Asaro
Robotics expert Megan O'Flannery joins a project to produce artificial intelligence in an android body, and begins making quick strides in making the prototype more intelligent and emotive. Meanwhile, she also becomes close with another expert in the field, the strange but brilliant Raj. But then things start to go wrong as the android develops a fixation for Megan.
The book started okay, but my interested started to wane fast. ( Read more... )The book's not completely horrible. I did like that there was a romance plot with a person who didn't seem like a typical romantic lead, full of strange habits and insecurities, and there are a few genuine surprises that I liked, but, on the whole, the book misses it's mark.
Finished: Lock In by John Scalzi
Chris Shane suffers from Haden's Syndrome, a disease that struck in our near future and left millions around the world "Locked In" to their bodies, unable to move or do much to interact. The crisis did however, spur some technological development to help those suffering... while they can't cure the disease, there are brain implants that let people telecommute into robot bodies, or even bodies of specially trained humans, and experience something close to a normal life, and also creating a new minority. Where there are new minorities, there is discrimination, and where there is new technology, there are new crimes, and Shane has to deal with both while working for the FBI, as a murder suspect is a human Integrator, who rents his body out to Hadens, and a wave of terrorism is about to break out.
The premise might be a little bit out there, but Scalzi instantly gets to work selling it to the reader as a believable development in human society. ( Read more... )I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars... but in thanks for the good dreams, I'll put it at the low end of the 4 side
Finished: Other Worlds Than These (short story collection)
"Go then, there are other worlds than these," is one of my favorite quotes from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, subtly evoking the sense of wonder inherent in the idea of a multiverse. So it's appropriate to draw from it for the title of this collection, themed around other worlds and people from worlds like ours who travel to them. It contains both stories that are both sci-fi takes (usually called parallel universe stories, drawing mostly on quantum physics theories), and fantasy (generally called "portal fantasies" because they typically involve some kind of a portal that takes a person from our world to another)( Read more... )I felt somewhat let down nonetheless, like I expected to be wowed more given the theme. So I'm giving it a two. That said, there are a few great stories in here, and if it's something that might interest you, certainly worth giving a try.
Finished: Touch by Claire North
There are ghosts in the world, but not like the ones most people think about. These people live in human bodies, swapping from one to the other with the touch of skin on skin, taking over another person's body completely and living in their life. When they leave, the former host remembers nothing since they were taken. The narrator of Touch is one of these ghosts, who has lived this way for 200 years, jumping from body to body, sometimes for seconds, sometimes for years. But when his most recent host is killed, he must use the killer to try and track down a group targeting his kind, and hopefully escape alive in the process.
One of my favorite books I read this year was North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which was well-reviewed and lived up to it... and although descriptions of this story didn't have as much attraction to me as the other, I decided to give it a try on the strength of my previous enjoyment.( Read more... )On the whole? This wasn't as good as North's debut (which wasn't even her debut, of course, as she's a prolific author and this is just a new pen name), but it was still solidly enjoyable. I do wonder, especially looking ahead to North's next upcoming novel, if this pseudonym is either intended to or accidentally working towards a formula: stories of a main character who is one of a small group of people in the world with the same "super power", one that is part curse but also allows for some wondrous opportunities. If so, at the very least, it's a formula that I find I really enjoy, and I do want to read her next book, The Sudden Appearance of Hope already. More so because in that case the "power" is one I used to play with myself long ago, with a character on a superhero MUSH.
Finished: Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey (Expanse #4)
Description cut because it's 4th book in a series and necessarily may be spoilery for previous books. The short version is, either my favorite of the series or second favorite, hard to say for sure.
( Read more... )So yes, there's no reason to stop reading here, even if it may be a bit formulaic (it is, after all, a series that seems designed to be a good TV series), it's thoroughly enjoyable and rises far above where you'd expect.
Still Reading: Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (short story collection)
Tentatively about to start: Planetfall by Emma Newman, Aliens: Recent Encounters (short story collection)
That means my official count this year is.... 71 books! Wow, that's a record for me! According to Goodreads, that's 27937 pages, which makes the average book size 411 pages, and means that for every hour I was alive this year, I read 3 pages. That's one page every 20 minutes of I was breathing, awake or not.
The complete list (very roughly in order):
1. The Martian, by Andy Weir
( Read more... )
71. Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
Now, I had two additional goals for this year. One I made partway through the year when I realized I'd accidentally been holding to it. That was my "No Rereads" goal. And I accomplished it (not counting a few short stories I reread in a new collection)!
The other goal was just to try to read more women authors. My methodology was simple, to introduce a very small positive bias, a slight inkling towards "what the hell let's give it a try", whereas normally, (male or female) when I read a book's description, either the premise wows me and I have to get it immediately, or I think, "That sounds kind of interesting... well, let's see if it gets really well-reviewed maybe or I find it in a used bookstore for cheap". Or it's an author I already love. But those conditions can already be skewed against women, so a positive "what the hell let's try it" bias helps counter that. And look at the results. Leaving out the multiple-author short story books (but including single-author ones), I read 68 books, of those, I read 34 by female authors, which works out to exactly half. Just from one tiny bias. I wasn't even GOING for "half", I was going for more, it just happened to be a happy accident. I think that serves, for me, as a good concrete object lesson about something I'd already suspected... how tiny unintentional biases can magnify each other and add up to a dramatically big effect. Last year, only a handful of novels written by women were on my reading list. This year, one tiny bias, and it's almost even. That's just for me. When you get into society at large, well, it's easy to see how things can snowball even with people who genuinely and earnestly believe they're treating everyone equally.
Next year, I think I'll be keeping that goal, and that bias, but unfortunately I suspect I won't be near parity, because I won't be doing the "no rereads" rule, and a lot of my favorites, the regular rereads, are still stacked heavily on the male side. I found one that I suspect might make it into this category (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August) and a few others that I might reread once or twice, but, well, that is the other problem with a "what the hell" bias, you read plenty of books that just a little less likely to be your thing. But I feel better for trying it nonetheless, and want to keep trying.
Other statistics of note, I got 5 physical books free, 5 from netgalley, and a handful from paying for membership in a group that gives out awards and gives free ebook copies of the nominees to voters, which really isn't free but really isn't buying. ANd a few that were in bundles of course. But still, free books rock, yo.
