Valkyrdeath's 2017 Reading Record

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Valkyrdeath's 2017 Reading Record

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1valkyrdeath
Modifié : Déc 31, 2017, 6:11 pm

I can’t believe this is my fourth year on Club Read already! My reading has diversified a lot since joining here and hopefully it will continue to do so. I do hope to get back to a bit more science fiction reading, since it used to be my main genre but I barely read any last year, but I want to do that without losing track of everything else. I read more books again last year than the previous, though I don’t think that can continue much longer.

Books read:
1. Longitude by Dava Sobel
2. All Clear by Connie Willis
3. Selected Shorts: American Classics by various authors
4. Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong
5. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
6. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
7. Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 edited by Greg Bear
8. Adulthood is a Myth by Sarah Andersen
9. A Wild Swan and Other Tales by Michael Cunningham

10. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
11. Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor
12. Floodgate by Alistair MacLean
13. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
14. Miracleman Book 1: A Dream of Flying by Alan Moore
15. Passing by Nella Larsen
16. The Stranger by Albert Camus
17. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
18. Miracleman Book 2: The Red King Syndrome by Alan Moore
19. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
20. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

21. The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven
22. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
23. Miracleman Book 3: Olympus by Alan Moore
24. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

25. Behind the Mask: A Superhero Anthology edited by Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson
26. Two for the Lions by Lindsey Davis
27. The Best American Comics 2016 edited by Roz Chast
28. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 1: 1966 - 1979 by Jimmy Maher
29. Back Story by David Mitchell

30. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
31. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq by Sarah Glidden
32. Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi by John Scalzi
33. The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks
34. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 2: 1980 by Jimmy Maher
35. Selected Shorts: A Touch of Magic by various authors
36. The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett
37. Rat Queens Volume 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth by Kurtis J. Wiebe
38. Final Girls by Mira Grant
39. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 3: 1981 by Jimmy Maher
40. How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman art by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon
41. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

42. Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury by Isaac Asimov
43. Plutona by Jeff Lemire and Emi Lenox
44. True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole by Sue Townsend
45. Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
46. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 4: 1982 by Jimmy Maher
47. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
48. Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke
49. Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay

50. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
51. And the Sun Stood Still by Dava Sobel
52. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 5: 1983 by Jimmy Maher
53. Best of British Science Fiction 2016 edited by Donna Scott
54. Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

55. Black is the Color by Julia Gfrörer
56. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
57. Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
58. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 6: 1984 by Jimmy Maher
59. Temperance by Cathy Malkasian
60. Eric by Terry Pratchett
61. Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz
62. How to Bake Pi by Eugenia Cheng
63. Donny's Brain by Rona Munro
64. Mrs. McThing by Mary Chase

65. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
66. The Return by Hisham Matar
67. The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
68. The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey

69. The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake

70. Warehouse 13: A Touch of Fever by Greg Cox
71. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
72. Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse edited by Carol Ann Duffy
73. Wayward Book 1 by Jim Zub, art by Steve Cummings
74. Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
75. Secret Sheffield by Ian D. Rotherham, Melvyn Jones and Christine Handley
76. Enron by Lucy Prebble
77. Proof by David Auburn
78. Ms. Marvel Vol. 2: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson, art by Adrian Alphona and Jacob Wyatt
79. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
80. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
81. Ms. Marvel Vol. 3: Crushed by G. Willow Wilson

82. At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
83. Pistache by Sebastian Faulks
84. All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis
85. Ms. Marvel Vol. 4: Last Days by G. Willow Wilson
86. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
87. Good Dog by Graham Chaffee
88. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
89. Ms. Marvel Vol. 5: Super Famous by G. Willow Wilson
90. The Ruby Sunrise by Rinne Groff
91. Violenzia and Other Deadly Amusements by Richard Sala
92. I, Parrot by Deb Olin Unferth, art by Elizabeth Haidle
93. Pregnant Butch by A. K. Summers
94. Ms. Marvel Vol. 6: Civil War II by G. Willow Wilson
95. Ms. Marvel Vol. 7: Damage Per Second by G. Willow Wilson
96. Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason
97. Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo
98. Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
99. My Sister’s Voice by Alexis Sugden
100. The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night by Alan Cullen

2valkyrdeath
Déc 31, 2016, 9:29 pm

Book stats for 2016:
138 books read made up of:
59 novels
40 graphic works
18 non-fiction books
13 short story collections
6 plays
2 poetry collections

70 books by women, 60 books by men.
Books from 15 different countries and by 103 different authors.
Oldest book read was Candide from 1759.

3valkyrdeath
Déc 31, 2016, 9:29 pm

Fiction highlights for 2016 (in no particular order):
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix
Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

Non-fiction highlights for 2016:
The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander
When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning
Under an English Heaven by Donald E. Westlake
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Spectacles by Sue Perkins
Red Land, Black Land by Barbara Mertz
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous

Graphic novel highlights for 2016:
Nimona
Lumberjanes Volume 4
The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia
The Trouble with Women
Dark Night: A True Batman Story

4valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:16 pm


1. Longitude by Dava Sobel
The discovery of an accurate way to tell longitude at sea was something that I’d never even thought about before coming across this book, but the story turned out to be a surprisingly interesting one. Dava Sobel tells the story of John Harrison, his invention of the marine chronometer, and his struggles to get it recognised by a scientific establishment that seemed determined to prove that the stars were still the best way to navigate and didn’t want to be undermined by a carpenter. His own stubborn nature and perfectionism didn’t help though, as every time they were all impressed by his earlier clocks and all ready to test them he would insist he could do much better and start all over, and by the time he was happy with his own work the people who had taken over didn’t want to listen. He basically devoted his life to the task of making clocks accurate enough for determining longitude that could withstand the motion on a ship, and it’s nice that he’s started getting some recognition for it. The first three clocks he made are still running and keeping good time on display in a museum. It’s a shame the book didn’t have some pictures of them since they’re beautiful objects aside from the technical achievements. I found this a really enjoyable and interesting read.

5The_Hibernator
Jan 1, 2017, 9:12 pm



I love Connie Willis! Looking forward to seeing what you think. As for North and South, I've finished it now. It was really good. I'll review it next Sunday, I think (I have things scheduled out that far on my blog already).

6dchaikin
Jan 1, 2017, 11:22 pm

Longitude is a special history book, I think it was something of a trend changer. Glad you enjoyed it. Your to-read-soon list looks terrific. Happy New Year Gary!

7NanaCC
Jan 2, 2017, 12:08 pm

Longitude sounds quite interesting, Gary. And I agree with Dan, your 'up next' list is a nice one. I need to read more by Connie Willis. I really enjoyed the Doomsday Book. North and South was great, and I loved A God in Ruins. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

8baswood
Jan 2, 2017, 6:19 pm

Some interesting books appearing in your to read soon column

9arubabookwoman
Jan 2, 2017, 7:47 pm

You've got some good reads coming up. I loved A God in Ruins and was intrigued by The New York Trilogy.

10valkyrdeath
Modifié : Jan 3, 2017, 1:19 pm

>5 The_Hibernator: I love Connie Willis too, I've yet to be disappointed by anything I read by her. I'm glad you liked North and South, I've enjoyed the couple of shorter Gaskell books I've read so I'm looking forward to getting to that one. Hope you have a good new year!

>6 dchaikin: Happy New Year to you too Dan! There was an interview with the author at the end of Longitude where they talked about how the book set trends, though she made sure to point out that she wasn't the first to write a book like that, and that it was just hers that got noticed and became a success. She clearly did something right with it.

>7 NanaCC: >8 baswood: >9 arubabookwoman: I'd say it's definitely worth reading the rest of the Oxford Time Travel books at the very least if you enjoyed Doomsday Book. I enjoyed Life After Life last year and thought I shouldn't leave it too long before getting to A God in Ruins. The New York Trilogy was new to me when I received it at Christmas but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing I'd enjoy. I like having at least a short list of things I want to get to soon otherwise I tend to keep saying to myself "I'll read that soon" about certain books and then still not having touched them months or even years later.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!

11mabith
Jan 3, 2017, 1:42 pm

Making note of your thread!

12AlisonY
Jan 3, 2017, 3:42 pm

Dropping by - will be following along again with interest.

13valkyrdeath
Jan 6, 2017, 6:19 pm

>11 mabith: >12 AlisonY: Thanks for dropping in!

14valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:16 pm


2. All Clear by Connie Willis
This is the second half of Connie Willis’s WW2 time travel story. Effectively, this and Blackout were just one very long novel that was chopped into two for publication, so the previous volume ended suddenly and this launches straight into the next chapter without any introduction, so you really need to read them both, just this one on its own would make no sense. Having said that, this is even better than the first part, fast paced, likable characters, plenty of tragedy as you’d expect from the wartime London setting but also lots of humour too as is usually the case with Willis. Two troublemaking children called Alf and Binnie rarely failed to raise a laugh whenever they appeared. The book is good at portraying the small acts of heroism from people you might not usually think about as being important to winning a war, and considers how these could all add up to be vital to victory. The time travel aspects all work well too, becoming quite complex but always being presented clearly, and I thought the ending was excellent. The plot was rarely predictable and I really didn’t know where it was heading until I’d finished the book.

To nit-pick, some of the things I’ve noticed in her other time travel books are in evidence here. Some American things creep into London in the Blitz that wouldn’t have been there, such as children playing Parcheesi instead of Ludo, or people in England discussing Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Calais Coach, consistently using that title at various places in the book and by different groups of people, which I had to look up to find was the original US title of Murder on the Orient Express but which was never used in the UK. There’s the odd mistake like this scattered through the book and it did briefly pull me out of the story every time, though it’s probably not so noticeable to readers outside the UK. It wasn’t enough to change the fact that I loved this book though, as I have with everything I’ve read by Connie Willis so far.

15valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:15 pm

3. Selected Shorts: American Classics by various authors
An interesting audiobook collecting eight stories from different authors, each read by a different actor live on stage in front of an audience. The stories are surprisingly varied, ranging in date from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 story The Black Cat to Amy Tan’s The Rules of the Game from 1989, and in tone from Joyce Carol Oates’s disturbing Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? to the comical At the Anarchists’ Convention by John Sayles.

Most of the performances are really good too. Six of the stories are in first person, and they mostly feel more like acting performances than simple readings, really bringing the stories to life. Perhaps my favourite was Rene Auberjonois’s nervous and increasingly unhinged reading of The Black Cat, Poe’s story of alcoholism driving the narrator to increasingly violent acts. I also really enjoyed Freda Foh Shen’s reading of the Amy Tan story, and Stockard Channing does a good job with the amusing Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty. The only story I didn’t really like was the Oates one, which was well written and tense but I just didn’t feel like it went anywhere at the end, so ended up just unpleasant.

I enjoyed this. I’m often not very good at audiobooks, but this one worked really well for me, and it introduced me to some stories I might not otherwise have read. I’ve seen some other audiobooks in the same series also available at the library so I think they’ll become a part of my reading later in the year.

16AnnieMod
Jan 13, 2017, 7:02 pm

>14 valkyrdeath: Considering that the series showed how the time travel changes reality a bit, I would chalk these inconsistencies to that - who knows how many times something small had been changed. At least that is my version and I am sticking to it :)

17valkyrdeath
Jan 15, 2017, 6:42 pm

>16 AnnieMod: But then any changes made were made in the earlier period so had already happened and were already a part of reality... time travel is so confusing! Either way, it doesn't really bother me much since it's fiction.

18AnnieMod
Jan 15, 2017, 7:20 pm

>17 valkyrdeath: Yeah but is that our reality? :) I do agree - it is fiction, complaining that it is not textbook accurate is not my style either (but then I also initially learned some of my history from textbooks that were a bit.. biased). I liked her depiction of London - and if it is not 100% correct - I am not reading these books to learn history.

19valkyrdeath
Jan 17, 2017, 6:45 pm

>18 AnnieMod: I agree, the depiction of London was good, and I think she portrayed the terror of being stuck in the middle of the Blitz very well. I'm just sorry I don't have any more of her time travel novels left to read now.

20valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:15 pm


4. Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong
A graphic memoir of a short period of the author’s childhood where he lived in Vietnam during the war. He certainly moved around a lot, being born in the Philippines to a Vietnamese father and a French mother, moving to America shortly after where his father worked for the Vietnamese embassy. Not long after that, he’s called back to Saigon where he ends up working as the interpreter for President Ngo Dinh Diem. Truong intersperses the story of the events that were going on in Vietnam with his personal story of growing up during these events while coping with his home life with his siblings and a manic depressive mother with violent mood swings.

The author does a good job of explaining the wider events during the time, and I found it interesting to see a different perspective on the conflict. He manages to make it a generally balanced account, neither glorifying nor completely vilifying either side. He also makes use of reference materials in telling his story, not merely relying on his own childhood memory but also quoting directly from sources such as letters his mother wrote at the time, and also fits in some scenes of him having conversations with his father about the events many years later.

I found this to be a worthwhile read and an interesting perspective on the Vietnam conflict. The memoir aspects seem a bit rushed through at times with so much detail on the wider picture to give, but it worked reasonably well. Occasionally some of the pages seemed a bit disjointed, but it was still a good read. There seems to be a follow on volume covering a longer period that he spent in London after this, but it doesn’t appear to have been translated into English yet. I’ll probably try and read it if/when it does.

21valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:14 pm


5. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
“Let me tell you about when I was a girl, our grandfather says.”

I had two Ali Smith books that I’d planned to read this year before getting to any of her other work, but I picked this up in the library and read that first line and that was it, I just had to continue.

Girl Meets Boy is a brief book split into five parts, alternating perspective between two sisters. Anthea meets and falls for a boy who turns out not to be a boy, an activist who she finds painting graffiti on the sign of the company she’s just stopped working for. (“She blushed like a boy. She had a girl’s toughness.”) Her sister Imogen continues to work there and has ambitions to advance, but over the course of the book comes to terms with Anthea’s relationship and with the awful methods the corporation uses to achieve its success. Both sisters have distinctive voices and both find themselves changed by these events.

This is actually one of the Canongate Myth series of retellings of different mythological stories, something I hadn’t realised. This one is based on the story of Iphis from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. You don’t have to know anything about the myth though, as the original story is actually told within the book twice, first in a straightforward brief description and again as a conversation that shows as much about the characters discussing it than the story itself.

I love Smith’s writing. She clearly loves language and playing with words and I find it a joy to read even aside from the subjects she’s writing about. This covers a lot of territory for a short book too. I have a feeling I’m going to be reading everything I can by Ali Smith.

I feel like I can’t really put my thoughts about the book very coherently so I’ll just leave it there, but I loved the book and am very glad I picked it up.

22wandering_star
Jan 19, 2017, 8:22 pm

>21 valkyrdeath: “I have a feeling I’m going to be reading everything I can by Ali Smith."

Yes, do! She is one of my top rediscoveries recently, with two of her books in my top ten for last year.

23janemarieprice
Jan 20, 2017, 5:47 pm

>21 valkyrdeath:, >22 wandering_star: Well you've got me interested. I'll keep an eye out for her work.

24valkyrdeath
Jan 20, 2017, 6:52 pm

>22 wandering_star: I read Public Library and Other Stories last year and was instantly drawn in by her writing style. I'm not sure I've read anything else quite like it.

>23 janemarieprice: I hope you like her if you do try one of her books!

25AnnieMod
Jan 20, 2017, 6:53 pm

>20 valkyrdeath: This one definitely goes on my list (or moves higher as the case is - it is already there technically)

26valkyrdeath
Jan 21, 2017, 6:59 pm

>25 AnnieMod: It's not perfect, but I'd say it's definitely worth a read. Hope you like it!

27valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:14 pm


6. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Well, this was a really lovely book that I enjoyed far more than I was expecting to. It’s made up of the series of letters the author sent to and received from the Marks and Co bookshop over a period of many years. Hanff’s sense of humour shines through in the letters and what start out as formal business-like replies gradually become more conversational as she starts sending food packages to the shop to help them during post-war rationing. A friendship builds between her and Frank Doel and other people working there. It’s interesting to see the relationship change over the course of the book, and to see what books she’s after in her latest letter. It’s a really fun read, though quite sad at the end. I also listened to this on audiobook (my second audiobook in a month!) and it was an excellent choice for that, with the parts read excellently by Juliet Stevenson and John Nettles. I loved it.

This book also makes me really miss second-hand bookshops, of which there are none at all near me anymore. I loved exploring the shelves and seeing what I could come across, and at the main shop I used the woman who ran it would watch out for copies of books I was interested in becoming available and save them for me. It’s a shame that there’s so few places like that left, at least around here, and quite sad that 84,Charing Cross Road itself is now a McDonald’s.

28AnnieMod
Jan 21, 2017, 7:14 pm

>27 valkyrdeath: You cannot not fall in love with that book, can you? Even if you do not expect to. :)

29janemarieprice
Jan 22, 2017, 10:41 am

>27 valkyrdeath: I too liked that one more than I was expecting to. I guess I thought it would more 'cute'. It makes me miss letter writing!

30valkyrdeath
Jan 22, 2017, 8:30 pm

>28 AnnieMod: >29 janemarieprice: It really is a book that I imagine would be hard to dislike. And it's full of people doing nice things, which is perfect for the current times when the worst side of humanity is really showing.

31valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:13 pm


7. Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 edited by Greg Bear
I keep reading these Nebula Awards volumes under the assumption that it’s at least a good way to get a variety of stories from the particular year, even though I don’t really think awards mean much in general. There’s often an agenda of some sort behind these sorts of things and too many times you look back at past awards and find acknowledged classics didn’t win or sometimes didn’t even get nominated while something virtually forgotten has won it. I didn’t expect to start reading this book and find the editor in his introduction basically agreeing with most of those things himself. Maybe that’s why in this volume, he’s managed to fit in every one of the nominated short stories and novelettes rather than just the winners and maybe one or two others as in most of the other years I’ve read. And maybe he also felt he had to give his opinion due to the quality of these stories, since I really don’t believe this can be the best the year had to offer.

The winning short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky, is the only story I’d read before, and it starts off seeming very silly, though it redeems itself a little by a reveal of what it’s actually about towards the end. It didn’t really stick with me the first time around though. “Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar (whose name I had to look up as it’s misspelled two out of the four times it’s used in the book) I found to be a bit bland and left no impression on me at all. "Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer" by Kenneth Schneyer is more interesting, telling a story in the form of suggested by the title, program notes for an exhibition of a fictional artist. It manages to imply the story well, leaving the reader to work out what’s happening without it ever being said, though the form was more interesting than the story itself. “Alive, Alive Oh” by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley was probably my favourite of the bunch, a decent science fiction story of a family stuck on another planet after going out for research purposes for a limited time but ending up quarantined there due to a bacteria that killed any of them that returned to Earth. It’s far from outstanding, but it wasn’t bad.

I didn’t care for the winning novelette at all, “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard, didn’t like the writing and the story was forgettable enough that I can’t remember a thing about it just a few days after reading it. It’s possible it’s just not to my tastes though. I loved one of the nominees for best novelette though, “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” by Ken Liu. It’s an historical fantasy set in China at the time of the Qianlong Emperor, and follows Tian, a “litigating hooligan” who uses trickery to help people get out of legal situations. It starts of as a really fun story though turns more serious as he gets into a situation that he may not be able to talk his way out of. An interesting setting, and actually based around real historical events with a brief afterword explaining this. That’s the story that would have won my vote out of this selection. I didn’t care for the winning novelette at all, “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard, didn’t like the writing and the story was forgettable enough that I can’t remember a thing about it just a few days after reading it. It’s possible it’s just not to my tastes though.

Of the other nominees, “Paranormal Romance” by Christopher Barzak was at least a fun light read, and “Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters” by Henry Lien had some interesting ideas, especially a place entirely coated in a surface suitable for skating on and a fictional martial art involving this, but I had a few issues with it that preventing me really liking it too much. The others weren’t completely terrible, but didn’t have much impact.

The winning novella, “The Weight of the Sunrise” by Vylar Kaftan, was quite good, an alternate history where the Incan Empire survived into the 19th Century and a group of Americans arrive to try to sell them the vaccine for smallpox for funds to rebel against the English. I enjoyed it and it was another interesting setting.

After that there’s extracts from the winning novel and winning YA novel which I skipped as I never see the point of reading a small part of a story. The article in tribute to that year’s Grand Master, Samuel R. Delany, was actually a highlight and really made me want to read more of his work, even if I wasn’t too keen on Babel -17 when I read it. His story in this book I quite enjoyed, though the end was a bit disappointing.

Finally the book has the three Rhysling Award winning poems in the different length categories. These were ok though poetry isn’t really my thing. The long poem is “Into Flight” by Andrew Robert Sutton and is about a time when books suddenly start to fly away, and it’s basically just a metaphorical rant about how he doesn’t like ebooks. All the books leave and we’re left only with digital versions and “the text was without soul / and offered nothing to its readers”. I’m just so sick of that attitude. Somehow the words don’t have anything to offer because they’re not in a physical print book? That’s such nonsense, and I’d have thought a science fiction anthology would be the last place for that sort of Luddism.

The weirdest thing about this book was how little fantasy and science fiction there actually was in a lot of it. The dinosaur in If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love was purely hypothetical, as the title suggests. The closest Selkie Stories are for Losers gets to fantasy is to remark that the fact the her mother left makes it like a selkie story where the selkie finds its skin and vanishes. Even The Litigation Master and the Monkey King, which I really enjoyed, was more historical fiction, with the only fantasy element being that the main character talks to the Monkey King, but that’s only in his own head. I’m happy to read general fiction short stories, but it’s not really what the awards are intended for. It feels like they’re so worried about getting taken seriously that they’re just downplaying the genre and end up including stories that barely feel like they should be eligible. And I’m sure there were plenty of really good stories that just never got a look in.

There were a couple of good stories in the book though, and they were fairly long ones, and not many of them were completely awful, but the book overall was a bit disappointing.

Well, that was too long and ranty, but I’m finally done!

32baswood
Jan 27, 2017, 9:50 am

>31 valkyrdeath: The weirdest thing about this book was how little fantasy and science fiction there actually was in a lot of it.

Thats interesting, perhaps you need to go back to the 1960's or 1970's for real science fiction.

33valkyrdeath
Jan 28, 2017, 6:09 pm

>32 baswood: The 40s - 60s period was what I read quite a lot of when I was younger and there's a lot of great science fiction that I love from that era. I think there's still good science fiction out there, but I'm just a bit baffled about how stories are picked for the awards. Light sci-fi/fantasy elements is one thing, but there's the odd story with none at all, and it seems that maybe just because the author has written science fiction before then every story they write is suddenly in the same category regardless of the actual content.

34valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:12 pm


8. Adulthood is a Myth by Sarah Andersen
This is a fun little collection of one page comics about different aspects of life. Things I can identify with, such as the struggle to get up, procrastination, social anxiety, and a love of books. The drawings are simple but likeable and the comics are funny. It’s a very quick read, nothing deep or complex but a very entertaining way to pass a little time and I’ll happily read the next collection when it’s released.

35valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:12 pm


9. A Wild Swan and Other Tales by Michael Cunningham
A book of fairy tale retellings that’s above the quality of most stories of this type that I’ve read. I was drawn to this book by the title story, based on the same story as Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier which I enjoyed last year. It was only after I’d got it from the library that I realised it’s by the same author as The Hours. The stories here focus on interesting angles of the original story, often expanding on minor elements or picking up from where the story left off. The title story focuses on the boy who, having been turned back from a swan, has been left with one wing in place of an arm. He’s only mentioned in passing in the original story at the conclusion but here it looks at what life is like for him afterwards. There’s a take on Rumplestiltskin that looks at his motivations for his actions and makes him a more sympathetic character and a version of The Monkey’s Paw where the parents can’t bring themselves to use the third wish and lose their son a second time, regardless of what form he’s in. That’s just a few of the stories in this short but enjoyable book. Some of them are also written in the second-person, which had an interesting effect and is something I don’t see used very often. The writing was excellent throughout and the stories had more impact and more depth than I was expecting from this sort of book.

36bragan
Jan 31, 2017, 7:05 pm

>35 valkyrdeath: Oh, that sounds right up my alley. Onto the wishlist it goes.

37AnnieMod
Jan 31, 2017, 7:14 pm

>35 valkyrdeath:

That sounds interesting.

38valkyrdeath
Fév 3, 2017, 9:41 pm

>36 bragan: >37 AnnieMod: I'd never heard of it before I got it from the library on a whim. I'm quite glad I did. Hope you enjoy it if you read it!

39valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:12 pm


10. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
A companion piece to Life After Life, this time focusing on Teddy. There’s none of the Groundhog Day style alternate lives here though, simply charting one of the possible lives of Ursula’s brother and his daughter and grandchildren. The main focus is around his wartime experience as a bomber pilot and the impact it has on his life, though there’s plenty of the book set before and after WW2. While it may not have the more fantastical elements of the previous book, the structure is far from straight forward, and it’s told non-chronologically, each chapter jumping backwards and forwards in time, where we’ll then jump further back via the characters thoughts or jump forward to something that happens later before snapping back to resume the events we were at before. Sometimes the same events are reached again from a different angle in a different chapter. It’s a sign of the quality of the writing that I never once felt confused as to what was happening or what period I was reading about.

The structure was extremely clever as we get to see characters and form opinions on them before later learning of events that give an idea of how they got to be the way they are and to see something from their perspective. My opinions on the characters by the end of the book were very different to the ones I had halfway through, and the events were sequences in precisely the right way to have the maximum impact in this regard.

I loved the book right up until the last few pages. There’s a bit at the very end where the author seems to have felt she needed to put a gimmick into it, as if because Life After Life had one then it wasn’t enough for this to be just a good realistic story. It feels out of place and you could remove these last few pages and the book would feel complete, and there was no need to just have something there to effectively negate everything that’s happened. I genuinely thought it felt like the appropriate end point of the book right before these pages. It wasn’t enough to spoil the book and I can basically just forget about that bit and remember how wonderful the rest of the book was. I enjoyed it all at least as much as Life After Life, if not more, but in different ways as they’re very different books.

40RidgewayGirl
Fév 4, 2017, 6:59 pm

A Wild Swan sounds interesting. Michael Cunningham is hit or miss for me, so it's good to know this one is worth taking a look at.

And it is interesting how very different Life After Life and A God in Ruins are.

41NanaCC
Fév 4, 2017, 9:08 pm

I also loved A God in Ruins, but didn't love the gimmicky ending.

42edwinbcn
Fév 7, 2017, 2:07 am

Michael Cunningham is a total disappointment for me I read several of his books, none of which I really liked. I sa A Wild Swan and Other Tales in a bookstore but decided to leave it there.

43Simone2
Fév 7, 2017, 7:36 am

44valkyrdeath
Fév 8, 2017, 7:04 pm

>41 NanaCC: I really felt the ending didn't fit with the rest of the book. I can't help but wonder if it was added as an afterthought after the rest had been written since it feels so irrelevant.

>42 edwinbcn: I'd only previously read The Hours, which I thought was well written and liked well enough though it didn't have any major impact on me and I can't remember much about it now. But then I felt much the same about Mrs. Dalloway.

45dchaikin
Fév 8, 2017, 9:59 pm

You've been reading some great books v.

>20 valkyrdeath: somewhat fascinated by your comments on this memoir

>21 valkyrdeath: I need to keep this in mind because, first, I'm going to read Ovid this year and, second, it's time I tried Ali Smith

>27 valkyrdeath: great review. I'm one of the few here who hasn't read 84 Charing Cross Road yet.

>35 valkyrdeath: hmm. I'm intrigued.

>39 valkyrdeath: Great review. I enjoyed this quite a bit on audio. Oddly I remember loving the end, but I can't remember it now...

46valkyrdeath
Fév 10, 2017, 6:51 pm

>45 dchaikin: I'm really happy with my reading so far this year overall. The Ali Smith book is a very short book and would probably be a good accompaniment to reading Ovid. And I definitely recommend the audiobook of 84 Charing Cross Road if you can get hold of it. I think it's something I'll return to if I'm ever in real need of cheering up.

47AlisonY
Fév 11, 2017, 6:34 am

Definitely still need to get to God in Ruins and Life after Life. I may be the last CRer to read these....

48valkyrdeath
Fév 13, 2017, 6:17 pm

>47 AlisonY: I think they're well worth reading! I'd say it's a good idea to read them close together if you do read them, since it's interesting to see the moments where the events do connect.

49valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:11 pm


11. Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor
The first book based on the science fiction comedy TV series Red Dwarf, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor who also wrote the show. It’s an interesting adaptation that covers the plots of a few of the episodes from the first two series, sometimes including scenes and dialogue directly from them, but also expands on things, fills out details and sometimes, especially in the last part of the book, takes it off in a completely different direction. It’s often very funny, though I’m not sure how much it relies on knowing the television show, and I’m sure having the actors voices in your head for the dialogue enhances the humour. I first read this many years ago but thought it was time for a reread when I came across the audiobook narrated by Chris Barrie, who played Rimmer in the TV show and is also an impersonator who does a pretty good job of voicing all the other characters too. I really like this book and I like how it expands on the characterisation of what was already a very character driven series. It’s probably more interesting to people who already know the show. Which is well worth watching if you don’t know it because it’s brilliant.

50AnnieMod
Fév 15, 2017, 12:44 am

>49 valkyrdeath: Is it standing on its own or should one watch the series first (I know, I need to get around to it...)

51valkyrdeath
Fév 15, 2017, 6:05 pm

>50 AnnieMod: I was coming at it already as a big fan when I first read it so it's hard to judge. It's certainly presented with no assumptions of any prior knowledge of the series, and it's a sort of alternate timeline to the show anyway since some aspects are completely different. I'd say it it should work pretty well for someone who doesn't know anything about it in advance. I'd definitely recommend watching the series though if you've never seen it!

52valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:11 pm


12. Floodgate by Alistair MacLean
I’ve enjoyed all the Alistair MacLean books that I’ve previously read, and I’ve had this one on my shelf for ages and was expecting another great adventure story along those lines. Sadly, Floodgate was a bit of a disappointment. This was one of MacLean’s last few books, and apparently his writing declined at that point, possibly due to the alcoholism that eventually killed him. If he drank anywhere near as much as the characters in this book, it’s not very surprising. It has neither the tension nor the action of his best work. The plot starts with a terrorist group having breached a dam and flooded Amsterdam airport, and proceeds with them carrying out various threats to other dams, all while making sure they cause as little damage as possible and giving warning to try to make sure no-one is killed, before finally revealing their demands. Lieutenant van Effen and two colleagues go undercover in disguise and infiltrate a group of criminals carrying out the explosions to ultimately take down the terrorists, and also to rescue two kidnapped women, one of them his sister. Most of the action takes place off the page and a lot of the time seems to be spent with the undercover officers sat around drinking and having incredibly unconvincing conversations. The hero never gets anything wrong, can fool the criminals perfectly every time and can spend days amongst them in his disguise despite them having met him in his normal policeman guise. It’s all a bit ludicrous. Not that these sorts of books generally have the most realistic plots, but they usually have some excitement that carries it along, and it doesn’t usually go to these extremes. The women are there to fawn over the hero and get kidnapped. It’s just very weak and nowhere near the quality of his earlier books, with all the worst aspects and none of the good parts. I’ll be sticking with those in future.

53valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:10 pm


13. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
This book looks at the people working in the Harvard Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the astronomical discoveries they were involved with. The glass universe of the title is a series of hundreds of thousands of photographic plates charting the stars in the night sky over many years. This is a fascinating book, from the perspective of both the people and the science. As the subtitle suggests, a lot of the people doing the work were women, something unusual for the time, as they would discover when they visited other observatories and addressed rooms full entirely of men. The directors of the observatory were initially Edward Pickering and later Harlow Shapley following his death, both of whom were men of their time but also supported and actively encouraged women to get involved in astronomy. Sadly, they of course got paid less despite the amount of complex work they were doing and the discoveries they were making. And these discoveries were really interesting to read about, as they used their spectroscopic analyses to discover all sorts of things from the chemical composition of the stars to the size of the galaxy and the distances between stars, to details about variable and binary stars. The methods they use to determine this information are ingenious and I loved reading about how they worked everything out. All the people involved seemed really likeable and all seemed fond of each other. And at one point they get together to put on a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof called The Observatory Pinafore, which still amuses me. The writing was excellent, presenting the details of what happened in a clear organised way. Another good non-fiction read from Sobel, and a story well worth telling.

54dchaikin
Fév 19, 2017, 6:46 pm

Terrific review of The Glass Universe. Noting this for audio (assuming there is one)

55valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:10 pm


14. Miracleman Book 1: A Dream of Flying by Alan Moore
The first few pages of Miracleman have the feel of a reprint of a campy 50s era comic when suddenly at the point where the heroes are standing triumphant we get a page of gradually zooming in towards the eye of the grinning Miracleman alongside a Nietzsche quote from Thus Spake Zarathustra. It’s a strangely unsettling moment. This is basically the comic where Alan Moore started his deconstruction of superheroes that probably reached its pinnacle with Watchmen. After this opening, we move forward to the 80s and the story itself begins with Mike Moran accidentally discovering the word that changes him into Miracleman, something he’d somehow entirely forgotten about. Set in 80s Britain, it’s a dark, gritty story, with the authorities treating him as a monster to be gotten rid of, former Kid Miracleman turning out to be abusing the powers he had, and ultimately involving an investigation into just where the powers came from that is a very different take to usual. Moore was at his best back in this era and while this isn’t his greatest work, it’s still extremely well written and I have a feeling it’s only going to get better in the next volumes.

56valkyrdeath
Modifié : Fév 19, 2017, 8:03 pm

>54 dchaikin: Thanks! I've definitely seen an audio version available, and I expect it's a book that would work quite well like that as long as the reader is good. I'm planning to try some more of Dava Sobel's books at some point.

57valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:09 pm


15. Passing by Nella Larsen
This is a short novel about two African American women who were childhood friends who happen by chance to meet up again after not having seen each other for years. One lives in Harlem while the other has spent the years passing as white. For such a short book, it seems to cover a lot of territory, and the meeting of these women ultimately causes big changes in both of them and the people around them, and it all leads up to a surprising conclusion that I definitely didn’t see coming. This was very well written and I really enjoyed it, and I hope to read her other novel at some point. It was a quick read and one that was well worth it.

58Rebeki
Fév 21, 2017, 4:46 am

>57 valkyrdeath: I hadn't heard of this book or its author, but it sounds like something I'd enjoy.

59valkyrdeath
Fév 21, 2017, 2:12 pm

>58 Rebeki: I'd never heard of it either until it was picked for an online book club. Strangely enough, shortly after it was picked I came across it again in a library featured collection of David Bowie's favourite books. It's certainly worth a read, and I read the whole thing in two days.

60Rebeki
Fév 23, 2017, 5:02 am

>59 valkyrdeath: Ah, interesting. I have an old Guardian article bookmarked that lists Bowie's "top 100 must-read books". It doesn't mention Passing, but it sounds more appealing to me than many on that particular list. I've seen there's an edition that includes both Passing and Quicksand, so I may treat myself at some point!

61valkyrdeath
Fév 23, 2017, 8:36 pm

>60 Rebeki: I'm hoping to get to Quicksand at some point too. Sounds useful if you can get both in one edition!

62valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:06 pm


16. The Stranger by Albert Camus
I can’t quite work out what I thought about this short book. For the first half of the book it follows Meursault as he goes about his life, a man whose behaviour doesn’t quite fit with the expectations of his society, following him through the funeral of his mother and the events that lead to him being on trial. The second half follows his trial, which brings up his behaviour during the first half to portray him as a monster, rather than focusing on anything relevant to the case. The trial felt a bit ridiculous, as I can’t imagine a prosecutor getting away with spending hours calling in witnesses to prove the fact that the suspect didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral in a completely unrelated murder case, but maybe that’s just cultural and/or time differences in play. But I don’t know what to make of the fact that he is actually guilty. Camus himself says that it’s the story of a man who is condemned because he refuses to play the game, but it seems to me that he was condemned because he killed someone. If he’d been innocent but had been convicted by the ridiculously unfair trial I could have seen that point in it, but since he actually was a remorseless killer, it lost its impact. It was an interesting read anyway, but not one that I loved.

63valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:06 pm


(These old covers are ridiculous. Every Asimov cover from this era seemed to have generic science fiction scenes with space ships. There's no space travel at all in this story, and I haven't a clue what this picture is supposed to be.)

17. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
In this book, the Eternity of the title is an area outside of regular time. In a future where time travel has been invented, Eternity has been set up, allowing people to move backwards and forwards through the centuries, though only starting from the point it was first set up. They keep their main purpose hidden from people within time, that being to make the minimum necessary changes to keep people safe and prevent disastrous events from happening.

This is an oddity amongst Asimov’s novels. Time travel isn’t a common theme for him, and this was a fairly original take on it. Also, the characters aren’t especially likable, and rather than a straight forward hero, the main protagonist of the book is an angry man, plagued with doubts, and also seeming to become progressively more paranoid and unhinged as the book goes on. Characterisation has never been a major strength of Asimov, and this is still focused around ideas and plot, but this is still quite different to the sort of people he usually writes about. The book raises questions about the ethics of what is happening in Eternity. By manipulating history, they’re causing large numbers of people to cease to exist while new people come into existence in their place. Should they be correcting people’s mistakes without their knowledge or should everyone be left to make their own choices? Who is to say that a bad event at one time won’t lead to better consequences in the future? And of course, the Eternals will have their own view of what is right and wrong, and what would give them the right to enforce their own version of morality on everyone else?

What definitely does feel like Asimov is the plotting of the book. There’s mystery elements to the plot, and these are developed extremely well, with plenty of surprises towards the end of the book, all of which were thoroughly clued, the majority of which was completely missed by me. The time travel is complex and yet completely understandable with Asimov’s typically clear writing.

The book has its problems. Asimov was never great at writing women, so there’s only one in the plot here, though in this case, she is probably the only sensible character. And the romance isn’t great, though it’s basically a McGuffin to drive the plot. But it is full of interesting ideas, some great plot twists, and a satisfying ending. I seemed to remember not liking it too much when I first read it years ago, but on rereading, I’ve found it to be a very good piece of science fiction, even if it doesn’t feel quite like the rest of his works.

64valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:05 pm


18. Miracleman Book 2: The Red King Syndrome by Alan Moore
Well, my aim to review everything this year within a couple of days of reading it falls apart when I have computer failures. Anyway, this is the middle volume of Alan Moore’s run on Miracleman. (Originally the character was Marvelman but had the name changed to prevent any copyright disputes with Marvel, even though Marvelman was around before they took that name.) Being the middle volume, it doesn’t have any resolution to anything, but continues the story with the Moore’s usual quality writing. The main focus of much of this book is the birth of the hero’s daughter, and her subsequent rapid development. In fact, there’s an entire issue graphically depicting the birth itself, which isn’t something I can say I’ve seen in comics before. I’ll be interested to see where this is heading for the third volume.

65valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:05 pm


19. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
This book was picked for the online book club that I’m in, otherwise I’d never have picked it up. I shouldn’t have liked this book at all. It’s a love story, it’s about teenagers, both things that are likely to drive me away. It was a complete surprise that I ended up loving it. The story is set in the 80s and follows the meeting and subsequently developing relationship between the two title characters. It managed to pull me in by having a reference to XTC at the very start of the first chapter and having the two characters bonding over Alan Moore characters, but soon it was one of those books that I just wanted to keep reading and found hard to put down. It alternates between the perspective of the two characters regularly, which I thought worked very well and showed things from both sides. It was a surprisingly tough read at times too, with themes of bullying and domestic abuse. The whole book felt very convincingly real to me which made those sections hit quite hard. I enjoyed the book all the way through and I liked the way it ended.

66Simone2
Mar 4, 2017, 1:47 am

>65 valkyrdeath: I think my kids read this book and we probably have a copy somewhere. I would never have thought about reading it but your review makes me at least want to look it up.

67valkyrdeath
Mar 5, 2017, 6:43 pm

>66 Simone2: I'd never have read it if it wasn't for the book club. I'm quite glad I did though, as I found it very well written. I think finding interesting books I wouldn't have thought to read otherwise is one of my favourite things about those sorts of clubs.

68AlisonY
Mar 6, 2017, 10:02 am

I've wanted to read Passing for ages but my library only ever has the audio version which doesn't appeal. Enjoyed your review - sounds every bit as good as I'd hoped.

69valkyrdeath
Mar 7, 2017, 7:48 pm

>68 AlisonY: It's definitely worth a read if you do get the chance!

70valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:00 pm


20. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
This very brief book features an elderly retired detective who now keeps bees, clearly Sherlock Holmes, though never named in the story. In 1944 he meets a small boy outside his house, a mute German Jewish refugee with a parrot as a companion that recites a series of mysterious numbers in German. Shortly after, a man is murdered and the parrot is stolen, and the detective decides to help, not to solve the murder but to help the boy find his parrot.

The book is nothing too special as a mystery, not bad but nothing too great. Far more interesting is the take on Holmes, an aging detective with an intermittently failing memory. He’s been really well written here and is one of my favourite non-Doyle portrayals of the character. The story has some very good writing in it. It’s also quite clever in ways unrelated to the mystery elements that are being investigated within the book. The double meaning title referencing the Sherlock story The Final Problem also has connotations of the holocaust. In a similar way, the book is a holocaust story that never talks about the holocaust. The mystery of the numbers and of events that happened to the boy is the one mystery the detective decides can’t be solved. The boy is mute and can’t tell his story, but we can infer it from references made and our own knowledge of the era. It’s something that never intrudes into the story directly and yet is ever present under the surface. For this reason it’s something I feel I like more looking back after reading it than I probably did during reading it, and one I may well read again and might appreciate better. Not that I didn’t like it while reading, but I think I probably missed things. I feel there was a lot more going on in what was on the surface a very short, well written but fairly average mystery.

71bragan
Mar 10, 2017, 7:05 pm

>70 valkyrdeath: I like Michel Chabon, but I've somehow missed this one. I think it's going to have to go onto my wishlist.

72bragan
Mar 10, 2017, 7:06 pm

>71 bragan: Oh, wait, it's already on my wishlist! Man, it's getting impossible to keep track of that thing... :)

73valkyrdeath
Mar 14, 2017, 7:34 pm

>72 bragan: I'm constantly typing books onto my list only to find they're already on there. I guess the fact that we'd forgotten we'd put them on the list is the reason we keep the list in the first place!

74valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 6:00 pm


21. The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven
A collection of stories all set at the tavern of the title, written over a period of many years. I’d read a few of these in various Niven collections in the past but this book gathers a lot of them together, though apparently not all. The Draco Tavern is designed to accommodate all types of alien that visit Earth. There are one or two longer stories but mostly these are very short vignettes that explore interesting ideas, usually involving the owner, Rick, in conversation with different alien species. Usually present are the Chirpsithra who claim to be extremely ancient and powerful and to own almost everything, but who Rick is never quite sure if they’re genuine or just good at telling tall stories. All sorts of other aliens turn up though, presenting different cultures and ideas in a few pages that might form the basis of a novel in different circumstances. I enjoy these stories, though they’re best dipped in and out of when all collected together like this rather than trying to read them all in one go.

75baswood
Mar 22, 2017, 2:01 pm

Excellent review of The End of Eternity. An Asimov that I haven't come across before. One to read I think.

76valkyrdeath
Mar 22, 2017, 7:16 pm

>75 baswood: Thanks! It's an atypical Asimov book in some ways but certainly an interesting one.

77valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:59 pm


22. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
This is my favourite so far of the books I’ve read by Gaskell. It follows a young woman as she moves with her family from a rural southern village to an industrial northern town. Gaskell writes extremely well and does a really good job of portraying lots of characters with hugely contrasting viewpoints. She seems to have a good grasp of their psychology too. The writing feels quite modern considering the book is over 160 years old. I loved it and will definitely be carrying on with the rest of her work.

78Simone2
Mar 27, 2017, 8:04 am

>77 valkyrdeath: This sounds great. I have it on my shelves but it seems so long and somehow I could'nt make myself pick it up, although I liked Cranford a lot. Your review encourages me to read it however!

79valkyrdeath
Mar 27, 2017, 7:46 pm

>78 Simone2: If it's any help, it's one of those long books that really doesn't feel long when you're reading it!

80NanaCC
Mar 28, 2017, 6:53 pm

>77 valkyrdeath: Agree.. this is my favorite so far, as well.

81valkyrdeath
Avr 5, 2017, 6:02 pm

>80 NanaCC: It was a great read. I've got plenty more of her works to go so hopefully there's more to match it too.

82valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:58 pm


23. Miracleman Book 3: Olympus by Alan Moore
The third and final volume of Alan Moore’s run on Miracleman charts his rise, along with the emergence of other beings with powers, from superhero to one of the Gods on Earth. They take over to create their vision of a utopian society, though of course, not everyone is going to be happy with an enforced regime, no matter how great it might seem, which is where Neil Gaiman stepped in with the next volume to start to downfall. He only got one volume out of it before it was cancelled though, though it possibly might be getting continued soon after all these years. This was a well written conclusion to Moore’s story arc with some interesting themes, though I feel this was very much one of his foundational works where he started exploring ideas that he’d return to even more successfully later.

83valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:58 pm


24. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
This is a collection of three novels, originally published separately but which supposedly form a trilogy. I had a very mixed experience in reading it. Starting off with the first book, City of Glass, it seemed intriguing, setting up a mystery and reading almost like a written form of a David Lynch film at times. It then started to fall apart though, seemingly setting up conversations between two characters simply to let them have a philosophical conversation about whatever Auster feels like talking about at the time. It switched between really interesting moments and rather dull ones, then the character randomly goes mad and the book ends with nothing resolved. The second book, Ghosts, follows a similar pattern except I found that one dull pretty much the entire way, and aside from the thematic elements the book is entirely unrelated. They also feel very cold and detached, with the characters never feeling like they have any real personality. The third book improved the quality though. It’s written in first person instead of third person, and the characters feel more convincing, the writing was very good and it kept me wanting to read. But nothing felt like it ever came together. Nothing gets resolved in any of the stories, and since the three stories are entirely unrelated they certainly don’t resolve each other. The only way the stories are brought together is when Auster states outright in the last book that the stories are all related. He uses the names of characters from the earlier stories in this last book, but they’re used in a context which is contradictory to those stories so it doesn’t really link them any more than me now mentioning an insurance salesman called Luke Skywalker would make this review a sequel to Star Wars.

Clearly I didn’t love this book as a whole, but I didn’t completely hate it either. There were some great ideas, the writing was good, and I genuinely did enjoy basically the whole of the last book. I just don’t see why I needed to slog through two far duller and seemingly unrelated ones before it. Maybe I’m an idiot and am missing some big key somewhere in the book that unlocks the whole thing and makes it all connected and gives it all resolution, but as it is, it all felt a bit unsatisfying as a whole. It's frustrating, because it felt like something I should have loved, but just couldn't.

84valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:58 pm


25. Behind the Mask: A Superhero Anthology edited by Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson
A collection of prose stories that look at life for superheroes away from the action, as interpreted by a variety of different authors, well known or otherwise. It often looks like what normal life would be like for superheroes (and the occasional villain), away from saving the world. There’s a range of different styles and tones, some being comical and others being serious, but I found them to be of generally high quality throughout. For an anthology, it had a fairly high success rate for me, with only two or three stories around the middle of the book that I didn’t really care for. A few that stood out for me were: Pedestal by Seanan McGuire, which looks at superheroes through the lens of celebrity culture, with her trying to just do her shopping without constant criticism from celebrity bloggers or the paparazzi trying to get embarrassing pictures; Inheritance by Michael Milne, which follows a boy who has inherited some powers from his superhero father, who he rarely sees due to his busy schedule of constantly dealing with crises; Origin Story by Carrie Vaughn, where a woman recognises a supervillain to be her old boyfriend; and Over an Embattled City by Adam R. Shannon, which twists reality in a way that’s hard to say without counting as a spoiler for the story. That’s just a few but there are plenty of other good stories amongst the twenty in this collection. One of the better anthologies I’ve read recently, and with an interesting concept to go with it.

85valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:52 pm


26. Two for the Lions by Lindsey Davis
The tenth book in the Falco series sees his partnership with his old friend Petronius ended, and a new partnership with his old enemy Anacrites formed. Initially offering his services as a tax collector for Vespasian, he soon ends up investigating the death of one of the lions used to kill criminals in the arena, which of course progresses to murder, at first of animals and then of a gladiator. This book is partly set in Rome and partly in Tripolitania, and there are plenty of historical details in there. Not my favourite in the series so far, but still another really fun mystery.

86valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:51 pm


27. The Best American Comics 2016 edited by Roz Chast
Another collection of the editor’s choice of best comics for the year. This time it’s selected by Roz Chast, who prioritised comics with some form of narrative, which means less of the abstract weirdness that baffled me in the previous year’s volume. I didn’t love everything here, but at least I could understand it all. There was a lot more that I did enjoy this time round. There were two excerpts from books I’d already read, El Deafo by Cece Bell and Here by Richard McGuire, both books that I’d really enjoyed. I really liked some of the comics by people I was familiar with already, such as Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware and Kate Beaton, but there was also a lot by people I’d never heard of too, and it renewed by interest in Fatherland by Nina Bunjevac.

87valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:50 pm


28. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 1: 1966 - 1979 by Jimmy Maher
Collecting entries from the Digital Antiquarian blog where Jimmy Maher is playing through significant games that follow the history of gaming, and specifically the history of games as a storytelling medium. In this volume it’s covering the very early years, looking at things like Eliza, The Oregon Trail, Adventure and the early Scott Adams games. He also looks at related topics like early home computers and ultimately at how tabletop war games led to the creation of Dungeons and Dragons which then led to the creation of computer RPGs. It’s all interesting stuff to me and written in an entertaining way. It’s pretty well researched, and where the occasional mistake has sneaked in he’s gone back and commented it with the correction. I’m going to enjoy reading through these volumes, with the next ones just covering a year each.

88valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:49 pm


29. Back Story: A Memoir by David Mitchell
This is a memoir by the funny David Mitchell as opposed to the novelist David Mitchell. I really enjoyed it, and though it found a good balance between being honest about aspects of his life while still allowing him to ramble off into one of his always hilarious rants. I listened to it on audiobook which he reads himself, and I think that makes it the perfect format for something like this.

89valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:49 pm


30. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
A huge epic novel that follows a Hungarian Jew called Andras, along with his family, before and during WW2. I loved this book and despite its huge length it never once felt like it was being padded out and never dragged. It was also really interesting to read about Hungary during the Second World War since it’s a region that isn’t written about very much. As you’d expect, things aren’t always easy for the characters, and it’s not always the happiest read, but it’s one that’s hard to put down. It’s one of those books that really immerses you in the story to the point where it’s hard to move on to something else afterwards.

90ipsoivan
Mai 8, 2017, 7:30 am

>89 valkyrdeath: Onto my list it goes!

91AlisonY
Mai 8, 2017, 4:09 pm

>88 valkyrdeath: can imagine he would be great narrating this - full of self-deprecation.

92valkyrdeath
Mai 9, 2017, 7:13 pm

>90 ipsoivan: It's a great read, I hope you enjoy it if you get to it!

>91 AlisonY: He has a great voice for that sort of thing. It's also interesting to see how his screen persona compares to how he portrays his normal life, which is often very different. He talks about how he and Lee Mack have basically the same sort of middle class background but get portrayed as opposites because of their accents.

93valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:49 pm


31. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq by Sarah Glidden
A work of journalism in graphic novel form, Rolling Blackouts has Glidden follow two journalist friends of hers to Turkey, Syria and Iraq to observe them at work and see how they put together their stories. Along with them is also a friend of one of the journalists, a former marine who served in Iraq. We get to see the stories of the refugees that the journalists are there to report on, but also a look at the process of journalism too. She recorded everything while she was there so almost all the dialogue in the book is quoted directly, and the very occasional exceptions are all noted with an explanation, which I thought was really good. I loved the art style too. I thought this was a really worthwhile read covering some really interesting themes, and telling some important stories along the way.

94valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:48 pm


32. Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi by John Scalzi
A very short book of very short science fiction stories. They’re all written for humour and many of them are looking at alien contact from the more mundane perspective of a world where aliens are commonplace, several of them taking the form of various types of guidance for dealing with cultural differences. There’s also a fun Star Trek sendup that ties in with Redshirts and a couple of superhero related interviews. There’s nothing deep but it’s a lot of fun to read and gave me a few laughs, and sometimes that’s all you need from a book. I really need to get to a Scalzi novel at some point.

95valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:48 pm


33. The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks
This is a collection of varied, mostly slightly strange stories. As is usually the case with collections like this, I enjoyed some much more than others. The two longest stories are the title story and another story involving taxidermy, and these stood out as two of my favourites in the book. The rest were all very short. Of these, I really liked a story that tells someone’s story in the form of maths word problems, and Thirteen Ways of Destroying a Painting, which is a fun time travel story following repeated attempts to do as the title suggests. I was interested to see yet another retelling of the Six Swans fairy tale. I’d never heard of that one until I read Daughter of the Forest last year, and now I’ve already read two short story retellings of it this year. The rest of the stories I found mixed, some I thought were alright and others I just didn’t really get. I really enjoyed my favourites of the stories though and I certainly wouldn’t mind reading more by Sparks.

96valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:48 pm


34. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 2: 1980 by Jimmy Maher
The second collection from the Digital Antiquarian blog focuses mainly on 1980 and covers the creation of the Apple II, Mystery House, the first adventure game to include graphics, some more early RPGs, Zork and the foundation of Infocom amongst several other topics. I was very interested to read about the old game based on The Prisoner which is one I’d never got around to playing but which did some really interesting things for the time.

97valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:47 pm


35. Selected Shorts: A Touch of Magic by various authors
Another anthology of short stories read by different actors, recorded live on stage. This time, they’ve all got some sort of fantasy or science fictional element to them. I’d read a couple of these before, the ubiquitous The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs and The Veldt by Ray Bradbury. I quite liked some of the other stories, such as The Year of Silence by Kevin Brockmeier, but none of them really stood out all that much to me and I haven’t found them especially memorable. Often the ones I was enjoying the most would then just stop abruptly with no real ending. Drunken Mimi by Aimee Bender was well written but ended suddenly in that way. The Little Green Monster by Haruki Murakami seemed interesting but then just turned nasty. The collection overall was a decent listen but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the last Selected Shorts I heard earlier this year.

98valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:47 pm


36. The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett
Well, I finally got to the last Discworld book. I’m so glad it didn’t end with Raising Steam, because this book was excellent. It read like a proper Discworld book and a fitting end to the Tiffany Aching series. There’s an afterword by Rob Wilkins where he explained that it wasn’t quite as finished as Terry would have liked it to be, as he tended to write the story and fill in parts later on. While there are occasional bits where you feel he probably would have expanded on it if you’re looking for them, the book certainly didn’t feel incomplete in any way. Another brilliant book by a truly great author. I wish it wasn’t the last.

99Narilka
Mai 25, 2017, 9:18 am

>98 valkyrdeath: Nice to see the series ends on a high note. I'm gradually working my way there, though not in any rush as I know there won't be any more Discworld once I finish.

100valkyrdeath
Mai 28, 2017, 5:37 pm

>99 Narilka: I was happy it ended like this since Raising Steam would have been a disappointing way to finish. Even though there won't be any more new ones, at least we still have all those wonderful books to read through!

101valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:46 pm


37. Rat Queens Volume 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'Rygoth by Kurtis J. Wiebe
The second volume of Rat Queens is at least as good as the first and a lot of fun. It continues the violent sweary Dungeons and Dragons inspired story from the first book. This volume has a change of artist half-way through, but unlike Lumberjanes they didn’t radically redesign all the characters, and I think I actually like the new artist better. I particularly liked some of the back story segments in this volume.

102valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:46 pm


38. Final Girls by Mira Grant
I started this book knowing nothing at all about it, since I got it as part of a bundle and just decided to try it at random. I was all set to think I wasn’t going to like it from the first couple of pages before it turned out to be something very different. It’s about a sceptical journalist who debunks pseudoscience going to report on a new type of therapy where people are put into a virtual reality environment and using fear as a way to alter their feelings and behaviours. She then agrees to undergo the treatment herself, but things don’t go quite as expected. I ended up really enjoying this for the most part, though I found the ending a little disappointing, but not enough to ruin the story as a whole.

103valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:46 pm


39. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 3: 1981 by Jimmy Maher
Continuing on with the history of narrative gaming, this one covers the start of two of the biggest RPG series, Ultima and Wizardry, the original Castle Wolfenstein and Zork II, along with a couple of others. There’s a slightly bigger technology focus this time though since it has the release of the VIC-20 and ultimately the start of the IBM PC to discuss.

104valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:20 pm


40. How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman art by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon
An graphical adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s short story where two 15 year old boys head off to a party to meet girls, but end up at a different party with slightly odd guests. It’s not my favourite Gaiman story, but it’s still good, and can be read with at least a couple of different interpretations. The artwork here is very good and I think it worked very well in comic form, much better than the adaptation of The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch that I read last year.

105valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:20 pm


41. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Well, I finally got around to reading this, which I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. I loved it, though I’m not even going to try to explain why or to try to analyse what it all meant. It just falls right into that surreal darkly comic niche that I often find compelling. It’s one I’m almost certain to want to reread.

106Simone2
Juin 6, 2017, 9:54 am

>105 valkyrdeath: O really? I had such a hard time reading Beckett (Molloy and The Unnamable that I have put him off for a while. Perhaps I'll try again with this one, or is is just as incomprehensible as those?

107valkyrdeath
Juin 6, 2017, 6:35 pm

>106 Simone2: I've never read any other Beckett, and I know some people hate Waiting for Godot, so I can't say how it compares. It's certainly not a play with a clear plot or straight forward meaning, but I enjoyed the strangeness and the dialogue.

108valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:18 pm


42. Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury by Isaac Asimov
The fourth book in the Lucky Starr series, Asimov’s series of books aimed at children. It’s another fun read, featuring a mystery science fiction plot, just with some added action compared to his adult stories. There’s actually a pretty good low gravity fight scene in it which isn’t the sort of thing you usually get with Asimov. This one even contains his laws of robotics, unusual considering he originally wrote them under the pseudonym Paul French. There’s a good mystery behind the whole thing with an almost Agatha Christie style range of suspects all with their own potential motives. These obviously aren’t Asimov’s greatest books but so far they’ve always been a fun read.

109valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:17 pm


43. Plutona by Jeff Lemire and Emi Lenox
A group of school kids find the body of a superhero in the woods and decide to keep it to themselves. The rest of the book follows on from there about what happens to them. It’s an interesting story but it’s only five issues long and I never felt I really got to know much about the characters. It looked as if they were going to continue developing some aspects of them but then it ends and it turns out it was a miniseries and there won’t be any more, so the end is a bit anticlimactic. Not a bad read, but not amazing.

110valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:17 pm


44. True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole by Sue Townsend
The third Adrian Mole book actually isn’t really an Adrian Mole book at all. It’s split into three sections. The first is the Adrian Mole part, but rather than the usual diary entries, it’s got shorter segments on individual events covering a period of several years, transcripts that were originally on Pirate Radio 4, and letters between Mole and the other characters. It has some fun moments but it doesn’t work as well as the earlier books, and I think it’s mostly a collection of things that were originally published elsewhere. The second part is Sue Townsend’s own diaries covering a couple of overseas trips she took, which didn’t do a great deal for me. The final brief section is The Secret Diary of Margaret Hilda Roberts Aged 13 3⁄4, which she claims to be the diaries of a schoolgirl and that no-one knows where she ended up. Margaret Hilda Roberts is actually the maiden name of the Great Evil One herself, Margaret Thatcher. This segment is a satire on her policies as she complains about how awful it is that poor children are getting given free milk, bosses her parents around because they don’t work hard enough and complains about not having enough work to do at school. The book in general is fun enough, but it’s nowhere near as good as the first two Adrian Mole books. I also worry that if the style of his writing doesn’t change in the later books, Adrian Mole would stop being amusingly naïve and without his age to blame on the mistakes he’d instead be worryingly stupid.

111valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:16 pm


45. Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
This was a very well written book and I enjoyed reading it, despite it ultimately being rather depressing. After around the first quarter of the book with the narrator talking about starting a job and meeting a downtrodden colleague there and gradually getting to know him, the book switches for the rest of it to the written account of this man’s relationship with a woman and what happened between them. It was good, but I don’t really know what else to say about it, so I’ll leave it at that.

112valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:16 pm


46. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 4: 1982 by Jimmy Maher
More of the history of gaming, covering Time Zone, a few more Infocom games and a handful of others, and the introduction of the Commodore 64. Enjoyable reading for anyone like me who is interested in this sort of thing.

113valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:15 pm


47. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
I enjoyed this collection of short stories, focused on Indian Americans and the mix of cultures. The first two stories, and especially the last one were my particular favourites. They generally felt like complete stories too rather than ones that just suddenly cut off and feel incomplete, which I find seems to happen a bit too often in some collections. It doesn’t quite rank amongst my absolute favourites, but it was a very good read.

114Cait86
Juil 9, 2017, 1:06 pm

>113 valkyrdeath: Lahiri's other collection, Unaccustomed Earth is also very good. Haven't tried her novels yet, but I do love her short stories, even if the subject is a bit repetitive.

115valkyrdeath
Juil 10, 2017, 1:44 pm

>114 Cait86: I didn't know anything about her other books. I'll add that one to the list!

116valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:15 pm


48. Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke
This is an interesting graphic memoir following the author as she deals with the death of her Uncle and gains a fascination with ruined and abandoned locations. It has some interesting ideas, and some of the location artwork is really impressive, though I wasn’t as keen on the art for the actual people. I enjoyed the book though and there were great moments in it, though it’s not quite a classic for me.

117valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 6, 2017, 5:45 pm

49. Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay
A very good, funny and slightly disturbing short play. The anti-war themes contrasted with humour and the use of Pierrot now makes me wonder whether Joan Littlewood had seen it and taken any inspiration from it when she was working on Oh What A Lovely War, though Aria da Capo is very different and more subtle play. I need to check out more of Millay’s work.

118valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:12 pm


50. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I liked this well enough at first, but as it went on I started to find it dragging more and more. I just never really found myself caring about the characters and because of this I couldn’t really get all that interested in what was happening. Which wasn’t much most of the time. And I never really got any sort of point out of it, since Anna herself exits the story well before the end, and then the book just carries on hardly ever mentioning her or what happened to her like it doesn’t know how to end. I know it’s considered a classic, but it’s not for me.

119valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:11 pm


51. And the Sun Stood Still by Dava Sobel
I got this without even realising at the time that it was by the same author who wrote a couple of non-fiction books I read earlier this year. It’s a play about Copernicus, and his meeting with Rheticus who convinced him to publish his work. It’s not incredibly deep, but it’s an interesting and enjoyable play and one that manages to fit quite a bit of humour into it too. It was apparently originally included in the middle of her non-fiction book about Copernicus so I’ll hopefully read that at some point.

120valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 26, 2017, 8:54 pm


52. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 5: 1983 by Jimmy Maher
And yet another year of computing and gaming history covered. Some interesting topics, especially the chapters about LaserDiscs and the games that used a computer to control a LaserDisc player to make the first multimedia games, something I hadn’t realised happened so long ago.

121valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 4, 2017, 9:11 pm


53. Best of British Science Fiction 2016 edited by Donna Scott
A solid collection of stories from British science fiction authors. As always with anthologies, I enjoyed some stories more than others, but there were only one or two in the whole collection that I didn’t like at all, and there were some very good stories amongst them. I particularly enjoyed Peter F. Hamilton’s unusual time travel story, Ten Love Songs to Change the World, Den Patrick’s People, Places and Things where the world is ending by a piece at a time being removed from existence, and the run up to a different (possible) ending in Front Row Seat to the End of the World by E. J. Swift. I also enjoyed To Catch a Comet by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, a comic story in the form of a series of emails where a scientist tries to warn various organisations and nations of a potential asteroid strike and is met by bureaucracy as every denies any interest or responsibility in trying to stop it. The Apologists by Tade Thompson is an alien takeover story with a difference. Most of the other stories were entertaining too. Overall this is one of the better recent anthologies that I’ve read with little that I disliked.

122dchaikin
Août 3, 2017, 7:35 am

How did I get so far behind here...

>89 valkyrdeath: I read a short story collection from Orringer last year and really enjoyed it. Noting The Invisible Bridge.

>93 valkyrdeath: I'm kind of psyched to see Sarah Glidden here. I follow here on fb. Haven't read this, but I'm very interested.

>105 valkyrdeath: Just noting I loved your comment on Waiting for Godot

>111 valkyrdeath: intrigued by Madonna in a Fur Coat, 2nd interesting review I've caught on CR "recently"

>119 valkyrdeath: I stumbled across this play in another book, on audio. The play was read by the actors. I've forgotten the rest of the book, but the play was entertaining.

123dchaikin
Août 3, 2017, 7:38 am

If you're interested, I post covers using a librarything code. I'll pm you.

124valkyrdeath
Août 4, 2017, 6:32 pm

>122 dchaikin: I've been wondering how I got so far behind on most threads on here. I thought I'd got a couple of weeks behind, and when I started trying to catch up a couple of days ago I found I was over 2 months behind on most of them. It's one of those years.

The Sarah Glidden book was excellent. I took a chance and bought it without ever having heard of her before because it looked so interesting, and I'm glad I did. I'm hoping to read her earlier book at some point.

Was the book with the play in A More Perfect Heaven? I listened to the play on audio and there was an interview with Dava Sobel afterwards where she talked about the play being in the middle of that book.

125dchaikin
Août 5, 2017, 10:54 am

No matter how engaged I am in CR, I always fall way behind. This year is a bit worse for me than usual, I think.

I'm certainly a big fan of Glidden. He book on Israel tries to capture the ambivalence of being Jewish and also being very uncomfortable with Israeli politics and policies, which fits me. I liked her take because she isn't on the attack, she was (is?) sincerely struggling.

Yes - it was A More a Perfect Heaven. I'm not recommending for or against Dava's book, just remembering the silly play was actually pretty good.

126valkyrdeath
Août 17, 2017, 6:47 pm

>125 dchaikin: It's definitely been worse for me this year, though I've been struggling with motivation for most things this year. I think it's time I got caught up now though! I'll definitely try and get hold of the Israel book.

127valkyrdeath
Août 17, 2017, 6:47 pm


54. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
This is a really well written short novel, and interesting for being a WW1 novel written while the war was still on. It’s based around a soldier who is injured in battle and returns home having lost all memories of the previous 15 years, meaning he has no memories of his wife and thinks he’s still in the very brief relationship he was in all that time ago. It built up to a conclusion that I found surprisingly powerful. I really enjoyed it.

128valkyrdeath
Août 17, 2017, 6:59 pm


55. Black is the Color by Julia Gfrörer
A very odd and rather dark comic about a sailor cast adrift from his ship who meets and falls in love with a mermaid while he slowly dies of thirst. Interesting art style but the story didn’t do anything for me in the end. I didn’t hate it but didn’t particularly like it either.

129dchaikin
Août 18, 2017, 9:07 pm

>127 valkyrdeath: - your comments make me want to get to this.

>128 valkyrdeath: - I'm intrigued by the summary, but noting your response. There are lots of other books.

130valkyrdeath
Modifié : Août 19, 2017, 9:57 pm

>129 dchaikin: The Return of the Soldier is definitely worthwhile, and it's a very quick read too.

If you're interested in the graphic novel, I discovered the whole thing is actually available online at http://studygroupcomics.com/main/black-is-the-color-by-julia-gfrorer/

131dchaikin
Août 20, 2017, 10:24 am

Thanks for the link!

132valkyrdeath
Août 25, 2017, 8:10 pm


56. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
Mr. Mercedes opens with a man in a Mercedes purposefully driving into a queue of people waiting to get into a job fair, killing several and injuring many more, and then getting away without being caught. Then a year later, the now retired detective who had been working on the case received a taunting letter from the killer.

This is a book that I ended up quite liking, despite spending a lot of the first half of the book being annoyed by it. Why was the retired policeman trying to investigate on his own and hiding it from the police, even after it became clear that people were in danger because of it? Why does the fact that one of the main characters is black seem have to be brought up in every scene he’s in, to the point where one character just announces “you’re black” to him in one scene. And why did apparently every single person vilify the woman whose car was stolen just because the police thought she’d accidentally left the keys in her car, and somehow they think that makes her responsible for someone stealing it and using it for murder? That genuinely frustrated me and almost put me off the book, especially with the detective who hounded her about it only starting to feel guilty when he suspects she might not have left the keys in the car, as opposed to feeling guilty about the fact that she’d done nothing wrong and he’d helped drive her to suicide.

Despite all that, and despite all the clichés, by the second half of the book the plot had gripped me and it was hard to stop reading until it was finished, and the ending was pretty good. That’s the sort of thing King is good at. So I can’t say I loved it or that it was a great book, but I still ended up generally enjoying it. I’d probably be quite happy to read the next book in the series, though I won’t be rushing to get to it.

133auntmarge64
Modifié : Août 25, 2017, 10:35 pm

>54 dchaikin: You've rekindled my interest in reading The Return of a Soldier, which is awaiting me on my Kindle. I think it just moved up a few notches on the TBR pile. :)
I had to go back and identify the book your description reminded me of - Random Harvest by James Hilton. Have you read that?

134valkyrdeath
Août 26, 2017, 6:57 am

I'd never heard of Random Harvest, but it sounds intriguing. It's going onto my list now! I hope you enjoy Return of the Soldier.

135auntmarge64
Août 26, 2017, 9:55 am

>134 valkyrdeath: Hilton also wrote Lost Horizon (the discovery of Shangri-La in Tibet - fiction, of course). It's a wonderful novel (and film), although both are dated in their mores.

136valkyrdeath
Août 26, 2017, 11:37 am

>135 auntmarge64: Lost Horizon is one I have heard of, and I think I may have seen the film many years ago though can't remember much of it now. I see he also wrote Goodbye, Mr. Chips, so I'm surprised I didn't know of him!

137valkyrdeath
Août 26, 2017, 7:37 pm


57. Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
A Poirot novel with a slightly different structure to most. In this one, he’s hired by the daughter of a woman who sixteen years previously had been convicted of murdering her husband. She wants him to find out the truth of what happens, hoping that she would turn out to be innocent. This means that Poirot has no direct evidence to use, no hunting around to find clues, but simply has the facts of the case, and the testimonies of the five witnesses who were there. It’s the purest use of his psychological approach. He visits each of them, talks to them, and then gets them each to write an account of what happened, which means a large part of the book is reading through the events again from different perspectives. It reminds me how skilful Christie’s writing actually was, since that could easily become tedious but she somehow still makes everything readable and keeps it all moving. Poirot doesn’t really have a lot to do until he pulls everything together with his revelations at the end, but it’s interesting to see the different approaches he uses to each of the witnesses to get what he wants from them. It’s an interesting story, well written, and though not my favourite Agatha Christie book, it’s still a good read and an interesting break from the usual formula.

138valkyrdeath
Août 28, 2017, 11:50 am


58. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 6: 1984 by Jimmy Maher
More gaming history. A lot of interesting (to me) topics covered this time, including some of the huge number of games based on books coming out at the time, and two revolutionary games, King’s Quest and Elite. Enjoyable and well written as ever.

139valkyrdeath
Août 28, 2017, 11:50 am


59. Temperance by Cathy Malkasian
A really intriguing graphic novel that reads like a modern day fable, though a distinctly adult one. The allegorical tale is focused around a man known only as Pa, an abusive father and leader who keeps everyone under his control by convincing them he’s protecting them from the threat of an impending attack by “the enemy”, an invading army that doesn’t exist. Then he eventually abandons them, leaving his adopted daughter to try to keep things going. I loved the pencil artwork in this one, which was really detailed and portrayed the movement in the action scenes extremely well. I also thought the story was really well done, though I feel it’s one that would take more than one read to really appreciate in full. It’s also feels refreshingly different to anything else I’ve read recently.

140valkyrdeath
Août 28, 2017, 8:23 pm


60. Eric by Terry Pratchett
The ninth Discworld book. Eric is a teenage demonologist who tries to summon a demon to ask for three wishes and instead manages to summon up Rincewind by mistake. They then go on a journey through the Discworld versions of some of our history and mythology. This seems to be a fairly underappreciated book in the series. I always really enjoyed it and while it’s not the deepest of Pratchett’s books, it’s a lot of fun, and up to the standards of his early Rincewind books. It’s a lot shorter than usual. Originally it had a few illustrations, though they were by Josh Kirby so I don’t feel I’m missing much by never having had that version. (Kirby’s covers always looked like they’d been drawn after spending five minutes flicking through the book and reading the back cover, and got nearly every details wrong.) Without the pictures, it’s a short novel that might not be the greatest in the Discworld series, but is still a really fun read.

141valkyrdeath
Août 28, 2017, 8:48 pm


61. Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz
This play was interesting, in that I learned about the Cuban tradition of the workers in cigar factories hiring a lector to sit and read novels to them while they work. The play is set in Florida in 1929 where the Cuban immigrants have brought the tradition over with them along with their cigar making. A new lector is hired who begins reading Anna Karenina to them, which then starts to influence the lives of the characters. It seemed an appropriate time to read the play since I’d recently read Anna Karenina. These characters seemed to get a lot more out of the book than I did. This play has the benefit over that novel of not being a billion pages long, and I rather enjoyed it, though I’m not sure how memorable it’s going to be in the long run, and the ending felt a bit sudden. It was an interesting glimpse at a different way of life that I hadn’t encountered before.

142valkyrdeath
Août 28, 2017, 9:00 pm


62. How to Bake Pi by Eugenia Cheng
I was looking in the bookshop a while ago and saw a book called Cakes, Custard and Category Theory by Eugenia Cheng, which I noted. A week later I went back and that book had gone but I saw this book called How to Bake Pi, which turns out to be exactly the same book. It seems the title had been changed for some reason within those few days. Anyway, it’s about category theory which is an aspect of maths I’d never studied so I thought I’d give it a go. The book uses baking as a comparison for mathematical topics, with each chapter opening with a brief recipe to be used to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, I found this felt forced almost the whole way through, as metaphors extended to such an extent tend to. I feel she probably found a concept that was well illustrated by comparing it to baking, and then felt she had to try to link everything else into it to, ending up with tenuous and misleading connections such as talking about the process of mathematical abstraction being like tidying away equipment and ingredients not needed for a recipe. The book also spends a lot of time on what category theory is and what it does without ever seeming to go into how it works in any way. Whenever it did show some examples of diagrams from category theory she’d say they were too complex to actually explain. But without these explanation it felt like I’d spent the book almost but not quite learning about the subject. The author seemed likable and the text was readable, but in the end I didn’t feel I’d got anything out of it.

143valkyrdeath
Modifié : Oct 1, 2017, 6:26 pm

63. Donny's Brain by Rona Munro
It was interesting to be listening to this play so soon after reading The Return of the Soldier, because the plots have a huge similarity, though without the war aspects in this one. This is set mostly in a hospital with a man who has had a serious road accident and can’t remember the last few years, can’t remember his wife at all and thinks he’s still in a relationship with the woman he had actually broken up with. Almost the exact same concept as the earlier book, but nowhere near as good. It was a passable play, but it didn’t really go anywhere, ending very suddenly without any real impact. The main character was completely unlikable and is obnoxious to everyone making it hard to understand why either of the women would actually want anything much to do with him.

144valkyrdeath
Oct 1, 2017, 6:33 pm


64. Mrs. McThing by Mary Chase
I didn’t really know anything about this play when I started reading it, but I absolutely loved it. It’s extremely funny and I’d love to see someone actually put it on stage around here again. It starts with a mother finding her son being disturbingly polite and well behaved ever since she chased off a girl who wanted to play with him, and everything progresses from there. I now feel I need to try some other plays by Chase.

145valkyrdeath
Oct 4, 2017, 6:07 pm


65. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Another really fun play, and one that I’d somehow never read or seen or listened to before now. The dialogue is excellent and as funny as you’d expect from Wilde. The ending is possibly a bit too much of a tidy happy ending, but then it’s a comedy and hard to fault for that. I’ve nothing much else to say about it and feel I probably don’t need to for something already so famous.

146valkyrdeath
Oct 4, 2017, 6:24 pm


66. The Return by Hisham Matar
A non-fiction book about Matar returning to Libya and trying to discover what had happened to his father, who had been kidnapped by Qadaffi’s regime. The book was ok. I didn’t dislike it, and it had a very personal story to tell. I never felt very enlightened about the bigger picture but then I guess that wasn’t the point of the book. It just felt strangely detached though and despite the horrendous situations I couldn’t really feel any connection to any of it for some reason. Maybe it was the writing which at times felt to me like it was trying too hard, throwing in lengthy literary references all over the place to the point where it started to feel like the author was showing off his education and certainly do nothing to help any readers who haven’t read the specific things he’s comparing his situation too. But in the end it’s a true story and one worth telling, and a decent enough read for the most part.

147valkyrdeath
Oct 22, 2017, 7:57 pm


67. The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
The second of Asimov’s novels feature detective Elijah Baley, and again he’s teamed up with the human looking robot Daneel Olivaw. This time, he’s sent to the world of Solaria to investigate a murder, since thanks to their lack of crime they don’t have much of a clue how to investigate themselves. As with the previous book, the cultures involved here are very well developed. Solaria has purposefully limited its population and everyone lives on thousands of square miles of land. Privacy is valued to the point where they pride themselves on never meeting other people in person and only viewing them via 3D projections, and they surround themselves with specialised robots to do virtually every task. Baley, coming from the crowded and very social Earth society of the time finds it difficult to even go out in the open for long, hence the books title. The murder mystery aspect is well thought out again and the laws of robotics come into things as you’d expect with an Asimov robot story, but it’s as much about the clash of differing societies as it is about the plot itself. And he does get to use a virtual version of the old Agatha Christie-style gathering all the suspects together to reveal the culprit cliché. I don’t think the book is quite as good as Caves of Steel, but it’s fairly close.

148valkyrdeath
Nov 18, 2017, 8:21 pm


68. The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
Way behind with my reviews now, though not too many to do considering how much my reading had slowed down in October. This is a mystery novel where a man gets stabbed in the queue to buy tickets at a theatre and Inspector Alan Grant investigates. It’s an unusual book that doesn’t follow the normal mystery clichés, and it was well written. It was a bit uncomfortable that his chief suspect was someone he referred to repeatedly as simply “The Dago”, but it’s the sort of thing that happens in these books. The end felt slightly unsatisfying in this one though, with the crime only getting solved because the culprit walks in and confesses at the end. Though it does help slightly that the casual assumptions that it must have been “The Dago” because he’s foreign prove to be wrong. I didn’t love this one, but I’m definitely looking forward to reading more from Josephine Tey, since I know a lot of people don’t care much for this one even when they love her other work, and I still mostly enjoyed it.

149valkyrdeath
Nov 22, 2017, 8:06 pm


69. The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake
I loved this just as much on the reread as I did the first time round. Following Dortmunder’s frustration as he has to repeatedly attempt to steal the same emerald is extremely funny, as is the dialogue. Now I can get on with rereading the rest of the series plus the ones I haven’t read yet.

150valkyrdeath
Nov 22, 2017, 8:13 pm


70. Warehouse 13: A Touch of Fever by Greg Cox
I don’t often read books based on TV shows, but I love Warehouse 13 and saved this for when I wanted a fun light read. And that’s just what it was. The writing isn’t amazing and the early parts of the book spend a bit too much time filling in background to the show, and he does seem to feel the need to cram in references to as many episodes from the series as possible. Otherwise, the story is actually pretty good, he wrote the character quite well and I could picture the whole thing as an extended episode of the series, which is exactly what I’d hoped for from the book. A quick fun read.

151valkyrdeath
Nov 27, 2017, 8:12 pm


71. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
Continuing on with my Discworld rereads. As the title suggests, this tenth book sees moving pictures come to the Discworld in the form of the clickies. It’s crammed full of references to classic films and film history and I’m sure I spotted far more references on this read that I probably wouldn’t have known anything about years ago when I last read it. One of the things I love about the Discworld books is that there’s always something new to get out of them every time I read them. This book also finally settles down to the group of wizards at Unseen University that would remain for the rest of the series, with Archchancellor Ridcully taking over. It also gives Gaspode his first appearance and gives a major role to Dibbler. I always feel these standalone books that aren’t part of one of the ongoing series such as the Watch books or Witch books are a bit underappreciated, since they’re the same high quality Pratchett and just as hilarious. It’s not my favourite of his books, but it’s a very good one, and the film buff in me loves spotting all the references.

152valkyrdeath
Modifié : Nov 27, 2017, 8:15 pm

72. Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse edited by Carol Ann Duffy
A book of poems by different poets all based around the subject of bookshops in one way or another. As usual I’m no good at writing about poetry so I don’t have much else to say about it!

153dchaikin
Nov 27, 2017, 10:11 pm

>151 valkyrdeath: I own it but haven’t read it. I have say your (older?) cover has a lot more appeal than mine.

154valkyrdeath
Modifié : Nov 28, 2017, 5:40 pm

>153 dchaikin: Those Josh Kirby covers are the original UK covers for the Discworld books. His artwork is still on the standard editions of the books, although now they just seem to focus on a closeup of one part of the picture. Kirby's artwork was often very innacurate to the details of the book itself, but when I first started reading Pratchett I really appreciated that you could spot the shelf of his books from the moment you walked in thanks to those pictures which wrapped around the spine and the back too.

155valkyrdeath
Nov 29, 2017, 7:10 pm


73. Wayward Book 1 by Jim Zub, art by Steve Cummings
Another graphic novel that I picked up at random and knowing nothing about it, but ended up quite enjoying. It collects the first 10 issues of an ongoing series. Starting with a girl moving from Ireland to stay with her mother in Tokyo and finding she can somehow see strange red lines in the air at times leading her to events, and soon finds herself meeting up with groups of people with different supernatural abilities, and ends up joining forces with them to defeat mythical monsters. That doesn’t sound the most original setup, but it’s well done and I found the characters quite interesting. The style of the book feels like a blending of Japanese manga with western comics and I liked the artwork for it. I’d like to continue reading at some point if I can get hold of the next volume.

156valkyrdeath
Nov 29, 2017, 7:20 pm


74. Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
I really liked this ghost story based around a fictional 70s folk band called Windhollow Faire. Their manager decides they should spend a few weeks at Wylding Hall to work on their second album, and strange things start to occur while they’re there. The whole story is told in the form of the various people involved talking to a camera for a documentary many years later. So we get constantly changing viewpoints and get different people’s perspectives of what was going on there, full of contradictory ideas and old rivalries colouring opinions. I absolutely loved the way it was told, and the story itself was the exact type of ghost story I enjoy, where the events don’t have to be loud and fast but more subtle and atmospheric, and where the house itself becomes almost a character. It also uses the musical aspect well, and described the music of the band’s second album so well that I was wishing it was actually real so I could listen to it. From what I’ve seen of Elizabeth Hand, it seems her books span various genres and all sound quite different, so I’ll be interested to see what some of them are like.

157valkyrdeath
Modifié : Nov 30, 2017, 6:12 pm

75. Secret Sheffield by Ian D. Rotherham, Melvyn Jones and Christine Handley
A brief book of local history of Sheffield covering a variety of different topics. Quite informative, but it really is just a rapid rundown of facts without anything to make them especially interesting or to make any of the people it talks about more than just a name.

158valkyrdeath
Déc 3, 2017, 8:25 pm


76. Enron by Lucy Prebble
This was a really fun play, which was something I wasn’t expecting from something about the Enron scandal. It covers the actual concepts behind what happened really well and makes them very clear, and shows the terrible consequences it had for so many people. But it sounded like the sort of play that could be quite dry, so I wasn’t expecting the elements of surreal humour going through the whole play, probably best demonstrated when the shadow corporations set up under the name of Raptors to hide their financial problems later turn up as actual debt-eating dinosaurs. I enjoyed the play much more than I was expecting, and it’s one I’d really like to see, though I doubt the chance for that is likely to turn up.

159valkyrdeath
Déc 3, 2017, 8:56 pm


77. Proof by David Auburn
Another play I really enjoyed. This one is about Catherine, the daughter of a famous mathematician who became mentally ill in later life. A former student is going through his papers and discovers an important unpublished proof, and the dilemma of the play revolves around who wrote it amid Catherine’s worries about inheriting her father’s illness. She also has to deal with her obnoxious selfish sister who insists she wants to help and is doing everything in Catherine’s best interests while clearly just wanting to try and control her life and have everything her own way. It’s a great play with well written dialogue and plenty of humour thrown into the mix.

160valkyrdeath
Déc 4, 2017, 7:46 pm


79. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwell
An interesting dystopian novel in a world where religious fundamentalists have seized power and women are stripped of their rights. It was a disturbing read and an all too believable one. I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to reading this, but it’s very well written. I loved the ambiguity of the ending, leaving the reader in the same confusion over the situation as the character, though some of that was taken away by an “Historical Notes” section framed as a lecture being given centuries later, which I felt was a bit unnecessary. A good read and I look forward to eventually getting to see the TV show.

161chlorine
Déc 5, 2017, 2:10 pm

Nice reviews. Enron seems really interesting.
I read the Handmaid's tale a few years ago. I always forget the endings of the books I've read, but reading your review I remember that I didn't care much for the confusion. It's interesting to see that it works for some people and is not just a trick of the author because she didn't know how to wrap up.

162valkyrdeath
Déc 6, 2017, 6:14 pm

>161 chlorine: I've often been annoyed by inconclusive endings, but this one worked for me for some reason. I can certainly see it being seen as an unsatisfying ending too though.

163valkyrdeath
Déc 6, 2017, 6:15 pm


80. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I enjoyed this collection of short stories. The title story is the most famous by far, a portrayal of the terrible “rest cure” ways of treating women’s illnesses at the time as a woman goes slowly mad stuck on her own in a room, apparently written following her own experiences having been prescribed the same thing. It’s very good, and I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the rest of the stories too. They varied in tone, and quite a few of them were quite comical. I enjoyed The Boys and the Butter, and especially When I Was a Witch, where a woman finds she suddenly has the power to have wishes come true and sets about dealing with all the people and things that annoy her. An enjoyable collection all round.

164dchaikin
Déc 6, 2017, 8:48 pm

>160 valkyrdeath:-to>162 valkyrdeath: - hmm. Just realizing that I don't remember the ending.

>163 valkyrdeath: - I'm not familiar with Gilman. Interesting.

165valkyrdeath
Déc 6, 2017, 9:17 pm

>164 dchaikin: Gilman seems to be famous mostly just for The Yellow Wallpaper these days. Not much information came up about her other stories when doing internet searches, though there's a few of her books available. She was quite interesting to read about in articles I've seen about her.

166valkyrdeath
Modifié : Déc 6, 2017, 9:18 pm


82. At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft is one of those authors who has been so influential that he’s probably more known for things based on his works than the actual works themselves. I’ve read many stories inspired by his Cthulhu Mythos, seen films adapted or inspired by his works and played countless computer games aiming to evoke the atmosphere of his works. Yet this is the first time I’ve actually read one of his books. I had mixed opinions on it. The first half of the story really did build up atmosphere well as the narrator explains the events of an Antarctic expedition with a sense of foreboding as to what’s going to happen. But about half way through when they actually start exploring the ancient ruins and discovering evidence of ancient non-human races, he starts telling in details all about their society. Apparently, they’ve worked out all the minutest details of exactly how their society works from spending a few hours walking around looking at statues and murals on walls. It’s very odd and makes no sense at all that they could know so much about the society. It’s generally well written but a bit excessive on the descriptions, and Lovecraft really loves using the word aeons. It does provide some background on all the famous ancient races that turn up so often in popular culture now, and does it in a science fiction context. I’m not sure how it compares to other Lovecraft. I didn’t love it but I’m glad to have read something by him at last.

167chlorine
Déc 7, 2017, 1:55 pm

>163 valkyrdeath: That's funny, I've read The Yellow Wallpaper less than two weeks ago. I only read the single short story though, not the others. It was cited in a list of horror stories available for free online.
I quite liked it. Reading your review, it seems to me that it can be read completely differently whether it's advertised as horror or not.

>166 valkyrdeath: I used to love Lovecraft's work when I was in high school. On a side note, after reading a book about archeology recently, it seems that archeologists at Lovecraft's time where quicker to jump to conclusions based on very little evidence than they are now.

168valkyrdeath
Déc 7, 2017, 5:44 pm

>167 chlorine: It's interesting how The Yellow Wallpaper can be read as a horror story and still work. It certainly draws on elements of gothic horror. It's sort of a horror story either way, just of a different type.

Interesting thought about the changes in archaeology! I have a feeling I would enjoy some of Lovecraft's other works more. I did enjoy the first half of the book quite a bit, but when it went into the history lessons I felt it lost its pace and tension. From what I've seen, most of the Lovecraft inspired things I've enjoyed have been based around works such as The Shadow over Innsmouth. I know I've also enjoyed film and TV adaptations of Cool Air and Pickman's Model amongst others, so I'd likely enjoy those.

169chlorine
Déc 8, 2017, 12:52 pm

>168 valkyrdeath: It was a long time ago but I think my favorite book by Lovecraft was The case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Also if I remember correctly, and from what I understand from your review, At the mountain of madness is longer than a short-story, maybe at least novella length? Apart from The case of Charles Dexter Ward, I think I liked his short stories more than his longer works.

170valkyrdeath
Déc 8, 2017, 5:23 pm

>169 chlorine: You're right, At the Mountains of Madness was quite long. Most websites seem to label it as a novella, but by the categories of the Nebula and Hugo awards it would be classed as a novel. I definitely intend to try more Lovecraft at some point and as a lover of short stories I'll be looking to those, but I'm adding The Case of Charles Dexter Ward to my list too!

171valkyrdeath
Modifié : Déc 10, 2017, 7:05 pm


83. Pistache by Sebastian Faulks
The description of this book described the word pistache as a cross between pastiche and pisstake, which indicates pretty much what’s in it. This is a collection of very short parodies, just a page or two each, in the style of different authors. Apparently they originated on a BBC Radio gameshow called The Write Stuff which I’ve never heard. Disappointingly, most of them weren’t particularly funny. This could be partly because quite a few of them are authors I haven’t read (“John Updike on how to boil an egg” means nothing to me) and so I can’t recognise whether the style is accurate or not, but even the ones where I know the author quite well I rarely found them funny. Some of them were cleverly written (such as William Shakespeare writes a speech for Basil Fawlty), but mostly they didn’t do anything for me. I often enjoy parodies, but I was disappointed in this one.

172valkyrdeath
Déc 10, 2017, 7:19 pm


84. All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis
This was a very fun Christmas themed novella. Aliens arrive on Earth and then just stand glaring disapprovingly as people trying to make contact with them. No-one has any luck until they have an unusual response to an overheard Christmas carol. It was full of Willis’s usual humour and I really enjoyed it, as I have everything I’ve read by her so far.

173valkyrdeath
Déc 11, 2017, 8:24 pm


78. Ms. Marvel Vol. 2: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson
81. Ms. Marvel Vol. 3: Crushed by G. Willow Wilson
85. Ms. Marvel Vol. 4: Last Days by G. Willow Wilson
Finally read the next few collected volumes of Ms. Marvel. I read an enjoyed the first one a couple of years ago, and these were a lot of fun. I do get a bit tired of how it has to keep bringing in other characters from other comics, but that’s Marvel for you, and this works with it quite well. The third volume was a bit disappointing due to having different artists to normal and I didn’t like them as much. The fourth volume was possibly the best, but it only collected four issues of the main storyline and then ended the volume with a two issue Spiderman story just because it had an appearance by Ms. Marvel in it. I didn’t care much for that story, and it was by a different writer to the actual Ms. Marvel comics. It was also the volume that got caught up in some big Marvel end of the world event that was going on across all their comics at the time, but it was still really good anyway. The sign of a good Marvel comic seems to be when it can manage to be entertaining and tell a good story despite all the crap Marvel tries to force on the author.

174valkyrdeath
Déc 11, 2017, 8:28 pm


86. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
I’ve seen approximately six gazillion different film adaptations of this story but this is actually the first time I’ve read the original book. I’m really glad I did because it was excellent. The writing was really good, of course, and somehow I don’t seem to get tired of the story despite how familiar it is. A really enjoyable quick read and perfect for this time of year.

And with that I'm finally caught up with my reviews for the first time in months.

175chlorine
Déc 12, 2017, 11:56 am

>172 valkyrdeath:: I've only read To say nothing of the dog by Connie Willis. This one seems like something to check out.
I've never read A Christmas Carol either, but will make a note to read it at some time! Being French, I'm probably less familiar with the story than many Anglo-Saxons, so I should have some surprise on top of the very good writing.

176valkyrdeath
Déc 22, 2017, 7:18 pm

>175 chlorine: It seems you got around to reading it before I got around to replying here! It's pretty hard to escape A Christmas Carol in the UK in some form. I think they show every single film adaptation of it several times at this time of year. It must be a very different experience reading it without knowing the story compared to being in a culture so saturated with it.

177valkyrdeath
Déc 22, 2017, 7:19 pm


87. Good Dog by Graham Chaffee
This is a short graphic novel following a stray dog as he wanders a town trying to find a purpose and somewhere he fits in. He attempts to help people but is generally misunderstood, and eventually joins a pack but finds out that even this isn’t quite what he imagined. It’s not a cute comical talking animals book but a more realistic look at the life of a stray who ultimately has to choose between the loneliness of living free or finding a human to stay with. While featuring animals, the themes in the book feel like they have general relevance. I can’t really fault the writing, as I enjoyed reading it throughout, and the artwork was very good. There was something about it, yet I also don’t think it’s going to remain very memorable in the long run.

178valkyrdeath
Déc 22, 2017, 9:35 pm


88. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
This was picked for my online book club. I didn’t know much about it until it was picked, but I’m really glad it was, because I loved it. It follows the life of Jess Goldberg from her childhood in the 50s all the way through to around the time the book was written in the 90s. Realising she’s different, and after being sent to a mental institution by her parents because of it, she discovers the butch community and eventually runs away from home. Later in life, she also starts to pass as a man in an attempt to avoid the discrimination she’s constantly being subjected to. It can be a tough book to read, since for every good thing that happens in her life, you just know there’s something really terrible, and she suffers through all sorts of violence over the course of the book. It’s great to read a book about a culture by someone who has lived through it and knows exactly what it’s like, so the whole thing feels very real. It also deals with working class life and unions. I particularly liked the character of Duffy, a union shop steward, as some of the sections with him reminded me of stories my dad told me about when he was a shop steward. There were lots of good characters, the book was well written and I just really enjoyed it throughout. One of the surprise highlights of my reading year.

179valkyrdeath
Déc 23, 2017, 8:58 pm


89. Ms. Marvel Vol. 5: Super Famous by G. Willow Wilson
Another good volume of Ms. Marvel, though sadly we’re bad to other artists who aren’t as good, giving the comic a more generic superhero comic look. The story is still well written though and deals with the Kamala’s problems with her fame as Ms. Marvel and people’s different reactions to it, and the difficulty of balancing her heroic activities with her normal life. There are two story arcs in it, and the plot of the second one gets a bit silly, but in a very entertaining fun way. Still enjoying the series.

180valkyrdeath
Déc 23, 2017, 9:01 pm


90. The Ruby Sunrise by Rinne Groff
I wasn’t sure about this play at first. It starts off being about Ruby, a young woman trying to invent electronic television in the 1920s. About midway through the first half though, it jumps forward to a TV studio in the 1950s, where Ruby’s daughter tells the story about Ruby to a script writer who decides to turn it into a TV drama. The second half of the show focuses mainly on this, as they fight the studio to try to maintain the integrity of the story amidst demands to keep the advertisers happy and the worries of the McCarthy witch hunt. I found the first half of the play a bit muddled, but quite enjoyed the second half in the end. It’s not a play that really stood out to me though.

181valkyrdeath
Modifié : Déc 29, 2017, 6:19 pm

91. Violenzia and Other Deadly Amusements by Richard Sala
I decided to read a few of the random graphic novels and comics that I’ve got from bundles that have been mounting up, starting with this, which is actually a collection of four stories. The first and last feature the title character, a mysterious purple-haired woman who turns up with guns blazing destroying various evil plots. Who she is isn’t really explained, just some hints given, but it’s enigmatic at about the right level to be interesting without being frustrating. The artwork is nice, though he doesn’t seem to portray movement too well in the action scenes. I didn’t care for the other two pieces. One was a strange rambling monologue with black and white pictures full of random strange creatures in the background which were well drawn but the writing did nothing for me. The other one isn’t a story at all, but an A to Z of monster pictures, mostly looking like the posters for 50s B-movies. It felt like there was an Edward Gorey, and the A to Z put me in mind of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, but it was bland without Gorey’s dark wit. So about half decent, but nothing amazing.

182valkyrdeath
Déc 29, 2017, 6:38 pm


92. I, Parrot by Deb Olin Unferth, art by Elizabeth Haidle
Another graphic novel that was pretty forgettable. A woman struggles with getting through her life while trying to keep being able to see her son and ends up housesitting for her boss who owns some rare valuable parrots which go missing. Oh, and passenger pigeons have been rediscovered and are no longer extinct for some reason. Not a terrible read but didn’t really go anywhere and wasn’t as interesting as it had potential to be.

183valkyrdeath
Déc 29, 2017, 6:48 pm


93. Pregnant Butch by A. K. Summers
Came across this graphic memoir and thought it seemed an appropriate read considering the recent read of Stone Butch Blues. It follows the author through her and her partner deciding she wants a child, finding out how to go about it, and then how the pregnancy goes. A lot of it seems to be general pregnancy stuff, with strange guidebooks and weird classes, and lots of pain, and all the stuff that makes me wonder why anyone would ever want to go through it. There are some things about her specific experiences though and it was pretty well done. I’m pretty sure the idea of wanting to have kids isn’t likely to get any less baffling to me though.

184valkyrdeath
Déc 29, 2017, 7:04 pm


94. Ms. Marvel Vol. 6: Civil War II by G. Willow Wilson
It must be frustrating trying to write stories for Marvel when they keep running stupid events that span across all their range of comics forcing the writers to have to incorporate it when they probably just want to get on with dealing with their own characters storylines. Civil War II sounds like a particularly stupid one, splitting their superheroes into two groups fighting each other yet again in a really forced way. A hero has turned up who can predict the most probably future and uses it to predict who is likely to commit crimes, and apparently half the superheroes decide that it’s perfectly fine to just start locking up people because a random guy says they might commit a crime at some point in the future. Captain Marvel heads that group, effectively turning her into a villain. Thankfully, G. Willow Wilson is a talented enough writer to manage to salvage something decent out of the mess. Kamala here initially, blinded by her admiration of Captain Marvel, starts helping her, but soon comes to her senses when she sees what’s going on and has to turn against the woman she most admires. And it leads to some major events in her personal life too, and it continues to be Kamala’s attempts to balance her normal life with her super heroics that makes this series work so well. Marvel’s attempts to get me to want to read all their other comics to fill in the Civil War storyline are completely unsuccessful though.

185valkyrdeath
Déc 29, 2017, 7:10 pm


95. Ms. Marvel Vol. 7: Damage Per Second by G. Willow Wilson
This volume starts with a worthy but slightly heavy handed one-issue story about the importance of young people getting out to vote. Then it gets onto the main story, featuring a creepy villain that starts stalking Kamala in the online MMO game she enjoys and starts invading the privacy of her and her friends in increasingly more disturbing ways, releasing their personal details and blackmailing Ms. Marvel. Not my favourite volume but still a good read.

186valkyrdeath
Déc 30, 2017, 9:42 pm


96. Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason
Another graphic novel that was readable but very strange and I didn’t really get the point of it. It felt like a bunch of separate scenes with the characters stuck together with just a bit of plot stuck in right at the end.

187valkyrdeath
Déc 30, 2017, 9:59 pm


97. Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo
I didn’t care much for this play. The characters were just completely unlikable, which isn’t always a bad thing, but there wasn’t anything else going on in the story to make spending time with them worthwhile. The character of Max is really obnoxious with no redeeming features, and virtually everything he says is horrible. I don’t understand why any of the other characters would want him around. I think he was supposed to also be funny, but he had no charm to go along with anything so the offensive comments he made to everyone just seemed unpleasant to me. Other people clearly liked it, judging by all the laughter in an audio version I listened to and the fact that it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but I just found it frustrating and uneventful.

188valkyrdeath
Déc 31, 2017, 6:03 pm


98. Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
A collection of science fiction stories from author Vandana Singh. They were very original and well written with really interesting settings. There’s a range of themes throughout the stories too. Often her Indian culture shows up in the stories lending them a much different feel to most of the English language sci-fi that’s out there. I particularly enjoyed the unusual revenge story Oblivion: A Journey, and Requiem, where a woman travels to a research station in Alaska where her aunt had been working before she died. The latter is the final story in the collection, appearing here for the first time, and it’s the longest story too. All of the stories have something interesting in them though, and are full of intriguing ideas. If anything, sometimes it feels like the detailed worlds she built needed more than just a short story to take advantage of them and occasionally it feels like the plot gets lost amongst all the details. Mostly though, it’s an excellent collection of science fiction with a different feel from most.

189valkyrdeath
Déc 31, 2017, 6:10 pm


99. My Sister’s Voice by Alexis Sugden
A very short graphic novel where a woman heads out with her mother on a boat to find her missing sister. It was an enjoyable read, but not a spectacular one.

190valkyrdeath
Déc 31, 2017, 6:25 pm


100. The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night by Alan Cullen
A popular play with music in Sheffield, originally staged in the 1960s, but rarely seen outside the city. It’s tells the story of events during the Sheffield Outrages in the 1860s. At a time when trade unions weren’t recognised by law, William Broadhead and his supporters committed murders and blew up factories of people they felt were harming the cause. The play aims to present the events rather than pass judgement on them, and it does it very well, and features many songs from the era alongside a couple written for the show. It also has a separate plot from the same era where a rival gas company is set up to try and break the monopoly that is charging everyone ludicrous rates for gas in Sheffield compared to the rest of the country. This plot adds to the more comical side of the play, with teams of workers digging holes while the other company follows along behind filling them in again. It’s an interesting play, and I feel it’s got themes that would be interesting enough to be performed elsewhere, but I doubt it’s likely to be put on outside Sheffield any time soon.

191dchaikin
Jan 1, 2018, 7:17 pm

Intrigued by Vandana Singh and interesting about the play about Sheffield and its history.

192valkyrdeath
Jan 2, 2018, 5:38 pm

>191 dchaikin: They were both interesting books in very different ways.

193valkyrdeath
Jan 2, 2018, 5:39 pm

That's all my 2017 reading up to date, and my 2018 thread is started at:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/279882