Finished A Clash of Kings and was suitably impressed.
Halfway through To the Finland Station and also decided it's time to pick up where I left off in Leaves of Grass. Hopefully it will be easier to read poetry at work than long chapters about direwolves or dialectics.
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I finished Paris in the 20th Century. It had a suitably French, downer ending, with the protagonist dying in a winter cemetary. I can see why it didn't get published in Verne's lifetime.
Now I'm reading another Winter themed book: The Left Hand of Darkness. It's a reread. The last time I read it in high school, so I have totally forgotten the ending, although certain scenes remain in my head. e.g. Genly Ai walking through a forest of red trees, the landships driving over the snow. Le Guin is very good at worldbuilding in her description - just in her own, subtle way. However, on the second reading, I've discovered places where the connections between this book and her other "Hainish" books rubs a bit thin - that is, it stretches probability farther than it needs to go in order to make a tenuous in-text connection. Unless she's trying to make a point about the nature of the novel or point out its construction as a creation of her authorship, which would be very post-modern (despite Cervantes having done it), and I don't think she's trying to do that. It could be stealth marketing...But that kind of thing doesn't affect me. Hmm....Maybe I should go check out Rocannon's World...
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Here we are. I put up The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. I will come back to it because it is good, if also tedious and suffering from a pretty glaring fault in its argument. It's just not the kind of history I can take right now.
Put it up for a series of Transformers comics, 80s vintage. Never read 'em before and only casually a fan of the franchise. They are toy commercials with all the faults that entails, but they do work fairly well as mostly standalone issues with a loose ongoing plot. Got the first four collections in a Humble Bundle a year or two back, so I read through those. Don't know if I care enough to seek out more of the old stuff, but I've heard good things about the newer IDW ones and I partook of a second Humble Bundle for them. I'll get there eventually, though it looks like I'll need to sort out where the story begins.
Read The Nightmare Stacks. Really liked the protagonist for reasons probably obvious to everyone who reads more than a few of my posts. Would like to read many more books starring him, which will probably never get written. The romance angle worked as a joke (it's consciously structured like a romantic comedy) but I had a little trouble buying that they were that into each other. I get that they're both inexperienced and blundering through. It still came off like a high school thing that's going to last a few months, which undermined the conclusion a fair bit. Probably would have forgiven all of it if it were two dudes, though. Who the hell puts vampires and heterosexuality in the same work? Just disgusting.
Then it was back to non-fiction, which I kicked off with Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton. I was warned going in that it's dry and tedious, but I don't think it's too bad on that score. Maybe I've read too much Eric Foner. There are certainly parts which are repetitive, but it's a global history s there's a lot of space to span with all its complexities. Beckert is great about laying out his argument in the plain and returning to it often, which is more than I can say for a lot of historians. I tend to note the general trend when he goes into numbers and them blip over. I think I'm about halfway through, but here's the basic thing:
Cotton was the world's first ~industiral ~capitalist affair; it's at the heart of the first industrial revolution. All that's old news. Capitalism is a government program, the product of intensive and extensive statecraft. (Ditto.) It was produced to meet the growing demand of mechanization by the commission of atrocities on a global scale, which Beckert terms war capitalism. WC is the process of states forcibly reordering areas and regimenting labor on their periphery to serve production in the metropole, in ways that just aren't going to fly back home. Cotton cultivation was imposed in just about every way something can be imposed and to meet the demand that the states were creating required massive deindustrialization (in India in particular) and our old friend slavery. Once the periphery is re-ordered into something semi-stable, war capitalism can and probably will transition into industrial capitalism. Basically, this is the process of making an empire, hence the title.
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'Three Against the Witch World' by Andre Norton.
It was superb.
Was putzing around at ye olde usede booke store with Mr. Comrade and picked up an old Pelican volume called Middle Eastern Mythology by S.H. Hooke.
Thus far, Gilgamesh, Ishtar and Tammuz, and the Enuma Elish. Fun stuff.
Here we are. I put up The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. I will come back to it because it is good, if also tedious and suffering from a pretty glaring fault in its argument. It's just not the kind of history I can take right now.
Samnell, have you come across Matthew Karp’s This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy ?
Finished To the Finland Station, made some progress in both Hawthorne and Whitman, and got up to Hittites in Middle Eastern Mytholohy.
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What JW said. Whether or not it's cheating is questionable and it is certainly not 'because girl power'. I wasn't happy with the situation but I can't really fault her actions based on what we have been shown of the characters and situations.
Well there was no need for the writer to have the main love interest cheat on the character. Let alone a good reason. Considering what happened to the main character compared to the love interest. On a factor of 1-10 of horrible, terrible things happening to who. He is not a 10 nor a 20 but a 30. At most the love interest is in the negatives. I get Stross wanted to try something new. While going for a less comedic tone. More dark. Yet imo it's at the cost of what I consider character assassination. While angering fans and making a popular character unlikeable. If that character were to die next novel I would shed no tears and actually cheer that the character was dead.
Samnell, have you come across Matthew Karp’s This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy ?Here we are. I put up The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. I will come back to it because it is good, if also tedious and suffering from a pretty glaring fault in its argument. It's just not the kind of history I can take right now.
I know of it and that it got some pretty good reviews. It's on the list but I've not gotten there yet.
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I finished Prudence by Gail Carriger last night. It got better as it went along, but it wrapped up things really quickly at the end.... but didn't seem TOO rushed.
Next up is Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie.
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I finished The Left Hand of Darkness. Some things I thought I remembered were not in the book, specifically
I'm not sure what I want to read next. I'm starting a new job soon and I know I will do more work-related reading so I'm not sure I want to start a big epic novel or anything. I have the "Mr. Holmes" novella on hold at the library, so maybe that will tide me over till the new job starts (just before Xmas!).
I finished The Left Hand of Darkness. Some things I thought I remembered were not in the book, specifically ** spoiler omitted ** Still an enjoyable story, with a good message about humanity overcoming differences at the end.
I'm not sure what I want to read next. I'm starting a new job soon and I know I will do more work-related reading so I'm not sure I want to start a big epic novel or anything. I have the "Mr. Holmes" novella on hold at the library, so maybe that will tide me over till the new job starts (just before Xmas!).
Do you consider Jules Verne steampunk, and if so, do you like steampunk?
If you answered "Yes" to some of that, and want some quick fun reads, I suggest Soulless by Gail Carriger (a steampunk comedy of manners with vampires and werewolves, but polite vampires and werewolves, and a kickass heroine, but not an Underworld-type of kickass heroine, even though she also deals with vampires and werewolves...) and Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding (basically a steampunk version of Firefly, but with a distinct lack of vampires and werewolves. Some kickass heroines. ).
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Finished reading Night Watch (Terry Pratchett) and started on two books - Theft of Swords and By Virtue Of Stratagem. I'm halfway through on both, currently, and enjoying the latter more than the former.
This is a pratchett book, so everything I can say will sound tired and predictable, but there it is - every page of this book has at least one smartly written sentence or insightful remark, the plot is sweeping, the characters lovable and unique, the humor crisp and ever present, the commentary on the real world timeless and brilliant.
If there is anywhere out there who has somehow yet to read a Pratchett book, please do yourself the favour of giving him a try. Your life will be reacher for it.
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The "Mr. Holmes" book arrived: A Slight Trick of the Mind, by Mitch Cullins. So far it is tracking pretty closely to the movie, but I read that it will diverge from the film in interesting ways, so I'm hoping to be surprised. I can't judge yet, but it has a high standard to live up to, since I loved Ian McKellen and Laura Linney in the movie.
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I finished The Left Hand of Darkness. Some things I thought I remembered were not in the book, specifically ** spoiler omitted ** Still an enjoyable story, with a good message about humanity overcoming differences at the end.
I'm not sure what I want to read next. I'm starting a new job soon and I know I will do more work-related reading so I'm not sure I want to start a big epic novel or anything. I have the "Mr. Holmes" novella on hold at the library, so maybe that will tide me over till the new job starts (just before Xmas!).Do you consider Jules Verne steampunk, and if so, do you like steampunk?
If you answered "Yes" to some of that, and want some quick fun reads, I suggest Soulless by Gail Carriger (a steampunk comedy of manners with vampires and werewolves, but polite vampires and werewolves, and a kickass heroine, but not an Underworld-type of kickass heroine, even though she also deals with vampires and werewolves...) and Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding (basically a steampunk version of Firefly, but with a distinct lack of vampires and werewolves. Some kickass heroines. ).
I should try Gail Carriger. Some of her books are shelved YA in the public library I work at, and I actually don't read enough YA. I don't think of Verne as being particularly steampunk, but I have read some William Gibson, so perhaps I lean cyberpunk? But I do like historical fiction & sci-fi. I think it would have to be very cleverly done for the historical and the sci-fi to mix just right, to where I'm not constantly questioning the history, or the etiquette, or the language, or the tech. I just don't want to get burned by something that is unfunny and painful to watch and ahistorical, like the Will Smith movie "Wild Wild West."
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Gail Carriger is great. One of my all time favorites. Her "Finishing School" series is probably the YA stuff. It's about aristocrats training to be assassins and spies, but as proper young ladies.
Go, Dog, Go.
I'm not sure I quite grasp the plot though.
Like why is he such an a&&&%~& about the hats.
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Went to the library and picked up and started Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal!; Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People which looks like it will be right up my alley.
Me and Mr. Comrade were at the Barnes and Noble the other day and he bought the recent reissue of The Final Programme and enjoying it immensely. I have never read it and am jealous.
Me and Mr. Comrade were at the Barnes and Noble the other day and he bought the recent reissue of The Final Programme and enjoying it immensely. I have never read it and am jealous.
That's an ace cover!
I'm still on the Andre Norton, and am also attempting to read the Lone Wolf books in order. However, I'm only got the first three, and they've shot up in price since Joe Dever sadly died...
Finished Listen, Liberal; it was alright. Didn't go nearly as far as I would have liked, but, whatevs. Learned some stuff.
Started re-reading Elric of Melniboné last night.
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So far in A Slight Trick of the Mind Sherlock is doing a bit more detecting than he does in the movie, but it looks like it isn't adding up to much. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It was a quiet little movie and so far seems to be a quiet little book.
Cullins' Holmes is Holmesian enough, without becoming a pastiche. However, Cullins' describing Holmes with a beard just doesn't work for me, since Ian McKellen doesn't wear one in the movie. Nor did Basil Rathbone, who, IMO, is the "best" Sherlock Holmes... Jeremy Brett is a close second.
Read-alike: The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon
I'm feeling ill. How are you?
Finished up Empire of Cotton and ended up griping about it with a Cubanist. We're both pretty convinced that the only thing wrong with the new history of capitalism is that capitalism's basically a useless term. Even the hyper-traditional formulations are just outright arbitrary. One might as well just say that nothing before Smith was capitalist and everything after was. If they just took the books and switched the word out for business they'd have works with far fewer theoretical issues and all the same content.
Mind, I do think there are meaningful distinctions between something like subsistence agriculture and market-mediated stuff. But that's not really the cleavage offered.
From that I kicked over to New England Bound, a brand new history of slavery in New England. I suppose it was good, but here's the thing: almost all the meat of the book is in the first chapter or two. After that there are seven more which are basically a standard text of small-scale slaveholding. It's all ably executed, but not really news. With the exception that Indians were often enslaved and then sold away to make room for Africans, it doesn't seem that slavery in New England differed meaningfully from elsewhere except in scale.
Took a day's break and caught up with some comics. Starting into The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas now. I see it a lot in the citations and it's relatively recent, which means I'm either going to get a lot from it or be annoyed that I've already gotten most of it by proxy. It was almost White Over Black instead, but the ebook price was absurd for something almost fifty years old and the used paper price was worse.
I'm feeling ill. How are you?
My ankle hurts. I think it's wear-and-tear from standing on iron grates and lifting 40-lb. packages full of shopping bags for ten hours a day, but some people think I may have broken it and my father even opined that it might be gout.
Think I'll stay home unless the pain goes down.
Hope your ankle gets better, DA.
I'm reading 'The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia' by Richard Overy, for some merry Christmas cheer.
I'm feeling ill. How are you?
My ankle hurts. I think it's wear-and-tear from standing on iron grates and lifting 40-lb. packages full of shopping bags for ten hours a day, but some people think I may have broken it and my father even opined that it might be gout.
Think I'll stay home unless the pain goes down.
:(
It can't be gout; that's a bourgeoisie affliction.
It feels better now, thank you.
Finished up Elric and read some more Natty Hawthorne short stories. I have found myself really enjoying Natty, even if the last story was a 20-page retelling of Pilgrim's Progress, except the narrator travels by steam engine.
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Back in my teens, I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I mention that because it's the only Jules Verne I ever read (aside from the odd excerpt here and there)...
...until now. Last month, on this thread, Zeugma first made me aware of Paris in the Twentieth Century. Feeling intrigued, I started reading it. I'm about 3/4 through it.
I bring it up now because Zeugma's comment last month gave me the impression - and might give others the impression - that Verne expressed his own misogynistic views in a certain passage of the book. I recently finished that chapter, which is titled "Quinsonnas's Opinions on Women". I just wanted to clarify that it's only one character who expresses those views, with which the main character clearly disagrees.
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Out of curiosity, I looked up Verne's bibliography and was kind of surprised that a) I had read a lot smaller sampling of his works than I thought I had; and b) everything I had read was in the early years of his career, the last one being The Mysterious Island in 1874/5. I wonder what's in all those other books?
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@Aaron Bitman: Thanks for pointing out that it was the character, not the author, who is expressing misogyny. It was a brief post and I didn't make that distinction - but it is an important one to make. Verne tends to create opinionated characters (e.g. the impulsive Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or the single-minded Detective Fix in Around the World in 80 Days).
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Out of curiosity, I looked up Verne's bibliography and was kind of surprised that a) I had read a lot smaller sampling of his works than I thought I had; and b) everything I had read was in the early years of his career, the last one being The Mysterious Island in 1874/5. I wonder what's in all those other books?
From memory:
I know Michael Strogoff would make one heck of a war/road movie set in Siberia. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.Off On a Comet is a fun bit of fluff about a French officer who is sent off into space when an asteroid rips the Gibraltar sound off Earth.
The Begum's Fortune is a spy story/Verne's revenge on the Germans for being ruined by the Franco-Prussian War.
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon is a travelogue along the Amazon river. At one point caymans attack.
Tribulations of a Chinaman in China is the "I've arranged for my own murder, changed my mind, but can't cancel the contract, oh crap." Features two unflappable British insurance agents as comic relief.
The Steam House is a bunch of Brits travelling through India in a steam-driven elephant. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Mathias Sandorf is the Count of Monte Cristo in Hungary. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Robur the Conqueror is about a man who's invented a lighter-than-air ship. Sort of a less satisfying 20'000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Purchase of the North Pole features the heros from From the Earth to the Moon and From the Moon to the Earth as they try to remove the tilt of the Earth's axis (a bad idea).
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From memory:
I know Michael Strogoff would make one heck of a war/road movie set in Siberia. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Off On a Comet is a fun bit of fluff about a French officer who is sent off into space when an asteroid rips the Gibraltar sound off Earth.
The Begum's Fortune is a spy story/Verne's revenge on the Germans for being ruined by the Franco-Prussian War.
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon is a travelogue along the Amazon river. At one point caymans attack.
Tribulations of a Chinaman in China is the "I've arranged for my own murder, changed my mind, but can't cancel the contract, oh crap." Features two unflappable British insurance agents as comic relief.
The Steam House is a bunch of Brits travelling through India in a steam-driven elephant. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Mathias Sandorf is the Count of Monte Cristo in Hungary. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Robur the Conqueror is about a man who's invented a lighter-than-air ship. Sort of a less satisfying 20'000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Purchase of the North Pole features the heros from From the Earth to the Moon and From the Moon to the Earth as they try to remove the tilt of the Earth's axis (a bad idea).
Wow! You've sure read a lot of Verne!
Out of curiosity, I looked up Verne's bibliography and was kind of surprised that a) I had read a lot smaller sampling of his works than I thought I had; and b) everything I had read was in the early years of his career, the last one being The Mysterious Island in 1874/5. I wonder what's in all those other books?From memory:
I know Michael Strogoff would make one heck of a war/road movie set in Siberia. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Off On a Comet is a fun bit of fluff about a French officer who is sent off into space when an asteroid rips the Gibraltar sound off Earth.
The Begum's Fortune is a spy story/Verne's revenge on the Germans for being ruined by the Franco-Prussian War.
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon is a travelogue along the Amazon river. At one point caymans attack.
Tribulations of a Chinaman in China is the "I've arranged for my own murder, changed my mind, but can't cancel the contract, oh crap." Features two unflappable British insurance agents as comic relief.
The Steam House is a bunch of Brits travelling through India in a steam-driven elephant. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Mathias Sandorf is the Count of Monte Cristo in Hungary. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Robur the Conqueror is about a man who's invented a lighter-than-air ship. Sort of a less satisfying 20'000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Purchase of the North Pole features the heros from From the Earth to the Moon and From the Moon to the Earth as they try to remove the tilt of the Earth's axis (a bad idea).
I quite fancy a go at Mathias Sandorf. Might be on Project Gutenberg...
Wow! You've sure read a lot of Verne!
From memory:
I know Michael Strogoff would make one heck of a war/road movie set in Siberia. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Off On a Comet is a fun bit of fluff about a French officer who is sent off into space when an asteroid rips the Gibraltar sound off Earth.
The Begum's Fortune is a spy story/Verne's revenge on the Germans for being ruined by the Franco-Prussian War.
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon is a travelogue along the Amazon river. At one point caymans attack.
Tribulations of a Chinaman in China is the "I've arranged for my own murder, changed my mind, but can't cancel the contract, oh crap." Features two unflappable British insurance agents as comic relief.
The Steam House is a bunch of Brits travelling through India in a steam-driven elephant. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Mathias Sandorf is the Count of Monte Cristo in Hungary. There's a showdown with savage coloured people.
Robur the Conqueror is about a man who's invented a lighter-than-air ship. Sort of a less satisfying 20'000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Purchase of the North Pole features the heros from From the Earth to the Moon and From the Moon to the Earth as they try to remove the tilt of the Earth's axis (a bad idea).
My dad had a a few from his youth that I got to inherit, and the local library had a substantial section translated and published by Sweden's then main SFF-guru Sam J Lundwall.
It is fascinating that in Around the World in Eighty Days, the woman they rescue in India is actually only mentioned three times or so after this.
I remember watching the cartoon, where Phileas Fogg was a lion, for some reason, and I think she had a bigger role in that.
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I think Aouda has a bigger role in the stage play. However, that could be my own misperception since Mark Brown's English translation I saw has a cast of 5 playing multiple roles, so the actress who has Aouda's role also has other lines for other characters. I'm not sure about the Verne version of the play, as I only saw this English translation.
P.S. It was great! If you get the chance, go see it!
P.P.S. When I read the book, I shipped Aouda and Passepartout, not her and Fogg. Passepartout is just a more relatable character.
I just finished Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie.
I'm going to start Imprudence by Gail Carriger later. More steampunky supernatural adventures and tea!
EDIT:
Ancillary Sword also has a lot of tea, too.
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Had a copy of Around the World on my shelf, so I'm going to read that next. Think I was nine or ten last time I read it...
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Finished reading By Virtue Of Stratagem, a non-fiction about Israeli stratagem which takes the approach that there is no magic solution to winning wars or battles, and that the only path to consistent victory is clever and meticulous application of the fundamentals of strategy. The book is divided into two sections - the first examines each aspect of the Israeli approach to stratagem and explains it through logic and examples. The second half is a collection of pairs of battles, each pair taken from one of the nations' many wars. The first of each such pair is a battle that went poorly for Israel, and the second is one where it did great. Each such battle is taken apart and examined move by move, each mistake and application of stratagem pointed out and analyzed.
This is the first non fiction I've read in over a decade, and had I not been forced to I would likely never have tried it, but I'm happy that I did. First, it reminded me of the potential of non-fiction books to engage the mind and imagination just like actual fiction, and second the specific subject of strategy and warfare is intriguing enough in it's own right.
As for an actual review of the book - it does repeat itself a bit too much because there is much overlap between different aspects of strategy, and could have probably been 50 pages shorter (losing 25% of it's length) without losing much substance. The analysis of actual battles if riveting and deepens the understanding of the subject matter considerably.
I don't think the book is avilable in any language other than Hebrew...
I think the only non-fiction I've read in the last 10 years is Bruce Campbell and Fareed Zakaria.
Currently reading Horns by Joe Hill; I'm about halfway through it. I must say,
Anyone have thoughts on NOS4A2, his other book that I know of?
Currently reading Horns by Joe Hill; I'm about halfway through it. I must say, ** spoiler omitted **
Anyone have thoughts on NOS4A2, his other book that I know of?
I've not read it and couldn't get through the movie of Horns. My issues with snakes got in the way. But I did read all of Locke & Key, a horror/adventure comic he wrote. Really liked it.
Still in The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. I'm behind schedule because it's relatively short (~300 pages of main text & appendices) but ridiculously dense and heavy on theory and numbers. Eltis is way into the demographics and economics of European expansion, which I am just barely curious about, and the stuff that's consumed a lot of the page count to date is concentrated on the Europeans. I hope it livens up some.
After that it's probably George Frederickson's Racism: A Short History.
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So, in previous years I started a "reading year in review" thread to which people usually didn't respond as enthuisiastically as a chance to list things should have prompted them to, so I decided to relegate this to a post here.
Essentially: I want to go over everything I've read this year and over-categorize it. Would love to see similar posts from others, just for fun, but anyway, here's mine.
category 1: how much did I read?
Number of Books read: 24
number of pages read: about 10.8k
average length of book: 465
shortest book: Nine Princes In Amber (175)
longest book: A Memory OF Light (909)
category 2: diversity
number of different authors I've read: 19
number of authors I've tried for the first time: 8
genre distribution: 1 non fiction, 12 fantasy, 8 science fiction, 3 other (fiction)
category 3: top 5 books of the year
5) books X in ongoing series: I've read several very strong entries in super long series this year, which I lumped together in this category. The two Dresden Files novels, two Terry Pratchett books and the third book in Tales Of The Katty Jay were all among the best of their respective series, but none of them was that different or better than the norm to deserve a slot of it's own in the top 5, despite being incredibly enjoyable and well written.
2) Embassytown, by China Mievelle: a very odd yet engaging story. This is definitely Big Idea science fiction, except the big ideas are less about the usual, cosmological physics related mysteries of the universe and more about philosophical concepts regarding language and meaning and narratives. The aliens and story were fantastic and exotic and my imagination was working on over-drive, and many parts of the book lingered in my mind months after finishing my read. Perhaps the only thing in the book that was lacking for some degree were the characters - never flat or badly written, but not quite as engaging as everything else. Thinking back to it, I remember only vague details about them, while being able to talk quite intelligently about other aspects of the book. Not every story is about the characters (this, in fact, is part of the point in this novel) but still, I like it when the characters stick with me, and these didn't.
3) Downbelow Station: A thoughtful depiction of conflict in a far future society, this science fiction story is very weak on most aspects of science and physics except for a single crucial one - the distances of a star faring human empire, and how physical distance fractures and changes human society. From the lawlessness of Pell and other stations, the independence of the Company fleet, and the outright alien-ness of the Union, humans in the setting of this story somehow live in a much more brutal world than the one we know in modern society today. The story is slow, with tension building tangibly, and cunning politics interposed with clashing with personal passions make for an incredibly complex and layered situation with enormous stakes. Downbelow Station is well deserving of the title “masterpiece”.
2) Senlin Ascends: A wonderful read hampered only by the somewhat overblown hype machine that various blogs and reviewers created around it. Senlin Ascends is a wonderful discovery - a self published work that is easily one of the most interesting fantasy novels of the past few years. Senlin Ascends starts out as an interesting and well written yet somewhat light story, but character development and world building take over soon enough, and by the end of this opening in the series, I am completely invested in the story. Senlin, The Tower, the many side characters - all of them grow and develop in such interesting ways, all twisted about the central and mind boggling mystery of the world they exist in - any fan of the fantastical cannot be anything but joyful.
3) The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August: Even with all the other wonderful books I’ve read this year, none quite surpassed this one. After about 18 years of reading tens of SFF books a year, I’ve seen a lot of what these genres have to offer. So when I come across something completely new, executed perfectly, the sparks in my mind start flying. I’ve never read anything that was quite like First Fifteen Lives. A character study about a man who lives the same years over and over and over again, who by seeking to understand himself and the universe around him, enters a deeply personal conflict that spans hundreds of years. Harry August is dry and reserved but deeply observational and clever. This is a winning combination of a smart SF idea, well thought out to the tiniest details and that has cosmic and emotional implications, with a fresh kind of story.
category 4: Bottom 5 books of the year
In no particular order, the least engaging books I've read this year have been Proxima, Ancillary Justice, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, God's War, Grim Company. Some of these are not actually bad, just flat and uninteresting enough that I regret putting my time into reading them to some degree. Grim Company is the exception, as I couldn't get more than 3 chapters into it - I found it to be a genuinely stupid and annoying attempt to duplicate the style of Joe Abercrombie that completely misses the point of everything Joe does. Not much point on dwelling in this section.
summary: a very good year as far as reading as concerned, with many new discoveries joining strong entries in series I've been following for years. I also finished reading The Wheel Of Time, bringing closure to this open wound from my childhood. Looking to next year, I think I'll focus less on discovering new things and more on finishing some of the ongoing stories I'm following, and possibly sink my teeth into a new super long epic fantasy or space opera - the need grows in me again...
Lord Snow: I didn't keep detailed notes on what I read, but I did post to this thread a lot. Maybe after the holidays, I'll go through it make a list like yours. Probably lacking the page count, though! :-P
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I thought twenty-eight books was pretty good last year. This year I set a goal of forty around midsummer, when I got on the book a week kick. That didn't work out because you know why. Doing a bit better now and more than half of these books were read once I got on the book a week train. Would probably do better still if I let myself skim like a proper academic more often.
But I did start using Goodreads more aggressively, so I've got better records now. According to it, I've read 30 books this year for a total of 11,793 pages, with an average length of 393. That feels low, but I think it's using the Kindle pagecounts for lots of stuff and those stop when the notes begin. I don't usually read the notes cover to cover, so that's fair.
Of them, the most popular was Excession, which I think was only ok in retrospect. The least popular was The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854, which I read in a hurry when I found out it existed and I could get a copy before my podcast interview. Turned out to be worth the rush since I dug into it for several questions.
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I'd like to keep with Lord Snow's "reading year in review" theme, but I haven't taken as detailed notes as he has (and I don't have a Goodreads account).
Books read so far: 46
My top 5 books of 2016:
1. Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. The story of a South African priest, a landowner, and their respective sons. The only book this year that made me cry. I really haven't cried at a book since I read In Cold Blood years and years ago. One of the best works of realistic fiction I've read.
2. A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, by Kathryn Harkup. This Edgar Award finalist made organic chemistry interesting and understandable to me (a C-student in High School science); it helped that I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan, but anyone interested in forensics and medicine could find value in this book.
3. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Cain's book explores how our "extrovert ideal" harms people who are more introverted. As someone who grew up on the shy side, I could definitely relate.
4. The Grand Tour: The European Adventures of a Continental Drifter, by Tim Moore. The hilarious adventures of Tim Moore as he tries to retrace the steps of one of the world's first European tourists, 17th century "explorer" Thomas Coryate.
5. The Fourth Bear, by Jasper Fforde. A "nursery crime" book that feels just as madcap and bearly restrained as the last Fforde plot, but with more of a message about being true to oneself, and a (serial)killer ending to die for!
Bottom 5 books of 2016:
1. through 3. "The Darwath Trilogy" by Barbara Hambly. The themes didn't coalesce into something greater than their parts for me, and the paper villains and ethnic stereotypes just turned me off. Good fight scenes, though.
4. The Body in the Wardrobe, by Katherine Page. A light cosy mystery that I could have enjoyed had it been fair play. It wasn't. Any mystery that invokes the supernatural for an explanation and doesn't lay out that it's going to be a ghost story on page 1 is setting itself up to be discredited. At least "the butler did it" is a plausible explanation!
5. Sayonara Slam, by Naomi Hirahara. I liked this mystery from Edgar Award-winner Hirahara; the detective, Mas Arai, is like a more-curmudgeonly Inspector Columbo, and I enjoyed the background and details of the crime as much as her last book. But I figured out who the killer was by the middle of the book, so it didn't hold my interest.