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.