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Last Book Foo of 2016...
Dec. 31st, 2016 01:22 pmSo yes, it's the end of another year. One widely considered to be one of the worst in recent memory at least, and I can't say I disagree. I can, however, offer advice. If, after midnight, you happen to come across a discarded calendar of 2016... don't get complacent. Stab, stomp, or burn the thing immediately. We all know how it works in the movies, the monster always SEEMS dead but then it somehow lurches back for one final attack when people leave the body behind.
In other news, one last book foo of the year!
Finished: Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
Darrow is a Red, the lowest of the low in a rigid (and color-coded) hierarchy of society working on Mars. He believes he's laboring to make it habitable, but it's already habitable... the Golds at the top just keep the Reds in utter subjugation for convenience. But after Darrow loses everything he cares about, he's given a chance to strike back, to turn into a Gold and work to infiltrate their society and, perhaps, one day, strike back at them.
Typical YA scenario. Dystopia run on pure evil. Teen hero with improbably impressive abilities fighting against it. Competition, a little romance. There's nothing exceptionally novel about it, and it's even gimmicky in a few ways... but at the same time it has a pretty good fun factor. ( Read more... ) I've heard the series does improve greatly after the first book (and some say it even grows to be more proper science fiction), and despite my reservations with Red Rising, I did like this one enough that I'm willing to follow along and see if that's true.
Finished: The Noise Within, by Ian Whates
A pirate ship's been prowling the spacelanes, and special forces troops are trying to track it down. So is a businessman, who believes the ship is actually a lost prototype his company put out.. and designed to be the first ship piloted by an AI. ( Read more... )In a generally better book, I might have looked past these groaners, but here, they're about the only thing that stuck with me.
Finished: Phantasm Japan (short stories)
This is a collection of fantasy stories, about half written by Japanese authors and translated, and about half written in English that just happen to involve some aspect of Japanese culture or mythology. ( Read more... )I still think I'd give it only 3 stars, like the other anthology, but it's a much higher 3 stars.
Finished: Worlds That Weren't (short stories) (reread)
This is a collection of alternate history tales, and as there's only four of them, they're of novella length. In one, Socrates goes to war with an old friend and ends up changing his mind. In another, over a century after a major meteor shower in 1878 radically realigns the world and puts the brakes on progress, an aristocrat from India (now the center of what was once the British Empire) goes hunting in the wilds of Texas. In another, a group of mercenaries get into conflict with a religious order over their demand to bury a woman fighting with them. And in the last, German Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche moves to the U.S. for his health and eventually winds up in the middle of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
I love alternate history. In theory. ( Read more... )Two stars.
Finished: A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
Because even reading the simple summary spoils some aspects of the ending of "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet," hiding behind a cut.
( Read more... )I liked the first book, a lot, but I thought I might like it as an exception, as a novelty. This one is less a novelty, but I liked it even more, which means the author is definitely one to keep watching.
Finished: Golden Son, by Pierce Brown
(description behind cut for possible Red Rising spoilers) ( Read more... )It looks like I'm hating on the book a lot more than I am, but I think more than anything I'm just disappointed by the hype. It's fine. I don't think I wasted my time on it. I'll probably read the third book (my level of enjoyment and curiosity about how they'll move on from where they did are just enough to make that decision) but I'll set my expectations a lot more realistically. Dumb fun is still fun.
Finished: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Normally I don't review rereads, but since I had to write a Goodreads review for it the first time I might not have my official one posted here, so, here goes:
One night, three kids are outside as the stars disappear. Soon, they, and the rest of the world, come to learn the shocking truth... the entire Earth has been wrapped in some kind of bubble, and for every year that passes on Earth, millions upon millions of years pass in the rest of the universe. If it keeps up, within decades, the sun will die. But life goes on, or at least it tries to, and people deal with the upcoming apocalypse in their own ways. ( Read more... )Overall it's just a fantastic book that I'd recommend to everyone, even if you're not a hard-core SF fan.
Finished: The End of All Things, by John Scalzi
Part of a long-running series, so plot description might be spoilery.
( Read more... )I like the author, but I want to read stories that I feel excite him, and I don't get that feel from this book, by and large. I'm not entirely ready to give up on the universe, but I think he needs to find a new focus to build stories around, and let the political shenanigans and authoritarian dirty tricks move more into the background, rather than center stage.
Finished: The City and the City, by China Mieville (reread)
Finished: The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
Finished: Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
Finished: Infomocracy, by Malka Ann Older
In the future, the world's political systems have changed dramatically, now (aside from a few holdout countries) everyone is divided into groups of their 100,000 nearest neighbors, and vote every ten years on which government will rule them. Within their 'centenals', the laws of their governments hold, even if another government is just across the street. It's election time again, and everybody's scrambling for control of more and more areas, and a few might be scheming to tamper with the vote. ( Read more... )Overall, I'd say I like it more than many of the actual elections that were going on this year that I was aware of. Which is a low bar to beat, admittedly, but still the novel's in a mild 'like' category, so, three stars. I'm not sure I'd read a sequel, but only because I think as a series this may be geared more to the type of people who really are into this stuff. But I might be willing to give it a try, if a sequel expanded on the world more and got more deeply into the character's other traits than being electoral geeks, or try other works by the author.
Finished: World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
I'm not sure what it says that I closed out the year with a reread of a trilogy set in the months before a civilization-ending asteroid hits the Earth. Maybe that it's preferable to how the rest of 2016's gone.
Anyway, my end of the year wrapup!
My complete 2016 reading list was:
1. Planetfall, by Emma Newman
( Read more... )
75. World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
75 is a new record for me, for yearly books read. Average length was 376 pages, 27,061 pages overall. That's 3.08 pages every hour of the year. Or one page every 19.5 minutes of my life.
10 multi-author short story collections this year (1 was a reread... technically one was a collection of essays, but we'll count it here)
That leaves us with 65. Breaking it down by gender, I did not do so well as last year, 19 books by women. (In addition, one trans male who is counted on the male side, and one author who I understand identified as androgynous, so I haven't counted in either category)
Now, last year I had accidental gender equality, but one key factor was in play last year... last year I had a secondary goal of no rereads. This year, I've been rereading some books. I had 17 rereads, one of which was a short story collection, one was by a female author, and 15 by males. Obviously, there's a historical imbalance, since before I was consciously trying to 'read more women authors', a large majority of my reading was by males, and so a large majority of my favorites have been as well (and that's likely to persist for quite a while).
If we remove rereads from the equation and focus on new books, there'd be 49 single-author books in total. 48 by people who identify either as male or female. Of that, 18 by women authors is still lower than I'd like, but a bit more respectable at least. Still, clearly there are unintentional biases that push my reading taste more towards male writers.
I'll continue trying in the future, to try and read more diverse voices in general.
I got 5 physical books for free as part of promotional 'contest' style giveaways, as well as 4 others that were pre-release electronic book giveaways for review purposes for a total of 9 (these are the ones with asterisks beside them). Another 6 I got for free either because that's how the publishers or authors generally offer them, or as special post-release promotions where they offered them free to everyone for a limited time.
Going into 2017, I'm reading:
The John Varley Reader, by John Varley (short stories), The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds and Fire with Fire, by Charles Gannon
In other news, one last book foo of the year!
Finished: Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
Darrow is a Red, the lowest of the low in a rigid (and color-coded) hierarchy of society working on Mars. He believes he's laboring to make it habitable, but it's already habitable... the Golds at the top just keep the Reds in utter subjugation for convenience. But after Darrow loses everything he cares about, he's given a chance to strike back, to turn into a Gold and work to infiltrate their society and, perhaps, one day, strike back at them.
Typical YA scenario. Dystopia run on pure evil. Teen hero with improbably impressive abilities fighting against it. Competition, a little romance. There's nothing exceptionally novel about it, and it's even gimmicky in a few ways... but at the same time it has a pretty good fun factor. ( Read more... ) I've heard the series does improve greatly after the first book (and some say it even grows to be more proper science fiction), and despite my reservations with Red Rising, I did like this one enough that I'm willing to follow along and see if that's true.
Finished: The Noise Within, by Ian Whates
A pirate ship's been prowling the spacelanes, and special forces troops are trying to track it down. So is a businessman, who believes the ship is actually a lost prototype his company put out.. and designed to be the first ship piloted by an AI. ( Read more... )In a generally better book, I might have looked past these groaners, but here, they're about the only thing that stuck with me.
Finished: Phantasm Japan (short stories)
This is a collection of fantasy stories, about half written by Japanese authors and translated, and about half written in English that just happen to involve some aspect of Japanese culture or mythology. ( Read more... )I still think I'd give it only 3 stars, like the other anthology, but it's a much higher 3 stars.
Finished: Worlds That Weren't (short stories) (reread)
This is a collection of alternate history tales, and as there's only four of them, they're of novella length. In one, Socrates goes to war with an old friend and ends up changing his mind. In another, over a century after a major meteor shower in 1878 radically realigns the world and puts the brakes on progress, an aristocrat from India (now the center of what was once the British Empire) goes hunting in the wilds of Texas. In another, a group of mercenaries get into conflict with a religious order over their demand to bury a woman fighting with them. And in the last, German Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche moves to the U.S. for his health and eventually winds up in the middle of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
I love alternate history. In theory. ( Read more... )Two stars.
Finished: A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
Because even reading the simple summary spoils some aspects of the ending of "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet," hiding behind a cut.
( Read more... )I liked the first book, a lot, but I thought I might like it as an exception, as a novelty. This one is less a novelty, but I liked it even more, which means the author is definitely one to keep watching.
Finished: Golden Son, by Pierce Brown
(description behind cut for possible Red Rising spoilers) ( Read more... )It looks like I'm hating on the book a lot more than I am, but I think more than anything I'm just disappointed by the hype. It's fine. I don't think I wasted my time on it. I'll probably read the third book (my level of enjoyment and curiosity about how they'll move on from where they did are just enough to make that decision) but I'll set my expectations a lot more realistically. Dumb fun is still fun.
Finished: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Normally I don't review rereads, but since I had to write a Goodreads review for it the first time I might not have my official one posted here, so, here goes:
One night, three kids are outside as the stars disappear. Soon, they, and the rest of the world, come to learn the shocking truth... the entire Earth has been wrapped in some kind of bubble, and for every year that passes on Earth, millions upon millions of years pass in the rest of the universe. If it keeps up, within decades, the sun will die. But life goes on, or at least it tries to, and people deal with the upcoming apocalypse in their own ways. ( Read more... )Overall it's just a fantastic book that I'd recommend to everyone, even if you're not a hard-core SF fan.
Finished: The End of All Things, by John Scalzi
Part of a long-running series, so plot description might be spoilery.
( Read more... )I like the author, but I want to read stories that I feel excite him, and I don't get that feel from this book, by and large. I'm not entirely ready to give up on the universe, but I think he needs to find a new focus to build stories around, and let the political shenanigans and authoritarian dirty tricks move more into the background, rather than center stage.
Finished: The City and the City, by China Mieville (reread)
Finished: The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
Finished: Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
Finished: Infomocracy, by Malka Ann Older
In the future, the world's political systems have changed dramatically, now (aside from a few holdout countries) everyone is divided into groups of their 100,000 nearest neighbors, and vote every ten years on which government will rule them. Within their 'centenals', the laws of their governments hold, even if another government is just across the street. It's election time again, and everybody's scrambling for control of more and more areas, and a few might be scheming to tamper with the vote. ( Read more... )Overall, I'd say I like it more than many of the actual elections that were going on this year that I was aware of. Which is a low bar to beat, admittedly, but still the novel's in a mild 'like' category, so, three stars. I'm not sure I'd read a sequel, but only because I think as a series this may be geared more to the type of people who really are into this stuff. But I might be willing to give it a try, if a sequel expanded on the world more and got more deeply into the character's other traits than being electoral geeks, or try other works by the author.
Finished: World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
I'm not sure what it says that I closed out the year with a reread of a trilogy set in the months before a civilization-ending asteroid hits the Earth. Maybe that it's preferable to how the rest of 2016's gone.
Anyway, my end of the year wrapup!
My complete 2016 reading list was:
1. Planetfall, by Emma Newman
( Read more... )
75. World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
75 is a new record for me, for yearly books read. Average length was 376 pages, 27,061 pages overall. That's 3.08 pages every hour of the year. Or one page every 19.5 minutes of my life.
10 multi-author short story collections this year (1 was a reread... technically one was a collection of essays, but we'll count it here)
That leaves us with 65. Breaking it down by gender, I did not do so well as last year, 19 books by women. (In addition, one trans male who is counted on the male side, and one author who I understand identified as androgynous, so I haven't counted in either category)
Now, last year I had accidental gender equality, but one key factor was in play last year... last year I had a secondary goal of no rereads. This year, I've been rereading some books. I had 17 rereads, one of which was a short story collection, one was by a female author, and 15 by males. Obviously, there's a historical imbalance, since before I was consciously trying to 'read more women authors', a large majority of my reading was by males, and so a large majority of my favorites have been as well (and that's likely to persist for quite a while).
If we remove rereads from the equation and focus on new books, there'd be 49 single-author books in total. 48 by people who identify either as male or female. Of that, 18 by women authors is still lower than I'd like, but a bit more respectable at least. Still, clearly there are unintentional biases that push my reading taste more towards male writers.
I'll continue trying in the future, to try and read more diverse voices in general.
I got 5 physical books for free as part of promotional 'contest' style giveaways, as well as 4 others that were pre-release electronic book giveaways for review purposes for a total of 9 (these are the ones with asterisks beside them). Another 6 I got for free either because that's how the publishers or authors generally offer them, or as special post-release promotions where they offered them free to everyone for a limited time.
Going into 2017, I'm reading:
The John Varley Reader, by John Varley (short stories), The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds and Fire with Fire, by Charles Gannon
