Here’s my 2015 book-reading according to Goodreads. (You’ll see it includes short stories and comics)
Category: book
In the past I’ve written reviews as I’ve completed books. I think I want to go back to that. However since I haven’t done that this last year, I’ll have to do one in the style of my 2014 round-up.
(most of the links in this post are Amazon Affiliate links. I get a tiny amount if you follow them and eventually buy something. If you’d rather not then don’t use them and/or clear your cookies.)
All You Need is Kill – I actually did review so follow the link if you’re interested. Here I’ll just say I enjoyed it. 7/10.
Witches Abroad
Revival
Who is Tom Ditto?
Steelheart (Reckoners Book 1)
Funny Girl
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
The Sword of Rhiannon
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
City of Stairs
Something Wicked This Way Comes
In the Unlikely Event
Turmabout
Station Eleven
Love and Mr. Lewisham
Space Captain Smith
Uprooted
The Tiny Wife
Rivers of London
The Internet is Not the Answer
Time and Time Again
The Stainless Steel Rat
Challenger Deep
How to be Good
Touch
Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series)
Next, and finally, the return of the “Melissa” awards.
Well, regardless of whatever else I do with my blog I always knew this would be the first post of 2016.
The headline is: I read 31 books last year and I am pleased with that!
General Observations
Before I dive into the books I read and the figures, a few thoughts. I am happy as I say with how much I read but also how I read. I seem to have re-gained a joy in reading. I’m also stressing less about how much I read, what to read next and whether to abandon a book. I haven’t seriously looked at my TBR in months.
I’ve been using the library more – mainly cos it’s a nice place to hang out when I’m at a loose end on a weekend, but hanging out leads to borrowing books – but I have still been buying new ebooks. I do try to avoid it but honestly it’s no tragedy if I buy a book for 99p (or even £2.99) and never read it. It’s like Netflix – I’m paying to have access to a book I may read one day.
What hasn’t changed is my memory. One of the things that went along with my I-don’t-seem-to-enjoy-reading-anymore whines was my now terrible short term memory. The fact that I only have to put a book down for a couple of days to have lost significant details, and that even with a longer book read continuously I still lose parts of the beginning by the end. I think it’s an age thing. Maybe I can improve it by getting more sleep and drinking more water. But it’s not as much a detriment to my enjoyment as it seemed.
Truth is I was depressed. And anxious. And those things don’t lend themselves to the mental effort of imagination that reading a book requires. But I’ve recovered somewhat and the enjoyment has come back.
After some thought I’ve decided to split this post into sections. Next up is figures!
So I bought the book, read a few chapters, set it aside and didn’t pick it up again until after I’d seen the movie – which was last week. I enjoyed the movie and so decided to read the book, and did.
A couple of decades or so into a global war with an invading alien race called the “Mimics”* Keiji Kiriya is a newish recruit in the United Defence Force (UDF). He’s a “jacket jockey” which is an infantry soldier in a powered exo-skeleton suit called, you guessed it, a jacket. We see him go through his day from waking up, through training, preparing for battle, fighting and subsequently dying in what seems to be a futile attempt to hold the Mimics back on the coastline of Japan. Did I say dying? Did I just give away a spoiler? Not really, as this is the premise of the book and film – we discover very early on that something is different about Kiriya, after that first death on the battle field he keeps going back, re-living the day over and over. So it’s a kind of Groundhog Day with aliens and war. We follow Kiriya as he tries to work out what’s going on, how to get out of the time loop, how to defeat the Mimics and what all this has to do with the near-mythic UDF soldier who crosses his path, Rita Vrataski, the so-called “Full Metal Bitch”.
OK. So first off I can say that both the movie and the book are fun and are different enough that if you’ve experienced only one (or neither) then it’s definitely checking out the other (or both). That said this is not a review of the movie, and I won’t be listing the differences between the two.
All You Need is Kill
is a fun, pacy, quick read. It has a certain tone to the language which is almost noirish in its grimy, toughness that I liked. It suited the story. It’s not deep but we skid along on the surface so quickly that that doesn’t matter. The time loop business was not over-used – that is to say, it didn’t become overly convoluted in a way that made my brain hurt (yes Primer I’m looking at you!) but served the purpose of the story. It’s particularly effective that what we end up with is a battle-hardened, war-weary veteran in the body of what the rest of the world sees as a raw recruit.
Like a lot of SciFi at this level the logic of it all doesn’t bear too close a scrutiny but that’s not what you’re interested in. And if you are this is probably not the book for you. If you want a fun little romp with aliens and fighting and so on then it may be.
I’d have like to have seen a slightly more nuanced view of women in this book, which you could argue is misogynistic. I think it’s mostly not but in a teenage boy’s naive, “it can’t be sexist if the women are kick-ass fighters too” kinda way. Then again nuance of any sort isn’t really that much in evidence here.
7/10 – all you need is a better title.
(*not really sure what they’re mimicking)
A book!
Was Read!!
By ME!!!
Yep. I finished The Martian by Andy Weir and I’m pleased that I did. I may even review it.
Or maybe I’ll read another one.
It’s almost that time again when I round up how well I’ve down with the year’s reading goals and set the new ones for the next year. Well I’m going to do half of that (setting goals).
Erm actually I’m going to do half of half of that (set some goals). Or a quarter of a half. Or something…
I’m officially signing up for the “TBR Triple Dog Dare” – which is a challenge to only read from your TBR list for Jan, Feb and Mar. My TBR is pretty healthy and gives a wide selection to choose from.
Actually I’ll go one further and say I want to finish books I’ve already started. OK so that’s my goal for Jan-Feb-Mar. If I get bored I’ll allow myself TBR books that I’ve not started.
I came across this book because Tom Merritt is one of the presenters of the Sword and Laser podcast to which I subscribe. More specifically I also follow the S&L group on Goodreads and it was there he posted a link to a book trailer video. I followed the link, was curious… and here we are.
The story of Lot Beta is a space opera set in a part of the universe controlled by a vast mining corporation. The hierarchy of the corporation is interesting in that it is, for the most part, hereditary, especially the senior positions. This is supposed to be because of the way the colonization process took place with people leaving behind their home planets on generation ships. I think there’s another reason as well but maybe I’ll come back to that.
Anyway a senior position opens up on “Sat A” by the death of the previous head of this unit*. Normally of course he would be succeeded by his child but this particular COO did not have one. Or did he?
And so begins a tale of a boy with a hidden past who is suddenly thrust into a position of power by a birth right he didn’t even know he had.
He says in the front matter that this was a NaNoWriMo book. I think that this shows, and not necessarily in a bad way. It’s short and has a big central idea but a lot of the avenues it could have taken aren’t expanded on, especially toward the end. Whether that was because the author was “pulling to the finish line” or simply he didn’t want to major on those parts of the book I’m not sure. What I do know is that a lot of the first half of the book is full of corporate politics and bureaucratic wrangling and power plays. Which may appeal to some but I found I was over it relatively quickly. It was well done I think just not really my thing. How our main character uses the vagaries of the supply trade agreements to assert himself over central control was cleverly worked out but for me, not as interesting as some of the later passages about space battles, mining settlement trouble-shooting and dealing with smuggling issues. In other words the action-heavy versus the talky-heavy sections of the plot were not evenly distributed.
At this point it’s probably appropriate to point out something important about the structure of the book. Which is that it’s based on a well-known myth but set in space. The author himself has mentioned this elsewhere on Goodreads but not in the book description so I feel I’d be spoiling to point out exactly which myth it is. I can see how this idea would be the sort of thing one might come up with for NaNoWriMo. It gives you a ready made plot outline to work to. It did make me think at times though, once I realised just how closely to the source he was sticking, whether he would have done certain things if he hadn’t been following this pattern. A couple of the analogues he found were quite clever {spoiler} but then there were sections I think don’t make sense at all unless you realise what it’s based on {spoiler}
It was fairly enjoyable overall. Short and readable.
6/10 – The legend of … in space!
Oh nearly forgot. The title alludes to something in the book which is a set up for a truly awful pun. {spoiler}
*I was never 100% sure whether a “sat” was an artificial satellite like a space station or a natural one like an asteroid. Plus I think there were planets but whether they had a different designation and how they fit into the corporate structure was unclear, or I simply missed it.
OK so this one I read only a month ago…
And it was for a book club and it was relatively short so I thought why not.
Do I need to give much background or a synopsis? This is the first Sherlock Holmes story. I’d never read any before. Of course I’ve seen lots of different adaptations – or bits of ones. I’ve certainly seen the modern version with Cumberbatch and Freeman, the first episode of which was based on this story and re-titled “A Study in Pink”
In fact I might have enjoyed this more if I hadn’t seen that because they were so faithful to the original that I pretty much knew who the murderer was and how he did it all along.
Having said that this book has an odd structure worthy of note. About the first half is the introduction of Holmes to Watson and then the story of the investigation of the murder, up to and including the capture of the guilty party. The story then switches suddenly to several years earlier in America and we get a sort of western with some Mormons and small town politics and power struggles. This eventually gives us the back story and motive for the killings. I quite enjoyed this section even if the portrayal of the Mormon culture was clearly a harsh caricature.
It’s odd for a modern reader because in any current crime story – especially on film or TV I suppose – the unveiling of the killer, the reasons for the crime and how the detective solved it would all appear in quick succession. Here we get the first, the ‘American interlude’ for half a book and then the other two. That felt odd.
Well it was an OK read and I can say now I’ve read Sherlock Holmes. Not sure I feel the need to read any more though.
6/10 – reasonably good, especially in the second half.
I’ve been a bad boy – I read this book almost two months (TWO MONTHS!) ago and I’m only now writing it up. So sorry. Here we go:
I picked this book because it’s written by the wife of one of the presenters of one of my favourite podcasts – The Slate Culture Gabfest. She was on the show to talk about the book and it sounded intriguing. It was the kind of book I might read anyway and it was just about to come out so I thought I’d give it a go.
The Never List is the story of a woman who was abducted and kept in a cellar for years. However the story begins a decade after she was freed and her kidnapper was imprisoned. Now he’s up for parole and she wants to make sure he doesn’t get it. He’s also been writing to each of his victims and she believes this could be more than the apparent remorse it purports to be. This sparks the beginning of an investigation and an uncovering of a much bigger intrigue. It seems her abductor may have had connections to a crazy cult and may even be trying to direct events on the outside. Determined to stop him she sets off to find out more.
So this book functions on at least two timelines. We have the story of the investigation in the present but then we’re given flashbacks to what happened years before. So what is happening now and what had happened are both suspense parts of the novel.
I did enjoy this book. It was well written for the most part. I think the early sections especially work really well. Later on the plot takes over and it becomes a little implausible. Zan spends time telling us about how the hero became a virtual recluse, working from home and rarely venturing out, only opening her door to a very select few. She has to overcome this fear of the outside world in order to go on her investigative journey and whilst initially we see her struggling with this psychologically, it gets a little forgotten. She’s soon taking planes, renting cars, sleeping in hotels and generally running around the country as if that’s the most natural and easy thing in the world for her. Maybe not quite but it felt like her agoraphobic tendencies had been a bit forgotten.
The other thing that stood out to me was that there’s almost no description of what he did to his victims. It seems to have been physical torture rather than sexual abuse, although they are kept naked, but I’m not sure whether we’re meant to infer a combination of both. When I read Blacklands I said how I like the fact that the author respected the victims enough not to glamourize the perpetrator. I guess Zan may be doing the same her but given the genre it felt a little coy.
Finally there were some law enforcement issues that stretched credulity – an FBI officer who handed over sensitive information virtually on request.
So I guess I thought I was going to get a harrowing psychological examination of the impact of a crime, and it started out that way, but it eventually turned into more of a what-will-happen-and-how-will-they-catch-him thriller. A fairly decent one, plausibility issues aside, but a different book than what I was expecting. What I was expecting was the ending which I guessed so that was a shame.
7/10 – a pretty decent thriller.
This book was an Amazon ‘deal of the day’. I’ve become quite addicted to checking (usually just after midnight) and sometimes I just like buying a new book. This has of course done my TBR list no favours. Still it’s a relatively harmless vice (ebooks tend to be cheap).
This book may have cured me of the habit.
Orkney is the story of a married couple who arrive on an Orkney island for their honeymoon. They are a strange couple because there’s forty years difference in their ages. He is an almost-retired English professor who expected to end his days single and not discontented among his books. She was a student and has some strange attraction to the north and the sea.
The book follows their two-week stay on the island, with a few flashbacks to their earlier life.
This is a short book – 61,000 words – and yet I struggled to finish it. In fact I put off reading other books because I was determined to finish it first but was finding it hard going. This is actually the exact opposite of The Guiding Principle for this year but in my defence:
- I have abandoned a few books and I felt like I needed to finish one
- it was short and that kept tempting me to just finish it in a day or so
- I went through a period of not feeling like reading so I may as well not be reading a book I didn’t enjoy as one I did (but might remember with sadness for other reasons)
So no, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not that it’s a bad book. I think that it does something I’m not that interested in. Despite the shortness of the book, the story is even shorter. The bulk of the bulk is about evoking a sense of place, a tone. There is a dreamy, ghostly, ethereal quality to the writing. I can imagine some people reading it and just soaking in the images the prose creates and loving it. For me, and this is as much a deficiency in me as anything, it was a book in which not much happens. And what does happens is rather melancholy.
Nevertheless this is my blog and this review is my impression of the book.
5/10 – well written but not for me.