Valkyrdeath's 2015 Reading Part 2

July seems a good time to move onto a new thread. On with the reading.

Books Read:
65. Don’t Ask by Donald E. Westlake
66. Young Adult Novel by Daniel Pinkwater
67. Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
68. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
69. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
70. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
71. A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
72. Fluke by James Herbert
73. The Best Art You've Never Seen: 101 Hidden Treasures From Around the World by Julian Spalding
74. The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis
75. Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey

76. Witness by Karen Hesse
77. Letters of Note compiled by Shaun Usher
78. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
79. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
80. March: Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin art by Nate Powell
81. On Writing by Stephen King
82. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
83. Dragondrums by Anne McCaffrey

84. Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett
85. Alone Forever by Liz Prince
86. Return to Sender by Fred H. Holmes
87. Honey and Salt by Carl Sandburg
88. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
89. Beloved by Toni Morrison
90. A Book in English by Woody Aragon
91. Poseidon’s Gold by Lindsey Davis

92. The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
93. We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin
94. Here by Richard McGuire
95. Last Act in Palmyra by Lindsey Davis
96. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio translated by Matt Thorn
97. Death: At Death's Door by Jill Thompson
98. The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell
99. Letting It Go by Miriam Katin
100. Neurocomic by Matteo Farinella and Hana Ros
101. How to be Happy by Eleanor Davis
102. Unnatural Selections by Gary Larson
103. Ms Marvel: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson art by Adrian Alphona
104. Asterix and the Banquet by Rene Goscinny art by Albert Uderzo
105. Asterix the Legionary by Rene Goscinny art by Albert Uderzo
106. Asterix in Switzerland by Rene Goscinny art by Albert Uderzo
107. The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa
108. The Mason Williams Reading Matter by Mason Williams
109. Flight edited by Kazu Kibuishi
110. What’s the Worst That Could Happen? by Donald E. Westlake
111. The Madame Paul Affair by Julie Doucet

112. The Apex Book of World SF 4 edited by Mahvesh Murad
113. Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
114. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
115. nEvermore!: Tales Of Murder, Mystery & The Macabre edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Caro Soles
116. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa translated by Stephen Snyder
117. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
118. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua

119. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
120. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
121. Sane New World: Taming the Mind by Ruby Wax
122. Narbonic by Shaenon K. Garrity
123. Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar
124. Lumberjanes Volume 1 by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis art by Brooke Allen
125. Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges translated by Andrew Hurley
126. Luisa in Realityland by Claribel Alegria translated by Darwin J. Flakoll
127. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo translated by Julie Rose
128. Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary M. Talbot art by Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot
129. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin translated by Clarence Brown
130. Lumberjanes Volume 2 by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis art by Brooke Allen
131. Narbonic Vol. 2 by Shaenon K. Garrity
132. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
133. The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett
134. Help Fund My Robot Army!!! And Other Improbably Crowdfunding Projects edited by John Joseph Adams

65. Don’t Ask by Donald E. Westlake
Another Dortmunder, this time much shorter than the last one. Not my favourite one, but still very funny. This time, he’s trying to steal a relic for one small country from another to help them secure a place in the UN. The dialogue is as sharp as ever, as are the situations, and I’m still impressed by how Westlake kept coming up with new ideas for these. I don’t have much else to say about it other than that the whole series is recommended.

I'm back for the second half. Enjoying your reviews.

Looking forward to your Cold Comfort Farm review. That's been on my TBR list for far too long now - hoping your review moves it up a notch!

>3 NanaCC: Thanks! Hopefully I'll have some interesting books coming up.

>4 AlisonY: I'm hoping I enjoy it. I'm worried I won't know enough about the sort of books it's parodying to fully appreciate it, but I'll soon find out. I don't think it'll take me too long to get through.

66. Young Adult Novel by Daniel Pinkwater
Another book with the usual Pinkwater brand of craziness. It’s pretty short but a lot of fun, about a group of Dada inspired school pupils and involving elements of parody of the sort of young adult novels around at the time. Not my favourite Pinkwater book but an enjoyable quick read.

67. Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Nothing to Envy is a non-fictional account of the lives of people in North Korea, focusing mainly on six people who eventually defected to South Korea. By concentrating on these people and what their lives are like are portraying wider events from that perspective it presents a far more human portrait on the culture. It reads almost like a novel at times, which is no bad. It’s obviously a rather depressing book at times, and it’s awful that there are countries still being run like this in the modern age. The whole society really does sound like Orwell’s 1984. It’s nice that there are positive stories in the end though, and while things aren’t perfect, the people chronicled in the book have generally managed to adjust to their new lives. The edition I read was updated with an extra chapter bringing events up to date to the middle of 2014 too, through the death of Kim Jong-il and the taking over by Kim Jong-un, and it was good to see how things had progressed in the meantime for the various people. It was a good book for me since I knew very little, and had no idea of the lack of electricity or just how bad the starvation is there. Very well written and definitely recommended for anyone interested in the subject.

I'm a big fan of Nothing to Envy and I love Cold Comfort Farm -- it's one of my comfort reads and I've read it several times.

>7 valkyrdeath: loved this book too - quite staggering that North Korea has remained as it is for so long. I missed the updated version - it would have been interesting to read Demick's take on Kim Jong-un.

>8 rebeccanyc: I've started Cold Comfort Farm and it seems quite fun so far. It was only about a year or so ago I discovered it was a comedy and actually became interested in it!

>9 AlisonY: It is amazing that it's kept going so long. It's got to collapse eventually, but the way it's been going it could be a long time coming.

68. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
This is the earliest of Gaiman’s short story collections that’s still in print. It’s a reread, as I loved it when I originally read it many years ago, and thankfully I think it’s still held up. The majority of the material here is good and the best ones rank as some of my favourite of Gaiman’s works. It’s also quite varied, with stories ranging from a comic tale about a woman who buys the holy grail for 30p at a charity shop, a murder mystery set in a city of angels at the start of creation, a Lovecraftian tale with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore characters inserted into it and a deeply disturbing alternate look at the Snow White story. There’s not a great deal I really didn’t like. I preferred this one to the later Fragile Things, but I’m looking forward to getting round to the new Trigger Warning one.

Smoke and Mirrors is going straight into my wishlist, thanks for the review!

>12 chlorine: I hope you enjoy it when you get round to it! It was actually the first Gaiman book I read after Good Omens so back then I actually thought the book would be all comedy. I obviously didn't know much about Gaiman at that time!

69. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to like this, but in the end I really enjoyed it. I don’t know much about the sort of books it’s parodying, but I think I got a good impression of what they were like just from reading this. It was extremely funny at times, and also I was surprised that it didn’t feel dated at all. There’s a lot of satire on all sorts of aspects of society in it that felt as relevant now as when it was written. I particularly liked the spoof introduction letter where she explains that she’s marked out the best bits to save the reviewers the trouble and then puts stars preceding the most ludicrously overwritten metaphors.

Up until a couple of years ago I hadn’t even been aware that this was a comedy book. It turned out to be a really fun book and I’m glad I finally read it. I’m now considering trying some of her other books too.

Enjoyed your take on Cold Comfort farm

>14 valkyrdeath:. I read Cold Comfort Farm last year. I had no idea what it was about going into it, so was pleasantly surprised by the humor.

Looking forward to getting to Cold Comfort Farm at some stage. Enjoyed your review.

>14 valkyrdeath: I'm a bit late, but fun review.

Yeah, I had always thought Cold Comfort Farm sounded dreary. I was pleasantly surprised by how very much I enjoyed it.

>16 NanaCC: >19 RidgewayGirl: I think I'd always assumed it was one of the sort of books it's a parody of and would just be a stuffy rustic drama. I'm very happy to have been wrong all those years.

Thanks to all for the comments!

70. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
This tells the story of two women during WW2, one a pilot and the other a spy. Following a crash landing in France, the first half of the book is told as the confession being written by the spy while being held and tortured by the Gestapo, though there are clues that things might not be what they seem. The second half of the book is told in the form of the diary of the pilot. Both of their stories look back over their friendship prior to the situation. It’s well written and seems fairly well researched and I really enjoyed the story. It’s not a light read though, with references to torture throughout the book due to the situation. I was surprised I had to go into the children’s section of my library to get a copy of the book. Anyway, it was a great read and had a fair few twists along the way.

71. A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
A really fun memoir of a childhood in a small town. I loved that it was told from the perspective of her childhood self rather than any sort of introspective look back. There’s no attempts at analysing the past, she simply narrates various events from her youth, usually in a very funny style. The events are sometimes things that people might find upsetting, particularly for anyone who doesn’t like to hear about the deaths of animals of which there are many, but it’s all told with the naïve innocence of a girl who just takes it all in her stride. One of the most entertaining memoirs I’ve read and one that made me laugh of quite a few occasions.

72. Fluke by James Herbert
A rare departure from horror for James Herbert, Fluke tells the story of a dog’s life as a stray, from the first person perspective of that dog. He seems to have captured the dog viewpoint pretty well, and there are moments of humour, though much of Fluke’s life is quite hard. As the story goes on, he starts to get more and more glimpses of memories of a time when he was human, building up to the climax of the book, which isn’t quite as straight forward as it first seems. It’s a pretty dark and at times disturbing story (though I remember it was adapted into a family film by changing pretty much everything in it for some reason) but one that kept me reading throughout and that I enjoyed. In some ways, it’s a shame James Herbert didn’t diversify into other genres away from horror more in his career, especially considering how his writing improved over the years.

Interesting books you've read recently - enjoyed your reviews.

>24 AlisonY: Thanks! I'm trying to keep things varied to keep myself reading.

73. The Best Art You’ve Never Seen: 101 Hidden Treasures From Around the World by Julian Spalding
This book collects a wide variety of art in many different styles with the intention of showing art that is usually hidden in some way. It was an interesting collection and a lot of the art was genuinely worth covering, the pictures that went along with it were generally good and the discussions were often well thought out. The author’s enthusiasm about the works really comes through and he was good at pointing out details I might not otherwise have spotted.

Unfortunately, he’s also very opinionated and feels the need to forcefully express those opinions throughout, such as what he thinks should and shouldn’t be classed as art and how art should be treated. I found this got quite annoying, especially as I disagreed with quite a bit of it. He states in the introduction that if a piece of art doesn’t speak to you then it probably has nothing to say, which seems to me to be ignoring the fact that different people like different things, and sounds like a justification for claiming that what he likes is good and what he doesn’t like is bad. (He also mentions that the only art worthy of the name works on many levels, something which just instantly makes me think of Fry and Laurie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WF6NIxIeaU)

The title is also a bit misleading. Not all of the art is particularly obscure and he includes it simply if he feels the art has been hidden at some point. Some of the more sexual works are pretty well known these days even if they weren’t publicly displayed in a past age for example. There’s a section on modern art that he likes that he claims is hidden by conceptual art, which is basically an excuse for him to complain about pickled animal parts and unmade beds in galleries getting all the publicity. He even includes the Mona Lisa due to how it’s obscured under old discoloured varnish that the Louvre doesn’t seem to want to clean. Some of these things are valid points but the title led me to expect something different. And there’s so much art out there, it really would be nice to see some things that really never get shown around at all.

Anyway, despite the flaws I generally enjoyed the book anyway. I liked the choices even if they’re not all the sorts of things I was expecting and when he’s not ranting the author manages to provide background history about the culture the art came from and the artist that created it as well as about the work itself, all in a relatively short space. Some of the more ancient pieces are as much of archaeological and historical interest as artistic, which appealed to me. More of that and less polemic and it could have been a genuinely great book.

I appreciate those criticisms. It bothers me a lot when a nonfiction book stretches the meaning of the purpose to the point it doesn't have much meaning anymore.

>27 dchaikin: That bothers me too. I'm never sure which titles are picked by authors and which are changed by editors and publishers, but when it comes to non-fiction I'm sure a lot of them are chosen simply to grab attention regardless of how little they have to do with the content of the book.

In this particular instance, he stated that if he'd picked all genuinely obscure works of art it would have cost far too much in terms of travel involved, but I don't see how it's any more expensive to travel to see lesser known works than it is to see more well known ones.

74. The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis
This is the fourth Falco book, this time seeing the Roman informer travelling to Germany to investigate a missing military officer. This one was more involved with real history, covering some real life mysteries of the era and mentions battles and situations in Germany at the time. It’s still got plenty of humour, though it’s a generally darker plot than the previous books. It also feels different rather than just a repeat of the same thing again, which is always good. Towards the end this is much more of an adventure than a mystery, though of course everything gets resolved in the end. I really enjoyed it, and am as always looking forward to continuing the series.

75. Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
Somehow I’ve gone all this time having never read anything by Anne McCaffrey. This seems like it was a good place to start. The world building is impressive and everything seems to have been thought out to make the setting convincing. It was well written and I enjoyed it, though it was light on plot and once the lead character gets out of the Hold she lives in part way through the book, there’s no real conflict to resolve and it ends quite abruptly. It definitely read like the first part of a book that’s been split up, leading into the sequel. So, onto the sequel.

76. Witness by Karen Hesse
Historical fiction set in a small town in Vermont in 1924 as the Ku Klux Klan move in and the effect they have on the lives of the people there. It’s told from the perspective of eleven different characters in first person perspective and it changes between them from one page to the next. It was an interesting quick read and I thought it was generally well done. The different personalities and viewpoints were captured well.

It’s a verse novel with each character being portrayed in free verse. The trouble is, in this case it’s that particular type of free verse that to me looks like prose with random line thrown in. You could remove all the line breaks and it would just read as normal text. I really don’t see what this adds to anything. And there’s no capital letters anywhere and very little punctuation. It didn’t really bother me but I don’t understand why it was like that either. At first I thought it would be done for a particular character but it was the same for everyone.

None of that really affects the quality of the writing for me, but it’s just something I found a bit strange.

>31 valkyrdeath:

It's the hip thing to write in free verse - and had been for a while (I know this one is from 2001)? Or maybe emulating the writing of someone very young? And the cynic in me is thinking that this is also a way to stretch the page number and make it into a book...

Although it does sound interesting...

>32 AnnieMod: The first character was a child so I thought it was to do with that, but then the characters in their 50s are set out in the same way. The fact that it would be extremely short without being laid out like that did occur to me too. I did enjoy it though anyway.

Funny how apparently Dragonsong is both the third book in the main series and the first in a trilogy. Wonder how that works out... I read Dragonquest years ago and quite enjoyed it.

77. Letters of Note compiled by Shaun Usher
A really interesting collection of letters ranging from ancient history to very recent. I can’t find much to fault in this book. It’s got a huge variety of letters and I can’t really quibble over the inclusion of any of them, as each is worth reading, whether for historical or cultural interest or in some cases simply because they’re very funny. It’s fascinating to see things like job application letters from Leonardo da Vinci or the Queen sending her favourite scone recipe to President Eisenhower, and disturbing to read the ignored letter warning of a design flaw in parts of the Challenger Space Shuttle which could lead to disaster. I think Dorothy Parker’s comical letter describing her tedious stay in hospital may have been my favourite though. And then there’s Virginia’s letter to the New York Sun newspaper about the existence of Santa and the reply. They blatantly lie to the eight year old child and try to encourage her to be gullible and believe whatever they say and never to be sceptical, a perfect indication of why you can never trust a newspaper. (Ok, this might not be the way this letter is generally portrayed, but it’s how I like to look at it anyway.)

The book is really well designed too, with high quality pictures of the original letters where possible and various other illustrative pictures, along with transcripts of the letters when the pictures aren’t completely clear, all laid out clearly and attractively. All in all a great book.

78. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
I loved this book. It’s definitely one of my favourites of the year. It’s a long book, but perfectly paced with so much happening throughout the course of the book. It’s hard to describe because it covers so many themes, comic books, stage magic and war, but mostly it’s about the characters. I won’t even try to go into any details about it and will just say it’s a great book.

>34 chlorine: Missed your post there! I think it's because it's a trilogy of stories about the same characters where I assume the series as a whole is just books set in the same world. I'd never read anything else by McCaffrey before though.

79. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
The sequel to Dragonsong, continuing straight off from where the first book finished. It really feels like it should have been the second half of one book. It follows Menolly’s musical training at the Harper Hall as well as more about the fire lizards. It was a fun book, and it’s nice to see the occasional book where things just go generally well for a character who doesn’t feel the need to go back and confront her abusive family and is happy to just leave them all behind. It’s an enjoyable series so far. One more book to go in the trilogy.

80. March: Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin art by Nate Powell
An interesting, though short, graphic novel by John Lewis about his childhood and early involvement in the civil rights movement. I didn’t know much about him, but he seems to have been a major figure and was well worth reading about. It covers mainly his growing up and the lunch counter sit ins to end segregation. It also shows his commitment to non-violence, something I have a lot of respect for. It’s a fairly straight forward account of events, but there’s nothing wrong with that. If there’s a flaw, it’s that given how short the book is, I wish they’d just waited and released the whole story as one rather than splitting it up into three.

81. On Writing by Stephen King
On Writing is a fairly brief book that’s part memoir of Stephen King’s childhood and how he became a writer and part his attempt at providing guidance to new writers. The short memoir part was ok, but I had issues with the rest of it. (Not a new thing, since the last time I read a non-fiction work by King, Danse Macabre, I spent much of it disagreeing with him.) Some of the stuff he said this time wasn’t bad advice, though I don’t really share his dislike of passive verbs, and I can’t even begin to understand his hatred of adverbs which are a perfectly good part of language and the examples he gives seemed to show why they were important even as he was saying they shouldn’t be used. What grated about it though was the fact that he doesn’t seem to follow his own advice at all. He tells people to eliminate unnecessary words and to get to the point as quickly as possible but quite often writes long rambling books that are often 200 pages longer than they need to be. The point that wound me up the most was when he started talking about how he doesn’t like flashbacks and only relevant and interesting backstory should be given. My last experience reading Stephen King was Wizard and Glass, a book published shortly before this one, which stops the action of the Dark Tower series for a long and tedious flashback scene THAT GOES ON FOR MORE THAN 500 PAGES! If I hadn’t read his books, I might be less annoyed but I couldn’t help getting irritated by that stuff while reading.

>40 valkyrdeath: Really enjoyed reading your review of On Writing, as I've been waiting for my library to find their missing copy for ages.

You've raised some interesting points (and very amusing that he's massively contradicting his own work in his advice). It makes me wonder: when someone has a specific style and voice, is it almost impossible for them to write a book about writing in a balanced way? In some prose styles long, eloquent sentences can be beautiful (e.g. Virginia Woolf), yet in others a very spare style works amazingly.

If you ignore some of what he's written on style in this book, was the book useful nonetheless on plot and character development and general writing methodology?

>40 valkyrdeath: Elmore Leonard also hated adverbs.

I think the idea of what is "relevant and interesting backstory" is simply going to vary from reader to reader. One of the things I like about King's writing in a lot of books is how he manages to make me willing to go along on these back trails through a character's past simply because they're compelling. Are they necessary? I dunno, I imagine he thinks so. But for me, relevant is less important than interesting.

>40 valkyrdeath: I found On Writing to be better as an inspirational motivator than as a creative writing primer.

Is there any consensus on what IS the best creative writing guide?

>44 AlisonY: I have a bunch on my shelves that for the most part I've never read, but I would somewhat flippantly say the best creative writing guide is reading books by writers you admire.

I would agree to a large extent, but it's always interesting to learn and understand how writers approach the actual task of writing a novel. I know there are many different approaches - some work out the whole plot for months first (I think Frederick Forsyth does this), whilst others just go for it and dive in and plug holes later.

I'm also conscious from reading the inside of book jackets that so many successful authors seem to either have take a creative writing degree or have come from a writing career like journalism, so there must be something said for actually learning and understanding the craft of good writing.

But back to your point, I struggle to take the time when reading a good novel to really consider why the writing is really working for me as a reader. Maybe slowing down and taking notes as some Club Readers do is a good place to start.

>41 AlisonY: He has general advice about writing regularly and setting yourself targets and things. He doesn't say much about character development and says he doesn't like plot, he just starts with a situation and then writes and works things out as he goes along with no plan about how it's going to end. I think the problem is, as you said, people have their own distinct styles, and when writing about how to write, they generally just want to try and get people to write in the way that they like themselves. I'd find it dull if everyone wrote the same way.

>42 ursula: He refers to Elmore Leonard at times in the book. I've just looked up some of Elmore Leonard's rules for writers and they sound very similar to King's. I've never read any of his books so I can't compare his advice with his own writing though.

I just feel people should write the way they feel is right for them. Advice is fine but I don't like when people try to set hard and fast rules about what you should and shouldn't do, because there'll be another author out there who breaks every one of those rules and writes amazing books. That author would probably give you their own set of contrasting rules which would be just as useless. And I've never once read a book where I've even noticed whether or not they've used adverbs.

>43 RidgewayGirl: You're right, I think he does a good job of showing how to motivate yourself and there's advice about getting started in being published and getting an agent and things like that. I can imagine those parts would be useful to an aspiring author.

>46 AlisonY: I do understand what you're saying, and I agree that it's interesting to find out how different writers work. Since I tend not to read contemporary fiction, I'm mostly reading books that were written before authors started taking creative writing degrees! So I may not be the best person to comment on that. I do find in many contemporary novels, when I read them, that they tend to peter out towards the end, as if the authors worked and worked (and workshopped and workshopped) the beginnings, and then just let the end take care of itself.

For a while it felt like every other book I picked up was by someone with an MFA, and I got to where I could spot an MFA'ed author's book in a few pages. It was fun to flip to the author information and discover I was right, but I ended up avoiding anything written by someone with an MFA for quite a while. They all ended up sounding the same. That said, there are excellent authors with MFAs out there. I have come to the conclusion that an MFA will help a new author produce something publishable, when they otherwise might not do so, but it takes a talented author to write differently than the MFA-approved style. I did have one author tell me that what the MFA program did for him was to give him the space and opportunity to really write.

82. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
I thought I’d go backwards and read the first Lord Peter Wimsey book, having listened to the audiobook of the second earlier in the year. I really enjoyed this one. There’s a good mystery, the characters are fun and turned out to have more depth than is common in these types of stories, and the dialogue was sharp and entertaining. I’ll certainly be continuing on to the third book in the series shortly.

I did a Lord Peter binge earlier this year. They were just as good the second or third time around.

>51 NanaCC: I saw that and along with another recommendation it was one of the things that got me looking into the series. I think I'm going to enjoy it.

83. Dragondrums by Anne McCaffrey
This is the final part of the Harper Hall trilogy and probably my least favourite. Piemur is the main character this time around with Menolly only appearing as a minor character. It’s more plot driven than the others, and it’s mostly a fun and entertaining story. There’s a moment where the supposedly good guys basically torture a dying man to get what they want though, and then it’s just sort of waved aside and never mentioned again, and I found that hard to accept. I’ve never agreed with the whole “ends justify the means” thing and I find it odd that this scene just turns up in the middle of a book that’s aimed at young readers. The rest of the book I enjoyed, but that certainly coloured my experience of it. The first two books were superior generally anyway. The second was my favourite, but really the two together should have been one book. This one is a completely separate story.

Too bad the trilogy ends with a book you like less. Are you planning on reading more McCaffrey books?

>54 chlorine: I'm not sure. I may well read some more in the future, but it's not likely to be for a while yet. So much to read!

84. Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett
This is a non-fiction miscellany of rain related topics and is an entertaining read. It sometimes tends to jump around a bit rapidly and seemingly at random, especially near the beginning, but then it soon settles down to longer chapters focusing on a particular subject. It’s interesting to read brief histories of things like weather forecasting or of the people who claimed to be able to make rain, and it would be a good starting point for further reading on the various areas. Some bits I enjoyed more than others, but I guess that’s to be expected in a book that covers so many different things, but overall I liked it.

>56 valkyrdeath: Does it cover the myth that people who sing out of tune will cause rain? ;)

>57 chlorine: Well, then it would always be raining around me because I can't sing in tune!

I don't remember that in the book, but it would explain the weather round here at times.

85. Alone Forever by Liz Prince
A collection of comic strips of varying lengths about the author’s experiences with being single. There’s often a sadness running through it, some of the strips are sweet but mostly it’s funny and I really enjoyed quite a few of them. There’s a good variety of formats from basic comic strips to parodies, and I liked the simple but effective artwork. Not a life changing book, but a fun quick read.

86. Return to Sender by Fred H. Holmes
This is a time travel book which aims to be the first in a series. The method of time travel this time is genetic rather than mechanical, with a company having discovered DNA that tracks the position and time for the individual, acting as “a builtin clock and GPS”. By manipulating this DNA, the person can be moved in time and location. Doesn’t really make much sense since changing a clock doesn’t move the clock to another time, it just means the clock is now wrong, but then time travel doesn’t make real world sense in the first place so I can go with it. What’s harder to go with is that the “hero” of the story is being sent back in time to try to change the outcome of the American Civil War so that the South won. Things don’t turn out so well once it’s done, but there’s a chunk of the start of the book involving the head of the company giving his thoroughly unconvincing explanation of why this is a good idea and waving his hands saying the South would have ended slavery within a few years anyway and expecting people to just accept it… and they do. Not one person seems to want to go against him about this, and no-one ever mentions the fact that changing a major event like that so far in the past would have meant probably none of them would have been born in the first place.

When it comes to the actual plot, it’s passable. The characters are a bit stereotyped and the main character seems to fall into a pattern of casual violence a little too easily, but as a pulp-style adventure story it doesn’t do too badly. Towards the end when it gives a sequence of newspaper snippets to show how history went following the changed events was quite well done and interesting to read through. It’s mainly in the characterisation and dialogue that things are a bit clumsy.

As the first book in a series, it’s possible that most of these flaws could be fixed if any later books are written and that a good time travel adventure could come out of it, assuming it involved a less uncomfortable premise than “let’s help the racists win”. As it is, it’s a readable story but doesn’t add much new to the genre.

87. Honey and Salt by Carl Sandburg
I’m not great with poetry. I just don’t understand the vast majority of it. Every so often I’ll come across a poem that I love, but even then most of the other work by that poet will probably mean nothing to me. It’s probably because in general I prefer things that just say what they mean rather than wrapping it in poetic language.

So having said that, I liked some poems in this book, didn’t understand most, and that’s pretty much all I can say. I’m not going to try to write a review of it because I’m clearly not qualified in any way to do so since I find poetry to just be one of those “I like what I like” things. For what it’s worth, I particularly liked “Little Word, Little White Bird”.

88. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
I didn’t know anything about these books, though after looking it up I realised I did see the Disney film of The Black Cauldron but can remember nothing about it. This one was a fun read following an assistant pig keeper with a desire to be a hero. His attempts to fulfil the stereotypical hero role on the adventure he ends up on are continuously thwarted by the fact that things never work out to plan in that way. It’s quite unusual for the era it was written in in my experience, and it makes it much more fun and adds a lot of humour. The main character can be annoying at times because of this but his companions are good characters and he seems to be changing over the course of the book. An enjoyable light read and I can imagine loving it as a kid.

89. Beloved by Toni Morrison
I don’t think Toni Morrison is for me after reading this book. It wasn’t as hard to read as I feared despite the weird writing style, but the story itself seemed to have been put together in an odd way. Constantly switching to flashbacks but never seeming to indicate clearly when it was happening, or when the perspective was switching and we were suddenly in the head of another character. Suddenly someone who was supposed to be dead would be having a conversation and I’d realise we were somewhere in the past now and it all became confusing. Having said that, sometimes the flashbacks were slightly interesting, but the main “ghost of dead baby returns in body of adult” plot did nothing for me.

Enjoyed your thoughts on Beloved. It's one if my absolute favorite books, but it's not for everyone. And we shouldn't all like the same books anyway.

>65 dchaikin: Thanks. I agree, we all have different tastes. And if everyone liked the same books, there'd be a lot less books since everyone would just be reading the same few.

90. A Book in English by Woody Aragon
I wasn’t sure whether to include books like this at first, but in the end it’s a book I’ve read so it’s going on the list, though it probably isn’t going to interest anyone else. It’s a magic book and it’s got some of my favourite thinking of any magic book I’ve got in recent years. There’s lots of powerful and usable material. I doubt I’ll be doing any of the tricks as written but I’ll most likely be adapting quite a few of them. One move in particular was worth the price of the book for me, though there are lots of other interesting ideas too. The theory chapters which close the book were quite interesting too. Probably the best magic book I’ve read recently. (In case anyone is reading this, it’s not a book for beginners either since it refers to sleights and moves and principles by name and expects you’ll already know them and some of the stuff is quite advanced.)

I'm intrigued to learn you know so much about magic.

And I'm intrigued by the title of the book. Is the name Woody Aragon enough to know what it's about? And does he usually write in another language?

My mind is stuck on Return to Sender. I'm now wondering if the sequel will have the Germans winning WWII, because they will turn out to be nice if they win?

>68 dchaikin: It's been a hobby since I was a child so I've got pretty good at it over the years, though I'm strictly amateur.

>69 FlorenceArt: It is an odd title! He's a Spanish magician and had several books out in Spanish before he wrote that one I believe. The name is probably enough amongst the sort of people who are likely the be buying the book. When it comes to the more professional level magic books, they're not usually on sale in general shops, only from specialist magic retailers so you know what you're getting.

>70 RidgewayGirl: If they had a German character, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they did. There was a Japanese American character in Return to Sender who turned out to have been secretly trying to plan to go back and change things so the Japanese won in WWII. I almost mentioned it in my review but I just didn't want to spend any more time on that one. I may not have actually got past the explanation of why the South should have won if it wasn't an ER book.

91. Poseidon’s Gold by Lindsey Davis
The fifth book in the Falco series, and it continues to be a lot of fun. This time it has Falco involved in the old detective-accused-of-murder trope, but it also focuses more than ever on his family and relationships. I like that Lindsey Davis has taken the typical hardboiled detective and not only transplanted him to ancient Rome but also inverted the whole stereotype by giving him a huge family and an ongoing relationship. Aside from the murder investigation the plot also involves some missing statues that his brother was involved in before being killed in the army. You also get to meet Falco’s father, which is fun. The plot is tight, the dialogue is well written and often funny and it’s just enjoyable all round.

92. The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
Sequel to The Book of Three and it's another fun fantasy book, though not quite as good as the first. I did love the scenes with the witches though. I don't have a huge amount to say about it. It was a fun light read but nothing too spectacular. I still like the lead character being far from perfect and making mistakes.

93. We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin
A graphic novel/memoir following the author's escape from Budapest with her mother during WW2. We see both the horrific events that were happening and her childhood perspective of them when she didn't really understand what was going on. It's an interesting read and Budapest isn't one of the places we hear about so often when WW2 is discussed. It's a story worth hearing, though it's a very brief read and could possibly have supported a longer length to flesh things out a bit more. The art style was excellent throughout and fully fits the material.

94. Here by Richard McGuire
More an art project than a traditional graphic novel, Here simply shows us one room of a house at various points in history. We get to see the events that have occured in this space, including before the house was built. It jumps around in time continuously, and sometimes the double page spread will show the room in one time period but various boxes will show that part of the room at different eras. Sometimes a set of pages will show a brief continuous part of a story amongst the other sections while other times we'll see similar events happening at very different eras. It's a thoughtful book and I could certainly imagine rereading it and seeing new things in it. It's very interesting to me to think about all the different things that have happened in one particular location.

95. Last Act in Palmyra by Lindsey Davis
Back to the Falco series with book number six. He's off out of Rome again this time, looking for a missing musician but soon getting entangled with a travelling theatre group after discovering their writer's corpse floating in water. He becomes their new playwright while secretly investigating the murder. The humour comes to the fore here and it's full of theatrical jokes and references. My favourite running joke is Falco trying to interest everyone in his idea for a play which sounds very much like Hamlet, only to be constantly told that it's a terrible idea. There's also a clown doing a standup comedy routine which sounds very much like most modern standups (and looking at actual jokes from the time, things really haven't changed much.) With the large group of suspects in a confined group it feels like Davis's take on the traditional Agatha Christie style mystery as she continues to take and twist every genre convention she can. It's also got plenty of historical details. A very fun book, and the series really seems to have hit its stride.

96. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio translated by Matt Thorn
Moto Hagio is a Japanese manga artist and writer specialising in stories aimed at girls. As with anything though, good writing is good writing, and this is a great collection of short stories that I very much enjoyed without having to be part of the target group. There's a good variety amongst the stories, ranging from generally realistic to more science fiction and fantasy themed ones, but all have a depth beyond what I was expecting. Some are better than others as always with a collection, and these stories span a large space of time, presented chronologically. I particularly enjoyed Girl on Porch with Puppy, a very short story about being different, the conjoined twins story Hanshin: Half-God and the very strange Iguana Girl. There's plenty to enjoy about pretty much all the other stories too though. A book I enjoyed much more than I expected and that I'd definitely recommend to anyone with an interest in comics and graphic fiction.

97. Death: At Death's Door by Jill Thompson
Jill Thompson tells a story about Death (and Delirium and Despair) during the time of Sandman: Season of Mists, but with cute black and white manga style artwork instead of the usual style. At least, about half the book does. When Hell has been closed by Lucifer, all the former occupants turn up at Death's house and she and her siblings have to find a way to keep them occupied while Morpheus is off sorting things out. It's a far more comical story than is usual for Sandman, and its rather fun. Thompson writes the characters fairly well, and Delirium is always entertaining. The cute artwork feels strange at first but it's well drawn and often amusing. The other half of the story is basically a straight retelling of Season of Mists itself, which seems a bit odd, but I guess was necessary for context for the rest of the story for it to work as a standalone volume. It's not a huge book and with only about half the book telling the new story there's not a huge amount of content, but it's fun and nice to look at. Not an essential part of the Sandman series but worth a read.

98. The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell
A graphical memoir about the author as she discovers the father she adored as a child had lied about basically every aspect of his life, mostly triggered when she discovers that he’s taken out a credit card in her name and maxed it out. As she investigates her father’s stories she discovers more and more deceptions. The book is also about her recognising her own problems along the way, and ultimately overcoming her addiction to alcohol and ambien. It’s an interesting story, well told, though don’t expect any resolution as to why her father was so obsessed with lying about his life.

99. Letting It Go by Miriam Katin
A second graphic memoir from Miriam Katin, this time showing her attempts to come to terms with her son’s decision to move to Berlin. Reading We Are On Our Own first isn’t really necessary, but knowing what Katin and her mother went through during the second world war helps to explain her attitude towards Berlin and her reluctance to have anything to do with it. Eventually she takes a trip there to visit her son and then returns when a museum exhibits some of her work there too, and it illustrates these trips, both good and bad aspects.

I thought the artwork in the previous book was excellent but it’s possibly even better here, and the art really adds to the storytelling too in an impressive way. As before, it was fairly short, but this time it felt like the right length for the material. Well worth reading.

100. Neurocomic by Matteo Farinella and Hana Ros
Neurocomic is a graphic novel following an Alice in Wonderland style journey through the workings of the brain. It also covers some of the history of brain science as the character meets various historical scientists on his journey. It’s a quick read and so doesn’t really go into a great deal of detail on anything and the storyline wasn’t anything too exciting. The artwork was quite good and it was enjoyable enough but nothing to particularly make it stand out. It would probably work as a nice introduction to the topics for children though.

On with the graphically focused holiday reading!


101. How to be Happy by Eleanor Davis
A collection of short comics, each with a different art style. It’s a gorgeous looking book and the art is the highlight of it. A few of the stories I didn’t really get the point of, but I enjoyed a few of them and loved all the different styles she used in the pictures. And the page where a woman describes her depression only to be told she just needs to go gluten-free was all too familiar.

102. Unnatural Selections by Gary Larson
A collection of Far Side comics. That pretty much says everything you need to know about it I think! I love the Far Side comics so I loved this. Probably not my favourite collection of them, but still good.

103. Ms Marvel: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson art by Adrian Alphona
Well, this was surprisingly great. The origin story of the new Ms Marvel, Muslim American teenager Kamala Khan. The characters are great, feeling believable and not too perfect as can happen in comics. The story is funny and well written and it’s just generally very entertaining. I’ll hopefully read some more of this when I can get hold of them.

104. Asterix and the Banquet by Rene Goscinny art by Albert Uderzo
105. Asterix the Legionary by Rene Goscinny art by Albert Uderzo
106. Asterix in Switzerland by Rene Goscinny art by Albert Uderzo
Well, these were great. I have no idea why I never read them when I was a kid, despite there being a huge collection of Asterix books in the school library, since I would have loved them. I’m always a fan of stupid puns so I love all the character names, and they’re pretty funny throughout. I missed them as a child, but I can enjoy them now anyway!

107. The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa
More catching up with stuff I missed during childhood. When I was a kid, all I saw of Disney comics were some short strips printed in Sunday newspapers which didn’t make much impression on me, so I would never have sought out anything like this anyway if it hadn’t been recommended to me (though I did like the DuckTales cartoons). It completely surprised me by being brilliantly written and drawn, often funny but also excellent in storytelling terms and in characterisation. It charts the life of the titular character from childhood to old age, ending at the point where the rest of the original Scrooge stories pick up, and incorporating all the facts Carl Barks wrote into his stories about Scrooge’s life. I loved it, but it’s made me want to read the rest of the Carl Barks and Don Rosa stories now.

108. The Mason Williams Reading Matter by Mason Williams
A fun little book of random funny thoughts and poems, along with the odd less comedic one. A slightly odd joke essay aside, I enjoyed most of this, especially a shape poem about Christmas trees which I think I’ll now have to try and find somewhere.

109. Flight edited by Kazu Kibuishi
An anthology of short comics ranging from a page to several pages, each with the theme of flight in some form, but with a wide range of styles from different artists and writers. There’s some beautiful artwork in some of the comics and it was really nice to look through. The stories were varied and mostly didn’t stand out much to me, though I enjoyed some of them. I was rushing through it a bit as I was reading at a friend’s house the night before I had to fly back home so that could have affected things too. It was definitely a lovely looking book and one I would probably have liked more time with.

110. What’s the Worst That Could Happen? by Donald E. Westlake
Another great Dortmunder novel, possibly the best yet. This time, he’s caught in the process of robbing millionaire Max Fairbanks, who then goes on to claim to the police that Dortmunder’s ring was stolen from him and takes it for himself. On getting away, he sets off to get the ring back in a series of burglaries, including at the Watergate. It’s extremely funny, many of the characters from the earlier books return and in some ways it feels like a natural end point for the series, though there’s a few books that came after it. Apparently this was the peak though and it goes downhill afterwards. This one was brilliant though.

111. The Madame Paul Affair by Julie Doucet
A short graphic novel, originally serialised in a French newspaper or magazine which means every page starts with a panel of text summarising the previous page. Julie and her boyfriend move into a cheap flat in a building full of odd people and an odd landlady who quickly disappears. They then investigate and yet more odd people turn up. It’s readable but nothing particularly interesting or memorable.

And with that, I'm finally up to date with my thread for the first time in over a month! Also at an end to my run of mainly graphic novels and comics.

112. The Apex Book of World SF 4 edited by Mahvesh Murad
The latest volume in the series of anthologies collection science fiction, fantasy and horror stories from around the world, and it’s a good one. As always with any anthology, I didn’t love every story, but there were plenty of great ones for every one that didn’t quite work for me. The definite highlight for me was The Boy Who Cast No Shadow by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, a wonderful story that I feel would stand out in any collection. It’s one of the longer stories in the collection, possibly the longest, and has so much going on it almost feels like having read a compressed novel. It’s a story set basically in the real world, only with the main two characters having fantastical abnormalities, one casting no shadow and not showing up on camera or in mirrors, the other made of glass, and it’s a story about friendship, love, and just generally being different. I’d have been happy to have read the book just for this one.

Other highlights include the moon emigration story The Four Generations of Chang E, a metaphor for the experience of various generations of Chinese immigrants. Of the more horror themed entries, Black Tea stood out with its disturbing atmosphere and situation. Most of the stories were at the very least a decent read, though there were one or two that just failed completely for me. I couldn’t follow Like a Coin Entrusted in Faith by Shimon Adaf at all and ended up not finishing it, and Single Entry by Celeste Rita Baker was written entirely in first person dialect. It’s just personal preference, but I think dialect writing is best used sparingly and I just couldn’t read pages of it at once. I also struggled with Sarama, since I think it would have helped if I knew something about the Ramayana first. These stories might be more successful for other people, but they didn’t work for me.

Generally though, the stories here are very well written and high quality, and varied in style. It’s great to have books like this to show the output from other countries in a market dominated primarily by native English speaking authors. A few of these authors I hope to check out again in the future.

Enjoyed catching up Valky. The Boy Who Casts No Shadow sounds pretty good.

>92 dchaikin: It was an extremely good story. It's always nice when there's something that stands out in an anthology.

113. Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
I’ve never read anything by Octavia Butler before. I’m not sure if a book of two short stories that were unpublished during her lifetime was the best way to start with her, but it was a pick for an online book club I’m in so I went with it. I’ll be checking out some of her novels as soon as I have a free slot in my reading.

The majority of the book is taken by the first novella, and then there’s a much shorter story following it. The second story was written for a final Harlan Ellison Dangerous Visions anthology which ended up never being published, so at least there’s a reason why it wasn’t printed in her lifetime, rather than stuff that was repeatedly rejected like a lot of posthumous publications. Both stories are well written and perfectly enjoyable to read, though I don’t have a lot to say about them. They both sort of felt like they’d be great first chapters to novels rather than things that were especially memorable on their own. The quality of the writing stood out though. I’m hoping to read Kindred sometime soon.

114. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
A semi-autobiographical novel about a boy growing up on a reservation and his experiences when he chooses to go to school away from it. Often funny, but with some serious subjects covered, it’s well written and thoroughly entertaining throughout. I can see it being perfect for the target age as a YA book, but that certainly didn’t stop me really enjoying it now too. I’m glad I read it.

115. nEvermore!: Tales Of Murder, Mystery & The Macabre edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Caro Soles
This is an anthology of short stories, all inspired in some way by Edgar Allen Poe. Some have directly based their story on one of Poe’s works, some are retellings and others have just been inspired by his gothic style. As always in anthologies, there’s a mixture in terms of quality and style, although I never really found anything dragged, which isn’t always the case in these sorts of books. The opening story, The Gold Bug Conundrum by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, was a bit disappointing as a start to the book, since it seemed fairly interesting until it came to an abrupt end with nothing having happened, but thankfully that’s not typical of the rest of the book. Street of the Dead House by Robert Lopresti is a highlight, retelling The Murders in the Rue Morgue from the perspective of the infamous orangutan, tying in with the original story while still creating something new in the process. Similarly, Nancy Holder’s Annabel Lee retells Poe’s poem from the perspective of Lee herself, and manages to incorporate a few of Poe’s other works into the story in the process. Naomi by Christopher Rice is an interesting and more supernatural take on The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masques of Amanda Llado by Thomas S. Roche spins a completely new story using elements of The Casque of Amontillado, while also having a pun on it for a title which always gets points in my book. And I particularly liked Kelley Armstrong’s The Orange Cat, which added some welcome humour amongst the gothic stories, taking on Poe’s The Black Cat as a modern legal case (incorporating a character that’s apparently from a series of books by the author.)

Most of the rest of the stories didn’t really stand out much, and there isn’t really one particular truly exceptional story, but it’s a solid collection with nothing terrible either. Any fans of Poe are likely to find something enjoyable here, and each story comes with a brief introduction by the author of where the inspiration came from, which is a nice touch.

116. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa translated by Stephen Snyder
This story follows a housekeeper as she goes to work for a former mathematics professor whose short term memory now only lasts for 80 minutes thanks to an accident years before. His ability to know what has happened recently is restricted to things he writes on notes that he sticks all over his jacket. It explores the friendship built up between the housekeeper, her son and the professor, despite the fact that for him, he’s meeting them for the first time every day. They make a connection thanks to the professor’s infectious enthusiasm for numbers, an enthusiasm that really comes through in the writing, as there’s quite a bit of maths related content, making it the perfect book for a maths geek like me. (There’s also a love of baseball in the book, which I understand less.) The writing was good, the translation flowed well, and the story was lovely, though at times sad. I’m noting the author to check out her other works sometime, though I understand they’re very different.

>97 valkyrdeath: was really interested to read this review. I read one of Ogawa's books for the first time this year (Hotel Iris) and really enjoyed it. Delighted to hear this one was also a good read - I'll add it to my wish list.

>98 AlisonY: I hope you enjoy it if you read it! I remember reading your review of Hotel Iris and it sounded extremely different to The Housekeeper and the Professor. I might well decide to read in the future, but it's one I'm not sure I'm ready for right now. I certainly would like to read some more of Ogawa though.

95-97 fun books. I'm intrigued by Robert Lopresti's take from the orangutan's view.

>100 dchaikin: The book as a whole was perfectly readable but not especially memorable, but that particular story did stand out a lot, being inspired by Poe without being completely derivative.

117. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
We Need New Names tells the story of a girl called Darling as she grows up in Zimbabwe before moving to the US about halfway through the book. It’s told in first person present tense, which I didn’t think I would like but it ended up not bothering me at all, and it actually meant that the voice of the narrator changed as the character aged, which worked really well. I was less keen on the fact that she didn’t use speech marks at all for dialogue, so sometimes I’d be reading something thinking it was part of the narration only to discover a couple of lines in that it was another character speaking. I don’t really understand why that was done, and it seems a particularly bad choice for a book that’s already in first person. It wasn’t a major issue though, just a baffling one, and overall the book was a great read and very well written.

>102 valkyrdeath: I have this book on my Kindle. I'm not sure why I haven't read it, but it may wait until next year at this point. I feel like my dance card is full.

118. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
A fun graphic novel, compiled from what was initially a webcomic, set in a parallel world where Babbage built his Analytical Engine and he and Ada Lovelace use it on various adventures, mostly involving other historical figures such as George Eliot and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It’s often funny, and despite the stories being fiction, a lot of the quotes and information used in them is taken from genuine sources about Babbage and Lovelace. Every section of the book ends with lengthy endnotes explaining some of the historical and scientific details involved. If there’s a flaw, it’s that in addition to these, the book is also overloaded with footnotes. It’s not so bad later on, but in early chapters the footnotes often take up more of the page than the comics and it halts the pace of the story. I could only get going with it at all when I decided to ignore the footnotes and then look through them afterwards. I’m not sure why all that information wasn’t just left for the endnotes.

At the end of the book, there are a few pages showing some of the more interesting source documents the author used, along with a length description about how some of the elements of the Analytical Engine would have worked. I found this quite interesting. Overall the book is enjoyable, I just think it could have been edited together a bit better.

119. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
My first ever Jane Austen read. Recently I’ve enjoyed books by Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot when I finally tried them, so I thought it was time I gave Austen a go. I don’t have much to say about this one other than I found it to be alright but not something that’s really going to stick with me. The writing was easy to read but I found it generally a bit bland and it only really got going about half way through for me. I enjoyed to bit where she plays on gothic horror and suspense conventions in the middle of the book, but otherwise I didn’t really see much humour in it either. (Though I don’t know how much there was supposed to be, I’d just seen various people stating it was her most explicitly comic book.) I don’t regret reading it, it was enjoyable enough, but not a favourite. I’ll probably try another Austen at some point though since I don’t like to judge on just one work, especially one of the less famous ones.

120. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
I wasn’t sure I was going to like this book, but I got into it pretty much straight away once I actually started it. It’s hard to know what to say about it though, since it’s one of those books with so much happening in it that it’s hard to say what it’s about. It follows various linked characters from different cultures in a portrayal of multicultural Britain. I really enjoyed it, and it was often very funny too. The characters often weren’t especially likable, but they were certainly interesting, and the various subplots are a mixture of the realistic and the absurd. It’s a sprawling work that can ramble off in different directions at times, but I was never bored. I was impressed, especially considering that it was a debut novel, and the age Smith was when she wrote it. I hope to check out some of her later books at some point.

>106 valkyrdeath: I tried to read White Teeth 10 years or so ago and I just couldn't get into it so I abandoned it a couple of chapters in. My reading tastes have changed a bit since then, so it's a title that I wonder about every now and again - perhaps on second attempt I'd like it a bit more.

>107 AlisonY: It's certainly possible. I know there's a lot of things I read now that I wouldn't have even thought about reading 10 years ago. Though it's also a book that's definitely not going to be for everyone. I just found it really readable and the humour carried me through, even at the times where I didn't like anyone involved.

121. Sane New World: Taming the Mind by Ruby Wax
The comedian turned neuroscience graduate talks about depression, using stories from her own life to highlight the points, and then talks about mindfulness as a method of dealing with it. I found some of it interesting, though, as the author admits, the mindfulness stuff isn’t for everyone, and after reading it I can see it’s not a technique for me. I appreciate that it’s all presented without any New Age gibberish, sticking to the brain science behind things, though it doesn’t go too deeply into things. There are jokes all the way through and the book is sometimes funny, though I find she could be a bit judgemental and unpleasant at times which put me off a bit. I found the book to be a quick and easy read though, and while I’m personally sceptical about mindfulness, it seems to work for some people, and when it comes to depression, if it’s going to help someone then I’m all for it.

122. Narbonic by Shaenon K. Garrity
This is a collection of all the daily strips from the first year of Garrity’s Narbonic webcomic, following a mad scientist, her evil intern and her computer technician. It’s very funny, starts well and just gets better as the book goes along. One volume down, five to go!

Just read and enjoyed your last four reviews. I would like to try White Teeth sometime. I enjoyed her book On Beauty, but it has its limitations and a lot of readers did not like it.

>112 dchaikin: White Teeth seems to get very mixed reviews in general too with a lot of people not liking it at all. I can't really say why I liked it, since I'm no good at analysing things like that, but it's probably a lot to do with enjoying the humour in it.

123. Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar
(AKA I Want To Be Philip K Dick) Take elements from every science fiction novel you can think of, mix in some stuff about Israel and the Holocaust and a lot of different characters and try to cram it into a book that’s extremely short, and you’d probably end up with a mess. And that’s pretty much Martian Sands. The writing is fine and it was never less than readable, so it’s not a terrible book, but it tries to cram too many disparate ideas into too short a space and doesn’t really get to explore any of them enough. I did have fun spotting the many references to sci-fi classics (a bar called Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, a song called Time Enough for Love) but it’s particularly obsessed with Philip K Dick, with Ubik brand cigarettes, the phrase “time out of joint” turning up, a cult with the motto “The empire never ended” and so on. The whole feel of the book seems to be aiming to be Dickish (there must be a better word for it than that.) There are some fun moments in it, such as scenes with bullets with artificial intelligence, all of them called Sam, but overall it just ends up a confusing jumble. There’s so many characters that you don’t really get to know any of them enough to really care and by the end everything goes crazy to the point that one of the characters seems to be living out a version of The Wizard of Oz for some reason. It’s interesting at times and started well, but I found it disappointing overall.

124. Lumberjanes Volume 1 by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis art by Brooke Allen
A really fun book collecting the first four issues of the comic about a group of girls at a Lumberjanes scout camp where all sorts of strange creatures keep turning up. I love the characters, they all have distinct personalities, and the dialogue is very funny. And it’s one of those books that can be enjoyed by both children and adults too, which I think we could do with more of. I definitely want to read more.

125. Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges translated by Andrew Hurley
As implied by the rather generic title, this is a collection of short stories spanning a variety of genres, but always with interesting and unusual ideas behind them. Some I liked better than others, but everyone one was intriguing in some way, from literary criticism of non-existent books and a gradually expanding encyclopedia of a fictional world to an entire society to stories about a man who never forgets a single thing and a satire of a man who tried to recreate Don Quixote word for word. I particularly liked The Library of Babel, a story about a universe in the form of a library containing every possible book, The Lottery in Babylon where a normal lottery escalates to the point of controlling everything and Death and the Compass, a kabbalistic murder mystery that puts a new angle on the typical Sherlock-style detective. I’ll eventually get round to working my way through Borges’ complete Collected Fictions volume.

126. Luisa in Realityland by Claribel Alegria translated by Darwin J. Flakoll
An apparently semi-autobiographical story about growing up in El Salvador. It’s not a novel so much as a collection of vignettes alternated with poetry. There seems to be some sort of revolution going on, but mostly the vignettes are just short snippets of memories about eccentric family members and most (though not all) of the more disturbing things are told in the poetry. I was never quite sure what was going on in wider events, which I guess can be a problem with works of this sort in translation which may have been written for a target audience who already would know all these events rather than someone ignorant like me who has only heard of El Salvador while knowing nothing about the place. It seemed quite well written and some of the segments I enjoyed, but it didn’t hang together too well for me, and I’m rarely good at understanding poetry anyway.

two interesting ones, v.

127. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo translated by Julie Rose
That Victor Hugo. He does go on a bit doesn’t he?

I finally finished this book after reading it on and off for about a year. (Nothing to do with the quality of it, but it’s about 1,300 large pages of fairly small print and would take ages to read in one go and I get antsy about not getting anything else read.) I enjoyed it mostly, though there were certainly parts where I thought it could have been shorter without losing anything, especially in the middle and with his many digressions. At one point he decides to spend almost fifty pages giving a detailed account of what happened at the battle of Waterloo, of which only the last four pages or so are actually relevant to the plot. Another time he takes twenty pages away from the plot to attempt to justify the fact that he lets his characters use slang. It’s like an essay collection has been mixed in with the novel and these segments usually turned up at a point where I was really getting into the story. Whole chunks could be removed without affecting the plot.

I enjoyed the plot though. I was familiar with the general storyline from the musical and various films but there’s more depth to it in the book. Valjean and Javert are both interesting characters and the book is at its best when it’s focusing on one or the other or both of them. Fantine and Eponine are also interesting and tragic, and I even enjoyed the lengthy character piece about the Bishop of Digne which the book opened with. Marius and Cosette on the other hand are generally pretty dull, and the lengthy section of them falling in love might as well have been replaced with thirty pages of “You’re wonderful” “No, you’re wonderful” repeated over and over again.

So I think it could definitely use some editing, but when it got on with the plot I found it well written and gripping. I also appreciate the modern English translation by Julie Rose. I’ve seen some people complaining about this particular translation, but mostly from people who seem to think using modern English is wrong. As if Victorian English is any closer to the original French than modern English is. Either way you’re still seeing it filtered through the lens of another culture, so it’s no more removed from the original text this way, and is just clearer and more pleasant to read.

Your review so makes me smile. The argot and sewers drove me mad. For me it was Valjean that I didn't like (although I liked him in the musical). Apparently Hugo would not allow any editing. Congrats on finishing. It is worth it overall.

>119 valkyrdeath: I loved the section on Waterloo -- I stayed up very late one night reading it because I had to find out how it ended. (I mean, it's Waterloo, we know how it ends!)

Liz - Waterloo was a highlight for me as well.

>120 dchaikin: Ahh, how could I forget to mention the sewers? Who doesn't want a history of the Paris sewer system inserted at a key moment in the plot? I do seem to remember seeing something saying that he wouldn't let anyone read any of it until he'd finished the whole thing so I guess that would fit with not allowing editing. I do think it was worth it despite the issues.

>121 ELiz_M: In contrast, I found myself rushing through that section as quickly as possible to get back to the plot. It's probably a well written account, but I just can't work up enough interest in military history or descriptions of battles. Any descriptions of the layout of the battlefield are also useless to me as I just can't visualise them.

128. Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary M. Talbot art by Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot
This is quite a well written graphic novel that uses the fictional Sally Heathcote character to follow through various real life events in order to chart the history of the UK suffrage movement. It covers all the main events in a clear way while telling a decent story and it shows the different suffrage groups and their methods. It also doesn’t glorify Emmeline Pankhurst at the expense of everyone else involved in the movement, which I find can happen a lot in the popular media. (For someone who claimed to want freedom for women, she only seemed to like women who obeyed her, going as far as to exile her daughter for not agreeing with her use of violence. And she only really wanted the vote for rich land owning women and actually opposed the idea of the working classes getting the vote. I think there were plenty of more admirable people in the movement who probably did more good.) Anyway, ranting aside, it’s a good book and I can imagine it would be a great introduction to the events for younger readers too. I really liked the art which was mostly in black and white with flashes of colour in places, particularly in the heroine’s red h air making her stand out instantly in any pictures she’s in. The back of the book contains lengthy notes giving background to almost every page, but none of it is needed to understand the story and it even recommends not to read them until after to avoid being distracted from the story. It’s nice to have them there for anyone who needs further details.

So I think the book works as both a story and a brief summary of an important part of history and I’m glad I read it. It’s a quick read, and the final page of the book hits quite hard. Recommended for anyone with any sort of interest in it.

Well done for finishing Les Miserables. I have yet to start it.

129. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin translated by Clarence Brown
An early dystopian novel from the 1920s that inspired 1984 amongst others, and which apparently was published in just about every other language before it finally got published in Russia in 1988. It was a good read, and interesting to see where it influenced later writers. It’s more satirical and humorous than most of the dystopian fiction I’ve read, thanks to looking back at present day society from the fictional future of the novel. I enjoyed it, though it had issues, especially with the way every time his friend is mentioned the narrating lead character has to refer to his “African lips” which just made me cringe every time it happened. And it happened a lot. It slightly spoils the experience, but otherwise it was entertaining and interesting and I’m glad I read it.

130. Lumberjanes Volume 2 by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis art by Brooke Allen
The next four issues of Lumberjanes collected into a second volume, and I think it’s possibly even better than the first. Very funny, great characters and a real sense of fun. And a lot of craziness. I love it and am looking forward to continuing.

131. Narbonic Vol. 2 by Shaenon K. Garrity
The second year of the Narbonic webcomic in book form, and it keeps on getting better. A really fun read and I look forward to carrying on in the new year.

>119 valkyrdeath: Catching up here but I have to say I loved the digressions in Les Mis for some reason. It added something to the atmosphere that I liked, though I know most people slog through it. :)

>129 janemarieprice: Sometimes I enjoyed them, but it depended on what the subject was and probably how I was feeling at the time. I was happy reading some of the historic bits or information about minor characters, but I'm not sure I could ever get interested in the history of a sewer system.

132. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
I really enjoyed this one. It’s an interesting character driven take on the post-apocalyptic genre, though a big chunk of the book is set before the collapse too. It’s told in a non-linear way, jumping backwards and forwards between different periods before and after the killer flu virus that wiped out most of the population, and between different characters, but it never becomes confusing, and you often learn something new that shows earlier events in a new light. It’s well written and hard to put down once you start reading, and throws you right into events from the first page.

133. The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett
Pratchett’s first book, published in 1971, then reworked in 1992 after he’d become successful before being republished. It follows a race of microscopic people living on a carpet, small enough that the hairs of the carpet are like huge trees. It took me longer than usual to get into this for a Pratchett book, but later on I started to enjoy it a lot more and there was plenty of his typical humour and some great lines. It starts to feel more like a Pratchett book the further you get into it. I’m not sure exactly which parts were rewritten and which were original. I enjoyed the book in the end, but it’s far from his best work. I’m glad I finally got round to reading it.

I hadn't heard of The Carpet People. Interesting. I read Strata thinking at the time it was his first book (I think I've known it wasn't for a while). It was entertaining, but not as well written as discworld.

>133 dchaikin: He also wrote The Dark Side of the Sun between Carpet People and Strata, which was effectively an Asimov pastiche. His pre-Discworld books definitely aren't of the same standard. I think it was sometime during the early Discworld books where he really hit his stride, probably around the same time he also wrote Truckers.

134. Help Fund My Robot Army!!! And Other Improbably Crowdfunding Projects edited by John Joseph Adams
This was an interesting concept. All of the stories in the book are told in the form of a fictional Kickstarted / Crowdfunding page. At first I thought it might just end up being a lot of descriptions of fictional products and little else, but most of the authors in the anthology have actually used the form in clever ways to tell a proper story, utilising updates and user comments sections to move things forward. Some of the best give brief glimpses into alternative worlds and futures, inferring what the world is like from the bits of information referred to. It spans a surprising range of subjects too, though mostly falling loosely within science fiction or fantasy. You get a pitch from a future dystopia, and one of my favourite stories refers to a rather disturbing future illness while never explaining it outright. Another of my favourites revolved around a device to remove the danger of learning spoilers, which takes another turn by the time you get to the comments. And there’s even a pitch from Nosferatu who wants to unleash a virus to wipe out all modern sparkly vampires, which is something I think would get a lot of support. The quality varies but I didn’t find any of the stories to be terrible. Some authors used the format better than others and a couple followed the format of the first story a bit too closely (the editor simply came across the title story and decided to get permission to build an anthology around it) and just gave pitches from people trying to take over the world. Overall though, it was a fun and enjoyable read. I like seeing people do something different, and while I can’t see this idea having a lot of scope, it certainly supported this book.

And to wrap up my 2015 thread, here's a link to my 2016 thread.