I missed one!

FIRST THING'S FIRST.  I missed a book, you guys!  Number 63 on this list is currently Life of Pi by Yann Martel - it SHOULD be Deadline, by Mira Grant.  I don't know how I forgot that, since I definitely logged it on Shelfari!  Anyway, Deadline was fun, you should definitely read the Newsflesh books (they are must-reads for zombie/horror fans, and recommended for fans of action/adventure/smart writing).

Which means that we're actually on...

70.  Redshirts, John Scalzi
Scalzi CLEARLY knows what he's talking about vis a vis science fiction television.  Redshirts is clever, witty, and the most genre savvy thing I think I've ever read.  It's the story of the apocryphal redshirts, a reference to those poor bastards on Star Trek that never make it to the commercial breaks - and what happens when one ensign starts to question what, exactly, is going on on his ship.  The twist is unexpected (at least it was for me, based on what I'd heard about the book I thought it was going to go in an entirely different direction) and the ending is satisfying, even while Scalzi is rubbing the goofy and ridiculous tropes we've all gotten used to right in our faces.  I don't believe this story would have come off half as well from someone who didn't a.) know the genre inside and out and b.) have the sentimentality required to treat these plot devices with fondness and respect.

71.  The Luxe, Anna Godbersen
Gossip Girl set in 1899, which works - it's a little less frivolous, because you get the sense that, even though the characters are all young, beautiful, and narcissistic, they are dealing with choices that matter and effect other people.  Frothy and fun while still handling some serious issues (marriage, bankruptcy, suicide, etc.).  A good palette cleanser.

The next four books on my docket are:
The White Road, John Connolly
City of Bones, Cassandra Clare
My Lobotomy, Howard Dully with Charles Flemming
and hopefully, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan (I'm waiting for this one on inter-library loan)

If I can get through those before January 1, I will have read 75 books this year that I've never read before, and I think that's pretty awesome.

Holiday Break Reading

66.  Snuff, Terry Pratchett
Sam Vimes is my favorite character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, so I was excited to find one of his books I hadn't read yet.  There's a bit of a template for the books featuring Vimes: he investigates a crime with vigor, typically because no one else will touch it, causing lots of political upheaval because he's Vimes and he has no fucks to give about class hierarchy.  Vimes is Pratchett's mouthpiece for exploring classism, racism, and cultural collision, and Snuff is no different from Feet of Clay, The Fifth Elephant, or Thud! in this respect.  Instead of golems, dwarves, or trolls, we have goblins, treated like vermin by the rest of the sentient creatures on the Discworld - until Vimes investigates a murder.  It's a template book, but Pratchett's writing is so damn good and his characters are so damn fantastic (this one in particular has the chance to develop Vimes' son, who is a typical six-year-old - obsessed with bodily functions and adorably empathetic) that it really doesn't matter.  It's a lovely cap to the adventures of Vimes.

67.  The Whisperers, John Connolly
Another template author, Connolly's books about Charlie Parker are all pretty similarly mapped out.  Like Pratchett, Connolly escapes a lot of criticism because of the strength of his writing and his characters; I particularly loved the way The Whisperers played with perspective and tense.  Much of it is told from the first-person perspective of Parker, but Connolly hardly lets this restrict the story, feeling free to bounce between narrators, third-person perspective, and back and forth in the story's timeline.  It never loses coherency and provides a neat way of telling the story, wherein the reader has more pieces than Parker but in a way that doesn't spoil the final confrontation.

68.  Blackout, Mira Grant
This was a satisfying way to end her zombie trilogy, but I do think that Blackout ends up being the weakest of the three.  One of the biggest conflicts in the novel is an existential dilemma that never really convinced me; it might be genre-jadedness, since it's a question that pops up in a lot of science fiction books I've read, but (without spoiling anything) Grant doesn't push it hard enough for it to be effective.  Other than that, Blackout is exciting and satisfying, if a little rushed at the conclusion; the final scene seems a bit too easily tied up.  I think the problem is that Feed, the first book, was SO strong and SO compelling that, even though Deadline and Blackout are really good reads, they don't quite measure up to the power of the first book.  You'll want to finish the story, though, because it's a hell of a ride (and I'd rather read Grant's worst book than the best book from SOME authors, just sayin').

Tigers and Spies

63.  Life of Pi, Yann Martell
I read this book because the movie trailer looks so deliciously beautiful, and while I'm still excited about the movie and I largely enjoyed big chunks of the book...meh.  I said on twitter that I give Life of Pi a solid A for effort, but a D for execution - a 66%, to be precise.  The first two thirds are great.  The first third or so is about Pi's life in India and his family's zoo, and is a pretty thoughtful meditation on the nature of faith and religion.  It's really beautifully written.  The next third is about Pi's survival in the lifeboat with the tiger, which is stark and brutal and raw (pretty much exactly how you'd expect it to be).  The final third goes off the rails and gets ridiculous in a way I just can't get on board with.  My (sure to be) unpopular opinion is that at this point, you should probably wait for the movie and, if you dig it, then invest some time in the book.

64.  Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
Help, my HEART.  This was a struggle to get into - I skimmed the first fifty or so pages really hard - but the payoff is so worth it.  Code Name Verity is the story of two young women fighting for the British during World War II; Maggie as a transport pilot, and Julie as a...well, she's a spy, really.  Julie gets captured by the Gestapo in France, but not all is as it seems and that's all I can tell you without giving anything away.  It's heartbreaking, and touching, and once again I was reading it on the train when the shit really hit the fan and I got all weepy on public transportation.  I really have awesome timing with that.

65.  Master of Disguise, Antonio J. Mendez
After seeing and loving Argo so much, I pretty much had to check out the memoir that Ben Affleck's real person counterpart wrote about his career in the CIA.  It's fascinating!  Mendez isn't a great writer, and I wish it had felt more exciting, but the details of his operations and duties are hypnotic.  Even when the writing fails to convey the tension that I wanted, the functional danger of what he was doing comes through loud and clear.  A must-read for anyone interested in the workings of our espionage system (or, you know, if you liked the movie).

Ghost Stories and Zombies

Y'all know how much I love lists.  In a break from our regular programming, I present to you:

Martha's Top Ten Horror Novels

Because it's Halloween, and All

If you read my other blog, Boycott Bluray (if not, why don't you?) you may have heard about my aversion to watching horror movies.  It comes with a lot of  caveats - I don't like ghost stories but am generally fine with slasher movies, but I'm also utterly fascinated by them and spend hours reading the plots of horror movies I will never ever watch on Wikipedia.  Also, I've been watching (and enjoying!) American Horror Story.  So, you know.  When I say I don't like watching horror films, take it with a grain of salt.

One thing I can say definitively is that I love READING horror, and I have for a long time.  So, in this spookiest of seasons, let me share with you some of my favorites.

Blood Music, Greg Bear

Medical and body horror.  Greg Bear is masterful at medical-based science fiction, and this novella is the perfect blend of clinical medical science and eerie future tech.  It's a little bit Prey, a little bit The Blob, and a whole lot of skin-crawling disease.

Bonechiller, Graham McNamee

For anyone who thinks creature features aren't scary.  This one, taking place in the frozen darkness of Alaska in the wintertime, reaches right into your primal survival center and wrings you out.  It's about a creature that stalks children, biting them...and returning later to collect.  A group of kids decide to fight back.  This novel is creepy and cold, living up to its title, and will make you want to stay indoors once the sun goes down.

Curse of the Wendigo, Rick Yancey

This is the second book in Yancey's Monstrumologist series, and I think it's the best.  Everything the first volume does, Wendigo does better: the gritty Victorian setting, examining human nature, peeling back the layers of civility to expose the savagery within.  It expands the world of Will Henry and his monster-studying (and hunting) master, Dr. Pelinore Warthrop, and does what The Monstrumologist didn't quite manage to do: give the good doctor some humanity.  It's also viscerally disgusting and pretty terrifying, especially when you consider that this is a young adult novel.

Every Dead Thing, John Connolly

I'm not a big fan of cops and robbers mysteries, which is why it is continually a pleasure to read Connolly's books about the intrepid investigator Charlie Parker.  These are detective stories imbued with a heavy amount of supernatural horror, and while he hardly ever comes out and actually says that Parker is involved in a larger war between good and evil, it's heavily implied.  Parker is a man haunted by figurative ghosts, until he starts tracking a grisly serial killer...and the ghosts who speak to him become much more literal, and much more personal.  There are a whole bunch of these, and I recommend them all.

Feed, Mira Grant  

Less outright horror, this superbly written zombie novel slowly reveals details of life in the world post-zombie apocalypse as well as bites of a conspiracy that will make your hair stand on end.  It questions the nature of truth, the relationship we have to fear, and the human survival instinct.  Not your average zombie story - quite a bit better, in fact.

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

I freely confess to not having finished this book...yet.  The truth is, it got under my skin so bad that I had to walk away from it for a while, and it's so dense that it's been a little intimidating to get back to.  When I started it I had no idea that a book about a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside

Rotters, Daniel Kraus

A zombie book that has no zombies in it.  It's just as gross, though!  Joey, the main character, moves in with his dad after his mother dies and discovers that Dad makes his living digging up the dead and plundering their coffins.  So, naturally, he decides to learn the family trade.  Kraus is so descriptive the pages fairly reek of the dead, and even though there's nothing supernatural about this story you'll still want the lights on when Joey decides to take some unconventional measures to solve a bully problem later in the book.

'Salem's Lot, Stephen King

There are two King novels on this list, and I STRUGGLED to keep him from overtaking it completely.  But I finally decided I couldn't live without 'Salem's Lot being here, because it is, simply put, one of the best vampire novels ever written.  King's vampires are not romanticized, which makes them more frightening than most.  They are animals, and they are clever, and no matter how young their bodies are they will eat you.

The Shining, Stephen King

Let's face it, my top ten Stephen King novels could probably comprise a list of its own - he's prolific and extremely good at what he does, and that is to bring me, white knuckled, to the edge of my seat with slow-burn terror.  I think The Shining is pretty much the microcosmic best of what Stephen King does: it takes his fascination with inherent evil, an innocent child hero, and a spiral into bloody madness, and it does so in less than 700 pages.  It's nerve-wracking, claustrophobic, terrifying, and exhilarating, and has made more of an impression on me than almost any other book.

The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris
Will there ever be a psychopath as charismatic as Hannibal Lecter?  I honestly kind of hope not - one of the things that makes him so memorable is how unique he is in the horror landscape.  I prefer this one to the followup, Hannibal, both because the ending doesn't go totally off the rails but also because watching two dangerously insane people circle each other like tigers makes for some gripping thrills.  Buffalo Bill is horrible, but even his flaying activities can't compare to the smooth, eerie, compelling cannibal Lecter.

Books! And Comics, Lots of Comics

57.  Feed, Mira Grant
A zombie book with new stuff to offer!  Much like World War Z, the world Feed takes place in is one that has already dealt with the zombie uprising - it opens with Georgia and Shaun, our intrepid blogger heroes, filming footage for their news site in a world where people have learned to cope with the reality of the undead.  Grant goes into all sorts of interesting details, like the function of news blogs in the media and the medial science behind the zombie virus.  She also presents an interesting plot bait-and-switch: this book isn't really about zombies.  They've already happened, they're here, get over it, and deal with the presidential campaign Georgia and Shaun (and the rest of their bloggers) get invited to cover.  A really, really interesting story about the nature of fear, our relationship to the truth, news, spin, and the media, and the courage of the desperate   I'm in the middle of the sequel, Deadline, right now, and let me tell you: these books kick you RIGHT in the feels.

58.  Fear to Tread, James Swallow
The Blood Angels chapter in the Horus Heresy novels.  It was ok; it had the weird Chaos shit I love, but the Blood Angels on the whole are kind of douchey.  I'd rather read about Ultramarines (or Sallies, WHERE IS MY SALLIES BOOK, GAMES WORKSHOP?), but it had New Information and some cool scenes showing the relationship between the primarchs.  Although, at the end you're really left wondering why the Emperor didn't just erase the whole damn lot of blood-drinking mutants...

Ok, so I just read what I wrote about Fear to Tread and realized it makes zero sense if you aren't familiar with the Warhammer 40K universe (much like every Horus Heresy blurb I've written in this blog, probably).  If you're a fan of military sci-fi or epic science fiction, do yourself a favor: grab a copy of Horus Rising by Dan Abnett.  It's a deep rabbit hole, but this series has some excellent shit in it.

59.  My Name is Not Easy, Debby Dahl Edwardson
A really heartbreaking book about Eskimo and Native American kids who attend Catholic boarding school in the 1960's.  I read it for my advocacy class, and it's obvious why my professor wanted us to: no one advocates for these kids.  They think they are, but My Name Is Not Easy really shows the damage that white privilege and thinking you know better about someone's life than they do can do.  There's a nifty little afterward in the back about how one of the characters' stories is the author's husband, and essentially true to life, which gives the whole thing a strong tang of authenticity.

60.  Batgirl vol. 1: The Darkest Reflection, Gail Simone and Ardian Syaf
I'm going through a serious Batgirl crush right now, you guys.  This one is the first trade paperback from Batgirl's New 52 reboot, and Barbara Gordon is seriously the best character ever.  She's smart and resourceful and confident, and has realistic fears and fucks up sometimes and kicks SO MUCH ASS that I can't even handle it.  The metaphors in this book are a little heavy, but the art is great and, like I said, Barbara is seriously an awesome character.

61.  Suicide Squad vol. 1: Kicked in the Teeth, Adam Glass and Federico Dallocchio
I bought a bunch of New 52 trades last weekend, can you tell?  While I don't like Harley Quinn's new character design, I continue to find her completely fascinating, and the other supporting cast is pretty compelling.  I was not familiar with the Suicide Squad before picking up the reboot - for others not familiar with the concept, it's basically a collection of villains that have been apprehended and now get a chance to shave time off their life sentences by serving on a task force for impossible government tasks that have a low chance of survival.  Harley carries a giant hammer and there's a guy with tattoos that sets shit on fire.  It's pretty rad.

62.  Batman vol. 1: The Court of Owls, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
This book is fucked, y'all, but only in the best way.  I know that DC has been putting out some shaky work in the fast few years, but so far I've been really impressed with the reboot, and if you're into Batman AT ALL I think you should check out the new stuff.  It's dark and kind of weird, but hella exciting and super interesting.

I'm running out of witty titles for these things

54.  The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson
Boyfriend's mom likes to lend me realistic fiction books about incredibly strange people, which always end up being highly enjoyable and balanced somewhere between endearing, amusing, and a little bit sad.  The Family Fang is no exception, although the strangeness is booted up to eleven - Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists specializing in public disruption, and their children Annie and Buster get used as tools in their performances until they're old enough to flee into the normal the world.  The book does a lot of questioning about the nature and value of art, as well as studying the weight of family connections.  (When Annie and Buster fall on hard times as adults, they are forced to move back in with their parents - to everyone's consternation.)  I enjoyed it, although it gets pretty bleak in places; the chapters alternate between what is happening in the book's present and the Fangs' performances in the past.  Reading about the things the parents persuade their children to do in the name of art is like a train wreck: mesmerizing and traumatic.

55.  Nothing, Janne Teller
This was one of the selections on my YA Literature class syllabus that I did not get a chance to read, but after hearing from my classmates it sounded rather intriguing.  It is, but it's...rough.  Nothing is a Danish book about a class of 13 year olds, one of whom decides that since nothing matters, nothing means anything and nothing is worth doing, so he starts spending every day up in the branches of a tree.  His classmates decide to show him that there is meaning in the wold by collecting what they come to term their "heap of meaning" - a pile of things that mean the most to them.  Except it becomes obvious that no one is contributing what means the most to them, so they start picking for each other, and...things escalate quickly.  It's horrifying, watching what these kids push each other to do; the front cover flap calls it reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, which turns out to be a pretty apt comparison.

56.  Muchacho, LouAnne Johnson
Read for my advocacy class.  It's about a Hispanic high school student in New Mexico, who can fairly be described as "high risk."  He goes to an alternative school and has an incredibly bitter outlook on life, until he starts dating a girl who's smart and perceptive enough that he starts trying to turn himself around.  Gang activity, drug talk, and some pretty deep insights abound - it's a good read, but there are moments where I simply did not believe that some of these insights could have originated with the character, considering how disengaged he is and his education level.  

Goal!

51.  Americus, MK Reed and Jonathan Hill
I read this (and The Chosen One) for my youth advocacy class.  It's a deceptively simple story about a kid growing up in small-town America who loves to read more than he likes interacting with other people, and loves one fantasy series in particular.  His best friend comes from an extremely religious family, the mother of whom finds him reading the newest installment and organizes a crusade against the library to get the books banned.  Superficially, all the characters are caricatures, with the shy bookworm, the militant librarian, and the religious zealot.  Hill's art, though, goes huge lengths to show the emotional conflict in each character, and reveals more depth than the writing might initially suggest.  (Which is not to say the writing is lacking, simply that the art and writing work in concert to provide a fuller picture of the story.  You know, the way a graphic novel is designed.)

52.  The Chosen One, Carol Lynch Williams
Uggh, my heart.  This is another one I read for my advocacy class, and it was a lot like getting kicked in the teeth.  Kyra, the main character, is a14-year-old daughter to a polygamist family in a religious compound, and she's told that the Prophet has had a vision about her getting married...to her 60-year-old uncle.  The book is about her emotional turmoil and ultimate rebellion, but it's also about her family and the way they love and protect each other.  It is rough, but Williams treats these people in a very human way, and doesn't just vilify the adults in the compound (well, not MOST of them.  Kyra's mothers and father are never vilified.  The Prophet and her uncle, however...).  It's sensitive, and astonishing, and an incredibly fast read.

53. Iron Warriors Omnibus, Graham McNeill
This is actually comprised of, I think, two complete novels and some short fiction, but I'm counting it as one because I read them bound together and because I do what I want on my blog.  McNeill is fun to read as always, but I confess, reading this much fiction where the bad guys win every single time was bad for my morale.  It gets exhausting after a while, especially when the front-and-center characters are as loathsome as these Chaos Space Marines.  I just...I just need to read about some good guy victories, ok?

I hit my goal this week!  I have read 52 books in WAY less than 52 weeks.  Now to see how many books I can finish before 2013!

This post is mostly about Horror Novels

49. Bones of the Yopasi, Graham McNeill
This is the second book in the Dark Waters trilogy by McNeill, which are novelizations in the universe of the FFG Cthulhu games (Arkham Horror, Elder Sign, Mansions of Madness).  I picked up the first one, Ghouls of the Miskatonic, at GenCon 2011 and have been waiting pretty eagerly for volume two (released, appropriately, at GenCon 2012).  I know McNeill first from the fabulous work he does for Games Workshop - I've mentioned some of his Horus Heresy work right here on this blog (his books are, largely, my favorites).  It's slightly baffling to me that his work with FFG isn't as strong, but as people have noted, the Cthulhu mythos universe may just be more difficult to write within - it's got the time period constraints, being set in the '20s, which comes with a whole load of issues (dialogue seems to be McNeill's biggest problem, all his characters end up sounding like Casablanca cliches) but in general, the Dark Waters books serve up a heaping dose of Elder God weirdness and some fun action.  At the end of the day, that's all I want.

50. 11/22/63, Stephen King
This is the third King novel I've read this year for my challenge, and I think it's my favorite.  When I was about 13, I went through an intense Stephen King phase: I loved (and still love) horror fiction, in a way that surprises most people who know how terrified I am of horror film.  But reading something is different from watching it, and King is a master of the genre.  I read IT, The Shining (one of my top five books ever), Eyes of the Dragon, 'Salem's Lot, Four Past Midnight, almost everything I could get my hands on (I missed some cornerstones, like Carrie, which I'm going to get to before the film remake comes out next spring).  At his best, King writes brilliantly paced, incredibly eerie prose that descends into the stuff of shambling nightmares.

What is so amazing about 11/22/63 is that it is both completely recognizable as one of King's works, but also something totally unlike anything I've read of his before.  It's a time-travel novel, and while it carries some of the typical tropes you'd expect to find in one, it's also a haunted house novel akin to The Shining.  The characters, especially our would-be hero Jake, are fighting against a malevolent, intangible force...which is time itself, rather than a spirit or ghost or something else supernatural, as Jake tries to do the impossible and prevent the assassination of JFK.  It's also a brilliant example of the way that King can write complete lives for his characters that don't seem to be particularly relevant to the specific story he's telling, but are compelling in and of themselves until the moment you realize, gob-smacked, that EVERYTHING you've read matters.

I did smile a little at one particular moment, because King is also known for being self-referential, and there was a moment were I thought he was going to slot the total plot of a previous novel into this one.  He doesn't, and unless you've read IT I don't think it would have mattered, but having read IT gives a little more insight into the world of 11/22/63.  Because, like I said, everything you've read matters - even if it didn't happen in this particular book.

It's Been A Long August.

46.  State of Wonder, Anne Patchett
I really wanted to like this more than I did.  Patchett is a beautiful, lyrical writer, but the story in this...just didn't work for me.  There's medical research in the Amazon, and the main character has to go find out what happened to her colleague, and the doctors working in the rain forest are living and working with a tribe of native people who could hold the secret to post-menopausal fertility.  The characters are intriguing, especially the acidic Dr. Swenson (who is leading the research team and has been for several years), but everything breaks down in the face of a very uncomfortable notion: it feels like Patchett is relying far too much on colloquial stereotypes, rather than on any actual experience or research, and ultimately I don't see that she says anything new about the issues she raises (and the rain forest itself feels like it stepped right out of Heart of Darkness - I'm sure we can all agree we don't need another definitive "savage worlds" narrative).  I've heard her other books are better, so I'll give them a shot, but I was disappointed with this.

47. Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star, Brandon Mull
These books are so fun!  The follow-up to Mull's first Fablehaven book ups the ante accordingly, pulling in the mysterious and evil organization, offering plenty of action, and leaving you with a much crunchier cliffhanger than volume 1.  I don't often feel surprised by the twists in children's/YA lit, but this one kept me guessing a little longer than most.  Recommended if you enjoy kid lit fantasy.

48.  Desperation, Stephen King
Hnngh.  Overall, not my favorite of King's - but it DID have a whole lot of the creepy, weird, gross horror stuff which is basically my motivation for reading Stephen King.  Unlike a lot of his books, Desperation hits the ground running; you don't get the slow burn build-up of The Shining or Salem's Lot.  Instead, you are instantly dropped into the middle of the desert, on the highway, with a murderous cop pulling people over and dragging them back to his town (Desperation, Nevada) where he may or may not have killed every single living person.

The big reason I didn't love this one as much as others is that, while it deals with King's typical examination of evil and the relationship between good, evil, faith, and possession, it's not subtle.  David, an eleven-year-old boy, is in direct contact with God.  God sent them there.  I'm not a fan of this trope because I feel like it takes some of the tension out.  When King lets things be more subtle, when his characters are less obviously "guided by God," there's more room for uncertainty and for human error.

I do kind of love the notion that he wrote a "companion" novel, called The Regulators, under his Richard Bachman pseudonym and published the novels side-by-side (The Regulators takes place in a parallel universe, with the same characters in different positions and the same overall villain).  I'd like to check that one out, just to see the complete vision of the story.

Forty-Five is Such an Even Number

44.  Ranger's Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan, John Flanagan
I read this on a lark, because I run into the Ranger's Apprentice books a lot when I'm shelving at the library.  The first one was fun, a fairly standard fantasy kingdom-type tale about a couple of adolescents learning how to be heroes.  The Rangers are the covert operation in the kingdom, and Will, our main character, gets personally selected to train under one of the more notorious Rangers in the kingdom.  I appreciated that his story, about stealth and subtlety and learning how to be effective with cunning rather than strength, is intercut with that of Horace, a boy who goes to Battleschool to learn how to be a knight.  Both boys end up being preternaturally skilled at their assigned tasks (surprise), but they do still have to work at it - there are no shortcuts or easy solutions in this book. 

45.  Messy, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
The long awaited follow-up to the effervescently clever Spoiled did not disappoint.  Heather and Jessica bring the same biting wit to their dialogue that they deploy on their website gofugyourself.com, and it hits just the right notes coming out of the mouths of sarcastic oddball Max and her nemesis-turned-business-partner, the beautiful and savvy Brooke Berlin.  Even when elements of the plot feel predictable, the Fug Ladies bring a refreshing perspective to their critique of the Hollywood Machine through blog entries ghost written by Max (as Brooke, providing the main conflict later in the book).  Plus, they managed to work in a turban AND a reference to the episode of One Tree Hill where a dog eats a guy's heart.  Perfection.

Almost done and it's only July

40.  Lockdown, Alexander Gordon-Smith
A friend of mine is reading the Monstrumologist books by Rick Yancey, which I've already read (and adored), and hearing him talk about them made me crave something dark, gritty, scary and weird.  So I looked up some title read-alikes on Novellist and pulled this title out of a pile.  It was ok - definitely not lacking in the dark and weird arena.  The story is about Alex, a teen who has the misfortune to be a small-time criminal growing up in the aftermath of the so-called Summer of Slaughter (an event in the book's history where teen gangs killed huge numbers of people).  When he gets framed for the murder of his friend, the judge locks him away for life in the juvenile detention center Furnace.  Furnace is basically hell with more nutritious food, complete with Nazi-esque body horror, some super creepy dogs that habitually tear inmates to pieces, and a geographic location a mile or so under the earth.  It turns into a pretty standard escape-from-prison story, but I appreciated the horror dressings Gordon-Smith applied in abundance.



41.  Fablehaven, Brandon Mull

I've been supervising junior volunteers at the library this summer, and they've been plying me with reading recommendations.  Fablehaven was one of these, and it turned out to be super fun.  It's young-young-adult fantasy, about a sister and brother who get sent to stay with their grandparents over summer break and find out that they're basically gamekeepers for a forest preserve full of fantastical creatures.  The fairies in Fablehaven are definitely the new breed, more inclined to harm and mischief than just being pretty, and the excitement ramps up after a pretty spooky midsummer night scene when the grandfather gets kidnapped.  I just got the second book in the series and I'm looking forward to reading more.

42.  Full Dark, No Stars, Stephen King
King's short stories are kind of hit-or-miss for me - for every Langoliers there's a Trucks, often in the same collection.  I thought that the first and the last stories in Full Dark, No Stars were pretty excellent; the middle two, not so much.  I had some trouble with one - it deals with the graphic rape and abuse of a young woman, and reeks a bit of appropriation; the other one I didn't care for was just too...boring.

43.  Age of Darkness, ed. Christian Dunn
Moar Horus Heresy.  This was fun, even the piece by Gav Thorpe (which was at least short fiction rather than a whole novel).  The big surprise for me was that the stand-out piece wasn't by Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, or Aaron Dembski-Bowden (easily the strongest writers in Games Workshop's bull pen), but by some guy I'd never heard of named Rob Sanders.  His piece, "The Iron Within," wrecked me in a way I'm only used to from McNeill.  Good stuff.

I just really like Moby-Dick, ok

37.  Railsea, China Mieville
I like Mieville, I really do, and this was a fascinating examination of Moby-Dick through a western/dieselpunk lens.  But there are times when I feel like Mieville might be being too clever with his language.  He has some partial chapters that exist only to tell you he's not going to talk about something right at that moment.  But the story is good, and extremely interesting because while it's only superficially an adaptation of Melville's original, it explores many of the same themes and ideas.  Plus the world Mieville has imagined is utterly fascinating to me: the railsea of the title is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, in lieu of the ocean there are thousands of miles of looping, endless railroad over earth that's full of gigantic desert creatures (like the ivory-colored mole that our captain is chasing).  Interesting stuff.

38.  The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
Ugh, my heart.  Describing this one to other people is a little rough, because at its heart it's about teenagers dying from cancer.  But it's also a coming-of-age story, and a love story, and sort of an adventure story?  It's a lot of things that Green does really well, and it's tragic and heartbreaking and I think I really loved it.  Here, if Green's teenagers sound a little too clever for their age, well, I bet terminally sick children have to grow up a little faster and more sharply than other people.  Hazel, his heroine, will charm you and probably make you cry.

As a side note, I REALLY have to stop reading books like this on public transportation.  I mean REALLY.

39.  Aliens Omnibus volume 1, Various
Fun fun fun.  This is a compilation of three sequential comics, written as part of the Alien expanded universe, and they take place (I believe) between Aliens and Alien 3.  It's a cold, cynical look at how Earth would react to knowing about the existence of the xenomorphs, and we get the government, private corporations, civilians, religious groups...all over the map.  It's creepy and it's scary and it's violent, and basically everything I wanted from a comic about acid-blooded, homicidal aliens.

Needs Moar Discworld

34. I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett
I'm done with the Tiffany Aching books now, and that is a sincere tragedy.  I love Tiffany and the witches almost as much as I love Sam Vimes in the Discworld universe, and I would be very sad if Tiffany didn't manage to make her way into future Discworld adventures.  She is clever, resourceful, pragmatic; but in true Pratchett style, she's also proud, a little short-sighted, and short-tempered.  Watching her suck it up and solve the problems her own actions cause is inspiring to anyone who's ever had to fix a mess they caused with good intentions.

35. The Black Angel, John Connolly
Typically, I prefer the Connolly books with a less overt supernatural tone, but this Charlie Parker mystery was everything I want in supernatural crime noir.  I love it when books explore the deeply weird, and Black Angel is not afraid to go there - ossuaries, art crafted from human bone, and the darker side of religious belief play prominent roles.  Louis and Angels, the caustic sidekicks, are back where I think they're strongest: as Parker's squadmates, just left of the spotlight, where they shine best.    

36. Cinder, Marissa Meyer
This was a big pile of meh.  I'd heard good things, but this dystopic, pseud-cyberpunk retelling of Cinderella didn't live up to the hype for me.  It doesn't deviate enough from the original fairytale for the "big reveal" to actually be a surprise, and the villains are too shallow to be interesting.  I think I can take a pass on the future installments of this series.

Some Books, and In Memorium

32.  Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
I'm cheating JUST A LITTLE here, because I haven't technically finished this.  Not that it isn't good - it very much is!  It's an interesting perspective on Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, in a way that manages to make him a bit more sympathetic than usual while also acknowledging that he did some terrible things.  Cromwell was one of those interesting people that managed to balance serving his king, serving his country, serving his lord (Cardinal Wolsey, while he was alive) and serving himself, and make all of those things complementary.  Unfortunately, he put serving his king above serving his country, and history shows that serving Henry VIII wasn't always about doing the right thing - often, it was about doing the thing that made him the least likely to have you imprisoned and/or executed.  The majority of the events of Wolf Hall happen around Anne Bolyen's ascension and Henry's process of separating from the Catholic Church in order to divorce Catherine, so there's a lot of political play happening in these pages.  It's all fascinating stuff.

The reason I haven't finished it yet is because it is DENSE.  And it is LONG (about 600 pages).  I'm about 50 pages from the end, but I realized that I'd basically stopped reading because finishing Wolf Hall was becoming a slog that I needed a break from.  I will finish it, just...after I've read some lighter fare.

33.  The Secret Lives of Dresses, Erin McKean
Aww, this one is super cute and full of enviable vintage fashion, even if I did occasionally want to give the main character a big old smack upside the head.  Dora is a 22-year-old adrift in a sea of possibilities - she's smart enough to do anything, so instead she does...nothing.  Her grandmother owns a vintage clothing store, acts like a sassier version of Jackie O, and is basically awesome and I want to be her when I grow up.  The book opens with the grandmother having a stroke and Dora coming home to run the store while grandma's in the hospital, and it's all very predictable and straightforward but also super fun.  Although, Dora whines about Mimi (her grandmother) putting aside vintage clothing for her when stuff comes into the shop that's her size, and it makes me want to ragequit everything.  EXCUSE ME.  I WOULD PUNCH STRANGERS FOR YOUR CLOSET.  THANKS.

As a final note, I'm sure you've all seen by now that Ray Bradbury died today at the venerable age of 91.  I want to thank you, Mr. Bradbury, for penning Fahrenheit 451 - only one among a vast, incredible collection of works - a touchstone book that taught me two things:

1.  Books can last a lifetime, and the ideas in them can transcend the occasional pettiness of human existence;
2.  Even when teachers get the lesson wrong, it can't take away the impact a book can have on someone's soul.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury.  The next time I hear the sound of thunder, I'll think of dinosaurs - and of you.

Suggestion Post!

Hey guys, no new books at the moment (I'm nearly done with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which is both enjoyable but very dense) but I thought that, since I'm reading only new things this year, I'd give all two of you the chance to pummel me with suggestions.  So:

WHAT SHOULD I READ NEXT?

Sci-Fi All The Time

30.  Goliath, Scott Westerfeld
These books are excellent and I'm sad that I've finished them.  This third volume especially gets points for not overwhelming me with the romance story, for introducing Nikola Tesla in all his batshit glory, and for the best illustration of a loris wearing a fake mustache I've ever seen.  If you like steampunk, or alternate history, or war stories, or fun things, you should probably read these books posthaste.

I'm still kind of shocked that Westerfeld wrote both these and the Uglies books.  The level of quality of the writing, the characters, the world building, is so vastly different - Uglies not only isn't on the same level as Leviathan, they don't even occupy the same hemisphere of literature.

31.  Know No Fear, Dan Abnett
The reason to plow through Deliverance Lost is pretty much so you can read Know No Fear.  I was looking at the most current list of Horus Heresy books and their authors, and it's pretty clear that Games Workshop knows where to get the best quality work - of seventeen novel titles (not including short story compilations), four of them are by Abnett and five are by Graham McNeill (I recently finished The Outcast Dead by McNeill).  There are a few others who are definitely quality authors, and I look forward to seeing more of their work (Aaron Dembski-Bowden and James Swallow, particularly), but Abnett and McNeill pretty much have a monopoly on the best titles in this series.  That said, I wasn't fond of the pacing of about the first third of Know No Fear - Abnett writes the book it present tense, and the beginning is SO heavy with foreshadowing that it feels weighty and plodding, rather than tense.  But once the main battle started I was on the edge of my seat - it definitely packs the gut-punching emotional weight and heartbreak that I've come to expect from Abnett.

I'm Halfway Through My Project Goal And It's Not Even June Yet

27.  The Outcast Dead, Graham McNeill
I was tired of waiting for someone else to buy the Horus Heresy novels that came out after Prospero Burns, so I bought the next three (The Outcast Dead, Deliverance Lost, and Know No Fear) all at once.  My challenge then was not to read them all in one big sci-fi swallow - because I like spacing series out so that I don't overload myself on one kind of story, and because I don't know when the next volume is coming out and these books are like crack to me.  Seriously, I know the idea of books based off a game property sounds like the end products will be pulpy and bad, but if you're a fan AT ALL of space opera, politics, or robot suits, please read these books.  The Outcast Dead is a really interesting addition to the series, since it shows the reader the fall-out from a specific event that happened a couple of books ago (specifically, you get to see what the astropaths on Terra experience after Magnus pulls his shit in the Golden Throne room).  There's also a ballsy revelation that re-contextualizes large swathes of the whole 40K universe.  In short: shit gets SO REAL.  Also ILU Graham McNeill.

28.  Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, Jenny Lawrence
The funniest book I have ever read.  No, seriously.  I couldn't read this book in public places because parts of it (especially the chapter on Jenny's adventures with exterminators who don't know what chupacabras are) had me HOWLING with laughter.  If you're a fan of her blog, thebloggess.com, this is a must-read.  If you're not, I don't even know you.

KNOCK KNOCK, MOTHERFUCKER

29.  Deliverance Lost, Gav Thorpe
Oh, Gav.  There's something undeniably cruel about putting a Thorpe book, the weakest of the 40K authors, in between McNeill and Dan Abnett, who are clearly the strongest.  It's a good way to get me to read the damn book, though, especially since the Raven Guard are not really a legion I have much interest in (WHEREFORE ART MY SALAMANDERS, GAMES WORKSHOP?).  But Deliverance Lost has some good story elements in it, and even when I was beating my head against the wall due to stilted dialogue and really bad pacing (it's really bad, you guys) there were still interesting revelations happening.  I'm not sure I really believe the plot point that the book is predicated on, but I have pretty much given up hope on completely logical plot choices in all of the Horus Heresy novels.  I get that there's already an event structure in place that the authors have to adhere to, I do.

(Deliverance Lost starts immediately after the Dropsite Massacre and chronicles Corax's efforts to rebuild his Raven Guard Legion, with a little help from the Emperor [AND NO HELP FROM YOU, ROGAL DORN, GOSH].  Also the Alpha Legion shows up for a while and I vomit a bit in my mouth.  There is some weird Chaos shit that happens, though, and I do love those bits.)

Booooooks

24. Graceling, Kristen Cashore
Some day I will read fantasy written for adults again, but honestly, right now the best stuff is getting written for the YA crowd.  Graceling is super fun high fantasy, without poorly written magic getting in the way - it takes place in a fictional kingdom, in a roughly medieval time setting, and the biggest fantasy conceit is that some people in this world are born with a "grace."  A grace is a natural talent that you do more naturally and better than anyone else, and if you've got one, your eyes are two different colors.  I thought Cashore did a good job showing how that talent discrepancy (between the "haves" and the "have-nots") affects the population, and how the gracelings are discriminated and basically made to be a lower class of citizen.  There's some interesting political stuff going on, and Katsa, the heroine, kicks so much ass I can barely stand it.  There's a strong romantic element (of course) but it contributes to rather than distracting from the story.  I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

25. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
It took me a bit to get into The Book Thief; I would say until about halfway through.  It's a ballsy book of Zusak to have written, and I appreciate the risks he takes with style and storytelling.  I also deeply appreciate the fact that while this is a book about World War II, Zusak has some new things to say about it - the primary narrator of this story is Death, so even though Liesel, a young German girl, is the main character, we get her story in the context of all the horrible things happening in Germany in the early 1940's from a particularly poetic viewpoint.  The Book Thief is beautiful and stark and gut-wrenching, and ultimately worth the effort it took to get through it.

26. Revolver, Marcus Sedgwick
What a gloriously claustrophobic, tense little novel.  Revolver isn't very long, but it packs a big punch - it takes place in a cabin, isolated in the woods, in the middle of winter, in the Arctic circle.  Shortly after Sig's father dies (seriously, like an hour after they pull his body out of the ice) some huge dude barges into the cabin claiming the dad owes him a shitton of gold and he's going to start shooting people if he doesn't get it.  Interlaced with that fun time are flashbacks to Einar, the father, working in Alaska during the gold rush.  It's tight, exciting, and jumpy, and I recommend it.

Some books I read for class

21. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
A charming fantasy adventure I read for my children's literature class.  A poor Chinese girl seeks out the Old Man in the Moon to ask for a change in fortune for her family - she meets a dragon who can't fly, a talking goldfish, and helps a king, all while collecting folktales from the people she meets.  A lovely chapter book for advanced grade school readers, and a nice diversion for me.  Plus I like dragons and spunky heroines.

22. Simon Bloom, the Gravity Keeper, Michael Riseman
Another class read, this one is also a fun little book but with fewer dragons and more messing around with physics.  When teachers or parents talk about a good "boy book" this is the kind of thing they mean - plot- rather than character-oriented, lots of action, lots of breaking rules (of physics).  The nice part about Gravity Keeper, though, is that the characters have to learn the formulas and the rules before they can break them, so there are actually some good teachable moments in here.  It was fun but not quite enough for me to want to read the rest of the series (it was way more juvenile than, say, Percy Jackson or Artemis Fowl, similarly flavored and for a similar age group but both of those are more complex stories).

23. When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
Writers of adult sci-fi need to read this book, because THIS IS HOW TO WRITE ABOUT TIME TRAVEL.  This is EXTREMELY soft sci-fi, which I can only really call it because of the time travel ideas, but it's a lovely book about the connections we make as people and the impact our actions can have.  Especially good for kids, who tend to couch their relationships in very black and white terms - When You Reach Me vividly illustrates that not only is there more going on between people than we might perceive, but also that it's worth it to untangle the relationships you have with people.

More Books in March

18.  Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
I don't know, you guys.  My issues with Pretties are actually quite similar to the ones I had when I read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - in both cases it felt like the author was basically rehashing the first book in the series with some superficial plot changes.  I'm also struggling with the likability factor of the main character; I find Tally kind of...tiresome?  Plus Westerfeld is failing to really convince me that his dystopia is a terrible thing.  I mean, OBVIOUSLY the world has some problems, but they never seem...totally evil, I guess.  I also feel like the divisions between the novels are kind of arbitrary - like, Westerfeld sat down and wrote one EPICALLY LONG story and split it into four even pieces, and then tidied up the ends so they'd have their own individual story arcs (except they don't really).  IN SUMMARY: I AM NOT CONVINCED.

I'm taking a break from these for a while so I can read Behemoth.


19.  Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool
My Children's Literature class is doing historical fiction this week, and this was the last book I read for the unit - getting myself to read it was like pulling teeth for reasons I don't really understand.  I don't know why, but I was incredibly resistant to reading it (even though it's required reading) but once I started I packed it in pretty quick.  It's a fun, tangled knot of a book, about Abilene Tucker, a young girl, coming to the small town of Manifest, Iowa, to wait for her dad.  It takes place in (I believe) the early 1940's, and while Abilene is stranded in Manifest she starts unearthing the town's recent past.  The town, everyone who lives there, her father, a mysterious boy named Jinx that Abilene reads about in a handful of letters, and the town fortune teller, Miss Sadie, make up that knot I mentioned, and unraveling it with Abilene was more enjoyable than I anticipated.  It's a solid young YA or older children's novel.

20.  Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld
More fun alternate history lessons with Westerfeld.  It was weird to read a couple of the Uglies books in between Leviathan and this one, because the Leviathan books are SO MUCH BETTER.  Like, it was hard for me to hear Westerfeld's voice in Uglies.  I think the Uglies books came out before Leviathan?  I think that's right.  So maybe Westerfeld's just getting better the more that he writes.  But I'm itching to read Goliath now, and I honestly don't know if I care to bother with Specials and Extras.  But anyway:  Behemoth continues into World War I with our heroes from the previous novel.  There's a gigantic genetically engineered squid that eats ships, a Tesla cannon, some robot elephants, and a loris that imitates human speech.  Also an anarchist rebellion in Turkey.  Love it.

March, pt. 1

15.  The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
This book was rough, you guys.  But extremely well-written and well put together.  I think what I appreciated about it most was that nothing is easy, especially for the main character - Amir, a native of Afghanistan who is forced to emigrate to the United States with his father after the Russian occupation, is not a likable guy and he does some pretty awful things, especially to Hassan, the servant's son who grows up with Amir.  The bulk of the story is about Amir making things right and atoning for the sins of his childhood.  I admit to not knowing very much about Afghanistan, the horrible violence that happened (and continues to happen) there, and the politics of it all, and this novel deals with it in an emotional, sensitive, raw, and ultimately satisfying way.

16.  Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes, Chris Crutcher
We read Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher in my YA lit class last semester and it was a truly quality literary experience.  Then Crutcher spoke at a literary conference I went to about advocating for young adults' rights to choose what they read and to combat censorship and book banning.  And it was a deeply moving experience.  Crutcher worked for a long time as a child therapist, who worked mainly (I think only?) with children from broken and abusive homes.  He's seen almost every tragedy that can happen to a child, and brings the weight of that knowledge to his work.  His books are serious meditations on the lives of teenagers, on what they deal with that adults can't remember or imagine, and addresses real problems (Sarah Byrnes deals with everything from bullying, child abuse, religion in schools, parental pressure, and being on the swim team).  His books are illuminating and his dialogue is inspiring.  Please read, if not Sarah Byrnes, SOMETHING by this man.

17.  Uglies, Scott Westerfeld
The first of my Westerfeld party!  I REGRET NOTHING.  I read this one before Behemoth because it was in the library when Behemoth was not (I'm waiting for my interlibrary loan RIGHT NOW) and because you can't be involved in the YA lit scene and NOT have heard about the Uglies books.  It was...ok.  Leviathan is better written, and more interesting in my opinion - Uglies is pretty standard dystopian fare (Equilibrium + Brave New World x Libba Bray = Tally and Uglies).  There's a huge point of convenience at the end that I actually kind of hated, but it's the set-up for the sequel so maybe after I read Pretties I'll hate it less.

Still looking forward to Behemoth (and then Goliath), though.

February, part 2

12. The Man In the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Very cerebral and kind of a downer, but since I've read Philip K. Dick before I kind of knew what to expect.  This book showcases pretty excellently how Dick excels at world-building; not only is his alternate reality where the U.S. lost World War II fully realized, but so is the alternate-alternate reality of the book-within-a-book, where the U.S. won the war (but not with the fallout we're familiar with).  And if that made sense to you, you should probably read this book.

13. White Cat, Holly Black
Holly Black is super fun - way darker and grittier than Melissa Marr, while still maintaining that thread of wish fulfillment that's kind of the hallmark of supernatural YA.  I found this one a little predictable, but still quite exciting; in this particular fantasy world, certain people have natural abilities to work magic on others (called "curse workers," or just "workers") and they come in different flavors - some can work luck, some emotion, some death, and so on.  Cassel, the main character, comes from an entirely worker family - except for him.  There's mobsters, con artists, and assassins, and the whole thing is pretty delightful.  (Except it's written in present tense, RAWR.  At least this one is first person.)

14.  The Reapers, John Connolly
I like John Connolly a whole lot.  He writes mostly crime noir, about a private detective named Charlie Parker (the first Parker book is Dark Hollow - I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who likes crime fiction or gritty supernatural stuff); his stories are typically gripping and suspenseful, he has a nice subtle supernatural element, and his side characters are entertaining and rich.  But I had trouble with this one.  It focuses on Parker's two most notorious cohorts, Angel and Louis, who typically provide a nice dose of banter while being ruthless killers.  Having a whole book focused on them (mostly on Louis, the professional assassin) might be too much of a good thing.

February, part 1

9.  Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett
Can't stop, won't stop.  Tiffany Aching is one of Pratchett's most likable characters and I'm going to be sad when I've finished everything that he's put out about her.

10.  The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi
This is a good book that I ultimately didn't care for.  Part of the issue is how nihilistic it is - and if I'd known that going in, I would have been better prepared for it.  It's pretty seriously depressing, which in and of itself isn't a deal breaker for me - but that combined with other elements that didn't work for me (3rd person, present tense narration, a seriously chaotic prose style) added up to a final product I wasn't crazy about.  It's a seriously dystopian story about the dying days of a city, and there's a lot to like here (if Bacigalupi had introduced his epidemic subplot sooner I would have been more on board, I do love a good disease story) but it wasn't for me.

11.  The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor
This was a whole lot of MEH.  It's kind of an interesting concept - a retelling of the Alice in Wonderland story, where Alice (or Alyss) is a princess of Wonderland and heir to the throne, ousted by her evil aunt Redd and escaped into our world for a time.  The second half involves Alyss returning to Wonderland to lead a rebel army against Redd and reclaim her throne in the name of White (good, as opposed to the evil Black) Imagination.  But the writing is not good, you guys.  All the exciting moments, of which there are many: assassination attempts, chase scenes, epic battles; they all fall flat due to a lack of description.  Apparently this is the first book of a trilogy, but I won't be reading the others.

January, part 2

6.  French Milk, Luck Knisley
A cute little travelogue about the author's six weeks spent in France during college.  It's a graphic novel, and the art is totally charming, but I wish there had been more introspection involved - it parses down to a lot of lists ("I ate these things, I bought these things") without much analysis or reflection.  The moments that are there, such as Knisely recalling an argument with her mother, are touching and emotionally connective.  The book could have used more of those.

7.  A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett
If you like Terry Pratchett, you should probably be reading the adventures of Tiffany Aching, which starts in Wee Free Men.  These books are pitched more toward the YA crowd (Tiffany is nine years old in the first book, and is eleven in this), but Pratchett doesn't tone down his wit or wordplay. 

8.  Kraken, China Mieville
Whoo, this was a doozy of a book.  It's incredibly dense and chaotic, but totally enrapturing, especially because I find religion and weird shit to be totally fascinating.  If you thought about Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, re-imagined by HP Lovecraft, with a guest appearance by a Stephen King villain, you'd be close to this book. 

January 2012, part one

I have a few books to start off with because I went on vacation for the first weekend in January that was a.) international (long plane rides) and b.) took place partially on a beach, so I got a lot of reading done.  I have a buffer!  Yay!

1.  The Help, Kathryn Stockett
I wanted to read this mostly out of the desire to be part of the conversation everyone is having about it - it's clearly problematic for some people, but has also elicited quite a lot of praise, and I can't talk about things when I haven't been exposed to them.  Now that I have read it, I can definitely see the problematic elements; you can't ignore the fact that Stockett is white, and is appropriating the culture of a marginalized group of people in order to tell her story.  I also think it's true that The Help was written out of a certain amount of guilt, owing to the conditions that Stockett herself grew up on.  BUT, I think the book is very matter-of-fact about its own problems, and isn't embarrassed to point them out to the reader.  It invites the discussion, which is important.  And the characters are just so FABULOUS, all of these marvelously strong women, and Stockett does a great job getting that sense of community across.  I recommend it.

2.  Naamah's Blessing, Jacqueline Carey
Carey has written nine books set in her Terre d'Ange world, and while all of them are enjoyable reads the latest set of three are the weakest.  Naamah's Blessing is the most recent and concludes the trilogy about Moirin, who is (in my opinion) Carey's weakest protagonist; mostly she reacts instead of acts, and is more content than previous characters to simply take her destiny as it comes.  Additionally problematic is the fact that this volume is almost a complete mirror of the third book in the series, Kushiel's Avatar, but less good.  I read it, I enjoyed it, and fans of Carey's work will enjoy it as well.  But it could have been better.

3.  Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Easily my favorite thing I've read so far this year (which is not saying much, as it's only been eleven days, but...), this book combines many things that I love: 80s pop culture, cyberpunk, geeks, adventure...it's super fun.  Cline incorporates a lot of fascinating ideas that are particularly relevant to our current cultural landscape, like social media, technology-based communities, and the difficulties of keeping secrets in an internet based society.  Wade, our narrator, is endearing and self-deprecating and it's easy to keep rooting for him, even when Cline gives in a little too much to hand-wavey hacker science near the climax of the book; he recovers with an exciting finale.  Everyone should read this.

4.  The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
The circus of the title is composed of multiple stand-alone tents, each containing its own dream-like beauty and experience.  The book itself is composed this way as well - the plot is nearly secondary to the imagery that Morgenstern employs, describing the tents and the circus and a handful of colorful characters.  Her scenes are rich and her language is singularly beautiful.  The story, a duel between two magicians, and the romance, are hung on the scenes like a gauze scarf: floaty and nearly insubstantial, adding a sheen of color to the black-and-white striped circus tents.  It's a lovely experience; not a strong story, but it doesn't have to be.

5.  Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
I...don't really know how I feel about this?  I appreciated the ending for reasons I won't go into (I'm employing a strong anti-spoiler policy on this blog), and it's certainly got a strong, quirky cast.  They wrestle alligators!  And...have sex with ghosts?  Maybe?  I'm not entirely sure what I read here.  It's written in a really interesting fashion, though - it takes place in the Florida swamp, and it reads like a swamp.  It meanders and oozes, takes it time and rolls around in its setting.  It's never in a hurry to get anywhere until the climax starts rolling, and it gives you a lot of time to contemplate the things that go on.  Which you need.

In Service of a New Year's Resolution

It's been a really long time since I've posted anything here (Blogger is telling me almost two years.  I'm a bad blogger, apparently.), but I'd like to change that!  One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2012 was originally to read 30 books that I've never read before, but I decided that wasn't nearly as difficult as it could be, and so have decided to undertake the 52 Book Challenge.  The rules are simple: read 52 books in 52 weeks.  My own caveat is that they have to be books I've never read before, so anything I re-read this year doesn't count towards my tally.

I'll be logging the books I finish here, with a number and a paragraph or two with my thoughts on them.  I'll also be recording them on my Shelfari page, so if you don't follow me there, you should!  You can find my user page here.