imyril meanders through the rest of 2014

Since I have hit my original target of 50 books (and my original thread is nearly 300 messages), I thought I'd continue afresh for my wanderings through the rest of the year. I'm not going to reset my target, I'll just see where I end up!

My secondary targets were 36 books off the shelf (which I'll achieve when I *cough* buy and then read Acceptance next week), although I've still got a way to go on my completism (Culture and Donna Tartt) and my non-fiction goals. I'm also aiming to read more classic scifi and as many works by female authors as male authors.

I calculate Mount TBR based on purchases vs things coming off the shelf. This year, Mount TBR is growing faster than I can climb it, although not so fast that I find myself back in the foothills. I'm just not getting closer to the summit :)

Total read: 80
Total off the shelf (phys / Kindle): 58 (24 / 34)
Total acquired: 80 (excluding Kindle duplicates)
Mount TBR score (off the shelf-acquired): -22

Jan (8 - 2/3/3)
Lev Grossman - The Magicians (physical off the shelf)
Tom Rath - Strengthsfinder 2.0 (non-fiction, personal development)
Iain M. Banks - Consider Phlebas (Culture completism)
Robin Sloan - Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore (Kindle off the shelf,)
Jane Harris - The Observations
Mark T. Barnes - The Garden of Stones (Kindle off the shelf)
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 (physical off the shelf, SantaThing 2013, classic SFF)
Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels (Kindle off the shelf )

Feb (7 - 1/5/1)
Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (kindle off the shelf, Tartt completism)
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination (physical off the shelf, classic SFF)
Iain M. Banks - The Player of Games (Culture completeism)
Charles Palliser - Rustication (Kindle off the shelf)
Lloyd Alexander - The Foundling (Kindle off the shelf)
Catherynne Valente - Palimpsest (Kindle off the shelf)
Paul Antony Jones - Extinction Point (Kindle off the shelf)
(Mary Doria Russell - Doc - put aside for a future occasion)

March (8 - 1/6/1)
Iain M. Banks - Use of Weapons (Culture completeism)
Dana Stabenow - Second Star (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)
Sally Gardner - Tinder (physical off the shelf)
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-five (Kindle off the shelf, classic scifi)
Jim Kelly - The Water Clock (Kindle off the shelf)
S. G. Redling - Damocles (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)
Diane Setterfield - The Thirteenth Tale (Kindle off the shelf)
Dana Stabenow - A Handful of Stars (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)

April (7 - 4/2/1) (and 1 partial)
Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake (physical off the shelf, SantaThing 2013)
Jose da Fonseca - English as she is spoke (physical off the shelf, non-fiction)
Michael Marshall - We Are Here (physical off the shelf)
Jeff Vandermeer - Annihilation (physical off the shelf)
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen - The Rabbit Back Literature Society (Kindle off the shelf)
(Iain M Banks - The State of the Art) (partial; Culture completeism)
Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit (Kindle off the shelf)
Janny Wurts - Curse of the Mistwraith (women can too write SFF)

May (6 - 1/2/3)
Andre Norton - Plague Ship (women can too write SFF, classic scifi)
Anne Rice - The Witching Hour
Robert O'Brien - Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh (group read)
Sarah Moss - Names for the Sea (non-fiction, Kindle off the shelf)
Kate Danley - The Woodcutter (Kindle off the shelf)
Jeff Vandermeer - Authority (physical off the shelf)

June (4 - 2/1/1)
Louise Penny - Still Life (physical off the shelf)
Melissa Scott - Burning Bright (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF, group read)
Katharine Kerr - Polar City Blues (women can too write SFF)
Peter Collyer - Rain Later, Good (physical off the shelf, non-fiction)

July (5 - /2/3)
Guy Gavriel Kay - The Summer Tree
John Sweeney - Elephant Moon (Kindle off the shelf)
N. K. Jemisin - Killing Moon (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF, group read)
Iain. M. Banks - Excession (Culture completeism)
Louise Lawrence - The Warriors of Taan (women can too write SFF)

August (7 - 1/2/4)
Lauren Beukes - The Shining Girls (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)
N. K. Jemisin - The Shadowed Sun (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF, group read)
Jared Diamond - Collapse (non-fiction, group read)
Tamora Pierce - Alanna (women can too write SFF)
Nick Harkaway - Tigerman (physical off the shelf)
Elyne Mitchell - The Silver Brumby
Weis & Hickman - Dragons of Autumn Twilight

September (7 - 3/1/3)
Robert Westall - The Cats of Seroster
Jeff Vandermeer - Acceptance (Southern Reach) (physical off the shelf)
Christopher Priest - The Prestige (physical off the shelf, group read)
Rajaa Alsanea - Girls of Riyadh (physical off the shelf)
Octavia Butler - Wild Seed (women can too write SFF)
Iain M Banks - Inversions (Culture completeism)
Matt Hill - The Folded Man (Kindle off the shelf)

October (6 - 2/3/1)
Ben Aaronovitch - Broken Homes (physical off the shelf)
Matthew Inman - The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances (physical off the shelf, non-fiction)
Daniel O'Malley - The Rook (Checquy Files) (Kindle off the shelf)
Mary Robinette Kowal - The Lady Astronaut of Mars (Kindle off the shelf, Women can too write SFF)
Iain M Banks - Look to Windward (Culture group read)
Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)

November (7 - 3/3/1)
Susan Hill - The Woman in Black
Katharine Grant - Sedition (physical off the shelf)
Halliday Sutherland - Hebridean Journey (physical off the shelf, non-fiction)
Rose George - Deep sea and Foreign Going (non-fiction, kindle off the shelf)
Helen S. Wright - A Matter of Oaths (kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)
Lauren Owen - The Quick (physical off the shelf)
Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)

December (8 - 4/4/)
(G Willow Wilson - Alif the Unseen - abandoned 58%)
Susan Hill - Printer's Devil Court (physical off the shelf)
(Leigh Driver - The Lost Villages of England - abandoned 30% - this is better to dip in/out of than to try and read cover to cover!)
Susan Hill - The Soul of Discretion (physical off the shelf)
Martha Wells - The Cloud Roads (physical off the shelf, women can too write SFF)
Sarah Moss - Bodies of Light (Kindle off the shelf)
Lauren Beukes - Zoo City (Kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)
Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire (kindle off the shelf, women can too write sff)
Marc Burrows - I Think I Can See Where You're Going Wrong (physical off the shelf, non-fiction)
Seanan McGuire - Discount Armageddon (kindle off the shelf, women can too write SFF)

Male / female authors: 40 / 39 (+ 1 co-authored)
Culture completeism: 7 / 10
Tartt completeism: 1 / 3
Classic scifi: 5 / 12
Women can too write SFF: 21
SantaThing 2013: 2 / 3
Non-fiction and/or personal development: 9 / 12
Diversiverse (full year): 4

51) The Silver Brumby - Elyne Mitchell


One of the treasures from the basement, this was one of my best-beloved books - as evidenced by the 2 very dog-eared shiny stickers that still adorn the spine (a golden duck and a red star). I must have been very young to think that was a good idea! I spent years tracking down the various sequels (although as far as my canon goes, there are no books beyond Son of the Whirlwind - I only found out about the later brumby books today ;) and read them completely out of sequence.

The Silver Brumby stands the test of time reasonably well - I was a little nervous of what I'd find, but in fact it is as simple as I remember it: the coming of age of a wild 'cream' colt as he overcomes the threats of weather, rival stallions and man. Largely a case of tell over show, there is little dialogue and less inner monologue; instead you get evocative descriptions of the Australian landscape and its animal inhabitants.

There's a few things to raise an eyebrow at, most notably how unimportant most of his herd appear to be to the stallion (in so far as only 2 of them even get names - the rest are literally shapes in the background). On the flip side, these are horses that feel like horses - there's very little anthropomorphisation, and Mitchell even slips in 'probably' to sentences where she is attributing motivation at times, as if she is merely interpreting visible behaviour rather than being an omniscient narrator.

I can see why I loved it, although it feels a bit thin these days - there's more personality in wise mare Bel Bel than her showy son, and while it's accurate for a stallion to think in terms of 'owning' mares, it sits rather less comfortably with me now. Nonetheless, this is adult nitpicking - it remains a brilliant children's book, guaranteed to be a hit with any child who loves horses.

Extra points for the beautiful line drawings of Australian wildlife that headline each chapter in my edition.

That is an impressive first eight months of reading. I will enjoy seeing what happens in the rest of 2014.

Ow. Ow ow ow ow.

I'm seriously reconsidering my decision to revisit Dragonlance, as my nostalgia is struggling to cope with the choppy prose (so! many! exclamation marks! ...and such short sentences) and the turn-based D&D campaign narrative (I don't need to know what each character is doing in every paragraph when so little of it moves the narrative on). It is amusing to recognise the genre stereotypes (pasty goblins; evil reptiles; spooky woods) and the paper-thin twists on hero archetypes (Raistlin's ethics; Sturm's depression; Tanis' angst) - and I can forgive this rather than growl about authorial laziness, given what these books were intended to be - but I've reached the bit where they butchered archaic English. WHY, fantasy authors, WHY? If you want to thee and thou, look up how it works. It's not hard. Grrrrr.

>4 imyril: I haven't read that book, and nothing is likely to lead me there; but I appreciated your review nonetheless, and especially the last part. I grew up with the King James Bible, from which I easily absorbed the rules of thees and thous and the appropriate treatment of corresponding verbs. And you're right, they're not hard. If someone doesn't know how to handle them, just don't do it. It's gratingly, screamingly obnoxious to hear or read those forms being butchered. Thanks for saying it so bluntly.

(And most writing, fiction and nonfiction both, doesn't require an exclamation point anywhere, at all, from start to end.)

>2 imyril: Wow, that is such a blast from the past! We had those silver brumby books at home, but in Dutch, and when I saw your title, I was wondering whether it was the same book you were describing (in Dutch, the title became The silver stallion). They were together with The black stallion books and books about The island stallion (which was translated as The red stallion in Dutch).

>2 imyril: I liked the first 3 or 4 Silver Brumby books but I seem to remember that the horses became less realistic in the later books and actually "talked" to one another. The descriptions of the Australian bush and its plants and wildlife were always excellent though.

Congrats on hitting your goals and on the new thread!

>5 Meredy: Agreed on both counts. It always strikes me as mindboggling dense when an author doesn't bother to check how basic grammar works - and the editors clearly don't notice or don't care. Thankfully it was very brief, and the exclamation marks largely vanished shortly after that post (although why they were permitted at all is beyond me. Urgh).

>6 zjakkelien: complete blast from the past :) I remember borrowing The Black Stallion from a friend, but I don't think I ever came across The Island Stallion.

>7 Sakerfalcon: I've got 1, 3, 4 and 6 - although I've read 2 and 5, I never managed to buy them and don't really remember them. I do have vague memories of Benni the kangaroo (or wallaby?) and wildfires, which I think must have been Silver Brumby Kingdom - I will probably work my way through the 4 I've got at some point and find out...

>8 majkia: Thank you :)

52) Dragons of Autumn Twilight - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman


I persevered and finished this off, mostly because I'm terrible at walking away from a book (however painful) and the prose did improve (slightly) about 100 pages in and I was able to stop gritting my teeth.

Ultimately, if I want to be kind to my long-standing attachment to it, this is a decent description of a roleplaying game. If I remove all my requirements of what makes a good book, there's a nostalgic glow to the very obvious character archetypes, plot tropes, gamesmaster amusement ('You do what? Are you sure?') and railroading, and to spotting the responses of players under pressure (the attack on the lifts at Xak Tsaroth was the highlight of the novel for me purely because it is the sort of daft thing roleplayers do when they've run out of sensible ideas rather than something an author would make his/her characters do) - all deliberately taking place in a familiar setting to create a common frame of reference.

As a book, on the other hand, it's dreadful, if still less annoying than The Left Hand of God (which is the only book I've given a 1 star rating to in the past year, I think).

For those with no hours of youth mis-spent on hexagons and dice, Autumn Twilight is just old ideas trotted out in painful prose and hackneyed characters - with everything told not shown, and consequently flat as a pancake. The characters in particular suffer here: there are actually some interesting characters under the archetypes (Raistlin, Goldmoon) and even some progression (Tas), but they never come to life under the heavy-handed narrative.

The target audience of white teenage boys is horribly clear. Two of the three female characters are motivated largely by crushes on bigger, more competent men, and the men are given free rein to behave badly. Competent Goldmoon actually apologises for being strong and independent, because her lover can't handle it, rather than telling him to grow a pair and learn to love that his wife-to-be is a power in her own right. And I'm really not clear why anyone would wear fur-trimmed underwear in a mild climate. But I digress.

I've moved on in 20 years, but I think it's also fair to say I've grown intolerant of bad books now that I have easier access to books in general and can get my hands on good ones. I can't underestimate how forgiving I was of any new reading material in my teens, given I grew up a 45-minute train ride from a town where I could actually buy a book in English with my limited pocket money.

Safe to say this little shelf from the basement will be tumbling (back) into a box in storage though, so that I can fill it with books I actually want to read now!

...all of which neatly emphasises how very good The Cats of Seroster is. Obviously the bar is quite low right now, but I'm thoroughly enjoying Westall's prose and his unexpected anti-hero Cam. Also it's a book about enormous cats. What's not to love about that?

53) The Cats of Seroster - Robert Westall


The last of my childhood favourite splurge for ReadAThing (I'll hopefully be tucking into the final Southern Reach novel next, assuming it arrives today as promised).

Unlike Alanna and The Silver Brumby, I have no idea when I first acquired The Cats of Seroster, I just know it's been on my shelf a very long time. It's one of the few fantasy childhood books I don't have in common with most of my friends, which suggests it may have always been a bit of an oddity. It's only rereading it as an adult that I realised quite how unusual it is.

Cam of Cambridge is a young Englishman in (13th/14th century) Provence, desperately in need of work, much too clever for his own good, and already a narrow survivor of accusations of witchcraft.

The Miw are great golden cats who fled Ancient Egypt, talisman of a nameless city on a hill. When the Duke is murdered, the Royal Miw Sekhet (a glorious bundle of pride and bad temper) rescues his young son and leads the cats - Miw and normal Brethren alike - into war against the usurpers.

The storylines take half the book to collide as Cam struggles against the fate carried in his cat-head dagger. Where most childhood fantasy is about farmboy heroes, brave knights or individuals stepping up to a glorious destiny, Cam spends three-quarters of the book looking for ways to sidestep his. He has no desire to be a warrior, nor a leader, and is terrified of giving himself over to the ferocity of the Seroster. The cats, naturally, have no qualms about herding him along.

Cam's reluctance to be a hero - and the fact that the Seroster isn't really a hero, he's a ruthless, competent warrior - both make the novel stand out for me. The Seroster is terrifying; Cam's reluctance to allow himself to be subsumed by him is understandable. The heroes here are the cats (poor out of his depth Smerdis; god-touched Amon; the foul-minded ruffian sons of Nibblefur; and old Castlemew, bound by love to a sozzled knight on the wrong side of the conflict) and the townsfolk who take up arms; Cam spends much of his time trying to run away and even works for the usurpers. He's an antihero, selfish and almost cowardly, bullied into doing what is expected of him.

I loved the prose (NB mileage may vary: it is littered with ellipses and sentence fragments, although exclamation marks are thankfully limited to speech and inner monologue), which is as blunt and unadorned as the setting. This mediaeval world is filthy, dirt encrusted and stinking; only the cats regularly wash themselves. The whole experience is slightly bruising - viciousness, murder, theft, threats, catdeath and torture - rather than flag waving and glorious victories. Consequently, it leaves me slightly astounded that I loved this as a child. That said, I suppose I had been prepped by the grim victories of Alan Garner... and well, it was about cats.

It loses a half-star for its womenfolk, who are disappointingly limited to being wives or harlots. There is only one female human character of note, a merchant's daughter with funny ideas about chivalric dues and a bubbling cheek that could have been fabulous if she'd got more page-time and - crucially - a name (she ultimately gets called the First Virgin, which pretty much rounds out the role of women here). This is conceived as boys' fantasy, then, although thankfully there's no sexism amongst the cats.

If you can step past that, though, this is striking and interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm glad that The cats of Seroster was a good reread for you. I must take my own copy of the shelf and give it another go; I too remember enjoying it as a teen. And you've reminded me that I must track down a copy of Acceptance!

I'm happy to leave childhood for fresh pastures for a bit. I'm fairly sure my next nostalgia trip (whenever it may be) may have to involve some Arthur Ransome :)

In the meantime, my copy of Acceptance arrived, so I'm all set!

54) Acceptance (Southern Reach 3) - Jeff Vandermeer

So I have finished Acceptance and quite honestly I haven't a clue what I make of it and won't be assigning a star rating. It goes on the list of things I'll need to read again sometime to make up my mind. I found it quite hard going, densely wordy and vague at best in its intentions and conclusions. The prose has a certain magnetic pull, and I enjoyed spending time with the Lighthouse Keeper, the Psychologist, and the Biologist/Ghost Bird.

The Lighthouse Keeper gives us the past: snippets of the mysterious goings-on along the forgotten coast before its transformation and its first blossoming into Area X. I liked Saul Evans - he has a tired but loving bulk to him that is tangible and grabbed my affection even as his world starts to transform around him, from the bizarre encounters with the Seance and Science Brigade to his first brush with the otherworldly invasion.

The Psychologist gives us her version of the first two books, in an out-of-time flashback that I think represents her memories as she lies dying on the beach, although this is slightly ambiguous. I liked that her frustration and experiences mirrored Control's far more than he would have believed - far from being the woman with the answers and the authority, she too was wrestling to make sense of something in which she was far more invested than he was.

Ghost Bird gives us the present, as the survivors try to find answers in Area X and forge a future in which they don't turn into weird leviathans.

Back in Area X, Control has less control than ever. Reduced to following Ghost Bird in the hope that her previous experiences or very nature will give her advantages that match her confidence, he gets little POV time and spends most of the book in a state of half-off-the-page panic. This was a bit of a letdown for me, as I appear to be one of the few people who enjoyed Authority and would have liked to see more agency and meaning for him.

More intriguing, Grace survived Authority and is waiting for them in Area X. Whilst we never get her point of view, she is less antagonistic and a lot more interesting through Ghost Bird's eyes and in the Director's flashbacks. She is the closest we get to a relatable observer who can help make sense of the weirdness, although it rapidly becomes obvious that she's falling apart.

Ultimately, there are some answers half-given and open to interpretation, and a wide-open ending that allows you to either adopt Grace's bristling hostility to the unknown or Ghost Bird's easy acceptance of her environment. I'm left somewhere in the middle, but the problem for me is less the mild frustration and more the fact that ultimately, I don't think I care either way.

I finished it recently too, and like you was left profoundly...unimpressed. I think I liked the writing better in this book just because I enjoyed the picture he drew of the environment...and at the same time was frustrated by the vague hints of environmental degradation somehow playing a role in Area X's appearance. But like you, in the end, I felt a big, "so what?"

>15 Marissa_Doyle: I think I was also frustrated that while we got some answers (sort of), we were needlessly given additional questions that were never resolved such as the true role of Jack and Jackie Severance, and the identities of the S&SB team. While they didn't have a lot of bearing, I just don't see the point in adding meaningless minor mysteries at this stage... that sort of realism has no place in weird environmental apocalypse ;)

Yes!! Not to mention just how what Control did "changed things." Changed them how? Argh!

>17 Marissa_Doyle: Quite. And why?

I must say, I'm enjoying The Prestige a whole lot more :)

55) The Prestige - Christopher Priest


Hurray for Morphy's Mighty Reads! This was a perfect palate cleanser, and joins Tigerman, The Shining Girls and The Thirteenth Tale at the top of my new reads of the year so far.

It really doesn't matter if you've seen the film - the book adds to the dark tale of 2 feuding Victorian illusionists with a modern-day wrapper revealing how the feud has trickled down into subsequent generations. In fact, there was enough additional depth and variation in the Victorian sections that I actually felt that I could be 'spoilt' - the end of the book and the fates of pretty much all the key characters is different here.

Told largely through the diaries of the two magicians, this is a study of obsession and animosity. All is fair in magic and war - they disrupt one another's performances, interfere (if not always intentionally) with love lives and ultimately threaten each other's lives. With asides on the cost of living a life of lies, what is considered acceptable to sacrifice for your art, and magic as both illusion and as science we haven't discovered yet, this is heady stuff, told with Gothic glee. I'm not particularly interested in stage magic; it really didn't matter - I was hooked from the start.

My only discomfort is the same one I had with the film - the awful position it puts its female characters in, especially Sarah Borden (although she is practically invisible in the book - her sad storyline was written into the film, it seems, as an attempt to explore consequences that are implicit in the book, although there's a strong suggestion that she and Olivia are unaware of what Borden is up to, unbelievable as that seems). In the book, Angier is not a widower and he visibly behaves badly with his string of affairs and long-suffering wife (although given the film kills her off in the opening sequence, it's open to debate whether she's getting shorter shrift here).

Either way, we're strictly in a world in which peripheral, poorly-treated women must always play third fiddle to the true focus of the magicians' lives: their career and each other.

I've docked it half a star for the abrupt ending - it's not that I necessarily wanted more answers (unlike Acceptance I didn't mind being left with a host of implications and questions), but it did feel like it just stopped.

>19 imyril: I think the portrayal of women was very true to what this story was about, the overwhelming obsession these men had with their craft and themselves. It's funny, because of the movie, even though Sarah was barely mentioned in the book, she always had a vivid place in my mind while reading. I thought the movie did a terrific job of showing the possible consequences for her in her situation in those times. It was also interesting that Angier chose to be completely honest with his wife.

Oh, agreed - this is one of those aspects that bothers me in the sense of makes me sad, not angry or less appreciative.

It's a firm favourite film, but I have always felt awful on Sarah's account and the book didn't improve on this (I didn't expect it to), although at least she was spared the breakdown and suicide. I find that part of the film very distressing, although again it feels a truthful exploration of the implications. But it's no fun being a work widow, and the level of deception Borden executes is objectively horrifying. I took some comfort that here Sarah and Olivia genuinely seemed oblivious.

And yet, there was one little sentence in his journal about what it did to Sarah, only, he never explains it. That is one where the two I's have a bit of a disagreement about how much to write, so that made me wonder. Sorry, we should be doing all this in the SPOILER thread!

I hope you don't mind, I'm going to copy and paste our conversation over there. If you object, tell me and I'll delete it.

>22 MrsLee: yes we should. Thank you :)

56) Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea


Rajaa Alsanea is unusual: she's a dentist with a bestseller to her name that's banned in her home country (Saudi Arabia). She states in her introduction to the English edition that she never expected it to be translated, and her intention was never to talk to women outside the kingdom. Reading it, I had to battle from the start to keep my Western attitudes and prejudices leashed, not to mention my feminist leanings and my issues with male authority.

Sadeem, Gamrah, Lamees and Mashael are 'velvet' class girls in their first year of university: rich, privileged, and constantly brushing up against the strictures of Saudi society. They accept the teachings of Islam without question, but they long for love and hope to find men of their own choosing who will accept them as the free-spirited thinkers that they try to be.

Told through a series of emails (it is unclear whether this is merely a framing device or the voice of Alsanea herself, although I assume the former) whose author is castigated from the start - in much the way Alsanea was attacked following publication - by those who considered this candid portrayal of young women subversive and unIslamic.

Reading as an Englishwoman - even one with some (very limited) knowledge of Islamic culture - it's difficult not to judge. Some of the things the girls take for granted are horrifying: the terrifying stalking that is substituted for meaningful contact by the gender-segregated youth (the scene of young men in cars trying to push their phone numbers on girls in other cars gave me the shudders); the control and judgement of the older women that reinforces the status quo; the ease with which Saudi men can dispose of unwanted wives, and the status of these women thereafter; the rigid control of the society (and the religious police); and the supreme arrogance of the 'only true Islamic nation in the world'.

The things that outrage the email readership within the novel (and presumably the Saudi establishment in reality) seem almost trivial to a Western audience, just as the fictional email author's rebuttals preach (however unintentionally) to a Western choir. The girls drink (once or twice), smuggle Western movies into school, smoke a shisha (once), and carry on clandestine relationships that amount to deep-of-night phone calls and text messages as any personal contact is almost impossible in the kingdom. There are rare meetings at a chaperone's house, and a lot of talk about breaking taboos that none of them ever achieve.

Because, inevitably, the sheltered girls are so helplessly naive. Every broken heart is a car crash you seem coming from the start: traditional Gamrah, desperate to please but hopelessly underprepared for her wedding night; sweet Sadeem, who is divorced by her fiance (legally but not publicly her husband) because of her willingness to accede to his advances (it's worth noting that the book only hints at what she may have allowed, which may well be much less than I read into the suggestion); half-American Michelle, tainted goods because of her mother, not fit for a true velvet class groom. Only bold Lamees, the Internet adventurer, is smart enough to keep her heart under wraps; although only she is arrested by the religious police for being found in a public place with a man she is not related to.

On the surface of it, this is exactly the sort of book I hate: chick lit, in which smart, independent girls define themselves almost entirely through their (much-imagined) love lives. The book is entirely given over to their dreams, heartbreak and compromises. But I didn't hate it. I swept through it rapidly, intrigued by the conflict between the girls' aspirations and their situation, and fascinated by this rare glimpse into a society I know little of. I lived on the outskirts of a Bedouin village in Jordan for a summer (whilst on a dig) and was invited to the wedding of a terrified teenage girl to a much older general (one of the more heartbreaking experiences of my life). This was another peek into a world that I can never fully understand.

Ultimately, it is a paean to the right to make your own choices; to abandon social prejudices (or at least some of them; the section dealing with a Sunni/Shiite friendship remains awkwardly underdeveloped - crossing this religious boundary seems to remain beyond the pale); and a rallying cry to recognise the value of a smart, independent woman rather than abandon her for an uneducated, sheltered girl who can be dominated. A searing moment - a critic writing in to question why a man wouldn't marry another man if he was looking for that sort of relationship. Ouch.

But it is worth noting that it focuses strictly on a class showered with money and privilege; girls who you see shopping in Knightsbridge and New York. Compared with less well-off girls, the friends are bemoaning the cultural equivalent of #firstworldproblems - I was reminded of A Thousand Splendid Suns precisely because there are no similarities here. Regardless, this was a good read and I'm glad I finally got to it.

57) Wild Seed - Octavia Butler


I've been meaning to read this for a while, and I'm glad I finally got round to it. I found it a little hard to engage with initially as the prose struck me as slightly stilted, but as I soon got sucked in it stopped mattering. In some senses, this felt like backstory / history - a recounting rather than a storytelling. I'll be intrigued to try other books by Butler and see if the style differs.

Doro is immortal, a cruel, controlling spirit moving ever further from his erstwhile humanity as he hops from one mortal body to the next (destroying the original inhabitant). Drawn to people with special abilities, he is determined to breed a super race who he hopes will one day be immortal as he is.

Anyanwu is as immortal as Doro, an entirely human shapeshifter with total control over her body and bodily processes. Doro recognises her potential and fears her resistance; the book explores their fiery relationship over the subsequent 200 years as she rebels against his assumed authority.

This is fascinating stuff, not least because Anyanwu forms a moral core to the tale without having inflexible prejudices (except about drinking milk). Butler also gets to throw gender, race and sexual orientation in the air, because her 2 leads can both be anything they choose. There's lots to like: people of colour, fluid gender and a strong central female character.

But the central theme is control. Doro's attitude to his people is proprietary; he engages in eugenics and he doesn't hesitate to kill those who he no longer considers useful to his gene pool. Anyanwu correctly accuses him of being no better than a slaver; he doesn't value human life or recognise that his people have any rights. His own desires are the only thing that matter.

Moreover, Anyanwu identifies as female (although she can and does take male shape and even fathers children) and Doro generally appears male in the narrative. This makes much of the tale a study of a strong, stubborn woman fighting to retain her identity and principles in the face of an oppressive man who holds all the cards - he can kill instantly without even a touch, and has no qualms about threatening her children to force her to his will.

Technically, then, this is a book about abuse (and reads equally as a portrayal of slavery/emancipation or domestic abuse). Anyanwu's ferocity and independence obscures it to a degree: she refuses to be a victim, and her submission to Doro feels like a temporary accommodation, but I found it difficult to overlook, and it frequently made for an uncomfortable read as well as making me quite ambivalent about the ending.

There are other issues, not least the treatment of the disabled (arguably period appropriate in the broader strokes, but the conflation of mental powers / mental instability / (attempted) rape also bothered me), but overall this was a good challenging read and I do want to explore the Patternist books further.

Having had a couple of challenges in a row, I'm going to pause before tackling any of my other Diversiverse options (none of which count as easy reading - Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography is most likely to be up next) and head back into Iain M Banks with Inversions for the weekend. I've got some catching up to do if I'm to finish all the Culture books by the end of the year!

>25 imyril: I like your review! I think Butler's book are often uncomfortable to read, but so far, I've liked almost everything I've read by her.

>27 zjakkelien: Thank you :) I liked that I enjoyed it even whilst it was making me feel a bit squicky - and I'm impressed that in spite of the discomfort I find I want to read more. I want to know whether Doro does moderate his behaviour, and what the future of the seed villages holds. I also want him to get an almight comeuppance, but hey ;)

I liked the way the themes were embedded; although they were very explicit, I never felt like I was being whacked over the head with them. And I really enjoyed Anyanwu's growth and slow embrace of bigger and broader concepts and morality.

I may need to give Wild Seed a try--I recently read Kindred and really enjoyed it.

>28 imyril: on occasion i've gotten quite angry at her books, but I enjoy them anyway. There is usually a lot to think about...

58) Inversions - Iain M Banks


I took a break from the #Diversiverse to dip back into the year-long Culture group read, as I realised I was getting behind (so much for the plan to read one a month). With Inversions I reach the books that I have only ever read once, and that a long time ago; they are the ones that I barely remember and/or left me cold on first reading, and I'm curious to see how I go on approaching them with rather different expectations.

I'm delighted to say Inversions goes up in my estimation (based on a previous 3* ranking), probably because I didn't bring any expectations to it. It is both the most and the least Culture novel out there, in the sense that where the first books drew us into the Culture step-by-step (and layer by layer) and that arc completed with the Minds' POV in Excession, Inversions - as promised by the title - turns the concept inside out and returns us to a non-Culture POV. Here we get the view of Contact or Special Circumstances from the perspective of ignorant locals being gently affected by the Culture's hidden interference.

Inversions is set in neighbouring countries, each possessing an outsider with influence over its ruler, mistrusted by the nobility and given to odd ideas. To the initiated, it is an obvious guess (and one soon rewarded) that these outsiders are embedded Culture agents; but with their stories related by a local it is left to the reader to read between the lines. Whilst there are some vibrant characters (UrLeyn's son Lattens was a joy, as is conflicted Oelph) and political shenanigans, these could belong in any universe and play second fiddle to the delight of recognising and second-guessing what is really going on. The actual stories of the Dukes' attempts to reveal the good Doctor and the question of whether there is a traitor in UrLeyn's entourage are finely drawn but - I still think - less absorbing than other Culture narratives to date; not least because the narrative devices distance us from the protagonists and thus the threat.

I think there's some mileage in comparing DeWar's stories of Sechroom and Hiliti and their debate on the morality of intervention to the Minds' moral quandaries in Excession; and I like that - as DeWar's stories are clearly as true as Perrund's - it seems likely that our Culture leads have swapped gender, the Doctor being Hiliti whose ends justify the means with a trail of corpses marking her success in shifting the King's thinking, and DeWar being Sechroom, who kills only to protect whilst influencing his mark (another point for discussion: was that mark UrLeyn or Lattens?) So as ever, Banks teases us with plenty to think about.

One point of note - one thing I particularly enjoyed about Against a Dark Background was the rich tapestry of history, culture and geography that was casually flung about (and almost immediately discarded); with a few paragraphs, whole worlds came to life although they were ultimately just background for a few meagre scenes. Sadly, I didn't feel Inversions succeeded in such world-building finesse. Both countries felt lightly-drawn and little-explored; neither the palaces nor the surrounding cities sprang into vital life for me. It is ultimately unclear why the Culture would be interested in these low-level civilisations, or whether our agents are more like Cheradenine Zakalwe - trained but semi-rogue, and engaged here on their own cognisance rather than that of Contact or SC. After all, putting your money where your mouth is seems an entirely likely way to settle a moral debate within the framework of the Culture.

>31 imyril: Again you are directing my reading. I read the first paragraph and a half of your post. As I have not read Inversions since it was first published I will come back to your comments when I have had a chance to reread it. My recollection of it was also less than totally enthusiastic, but I still enjoyed it at the time. I am looking forward to its having improved with age. :-)

>32 pgmcc: I'm sorry, I seem to keep doing this. I'm not sure if that makes me an enabler or a derailer :) I look forward to hearing how you find Inversions though - hopefully like a fine wine.

> 32 I like wine!

Glad you enjoyed Inversions more on the reread. I really like the characters in this one and had fun spotting the Culture references.

59) The Folded Man - Matt Hill


One of these days I'll read a book set in Manchester that isn't bleak, and I'll be so shocked I have to sit down for a minute. Or drink tea. From childhood (Elidor) onwards, this industrial capital of the northwest has featured in numerous books as a brooding background for the unhappy and abandoned. Perhaps it was all the urban decay of the later 20th century, the proud warehouses and mills crumbling, tagged by gags to mark knifings, racial tensions rising as incomes dropped. Perhaps it really is that grim Up North (full disclaimer: I'm from Sunderland. It's grim. And further north).

The Folded Man is set in the far-too-near future, a 2018 in which the internet has been turned off; mobile comms are for the very few; motorways for even fewer. Manchester is standing in for New York, the Beetham Tower blown up in a terrorist attack and replaced by a beam of light that shines nightly as a memory of what was lost. Distrust and media hype regularly turn the population into murderous rioting mobs, fuelled by racism but lashing out at whatever (and whoever) ends up in their path. Local governments rule with an iron hand, racist legislation limiting the movements of people of colour and heavy ordinance available for riot control with little care for who may get caught in the line of fire.

Our protagonist, Brian, is poorly-adapted for dystopian living. His legs fused together from birth, he's stuck in a wheelchair and terrified he's turning into a fish. His obsessive coping strategies include exfoliating salt baths to rid himself of the scales he's sure he's growing, eating his own hair (when his head is shaved part-way through, he has to improvise. Don't think about that too hard), and wallowing in self-loathing. He sits in his flat and watches reality tv streamed live from the helmets of soldiers in the Middle East. Once a week he abuses his carer who delivers food and tries to make him take care of himself. Very rarely he puts himself through the humiliating agony of a visit to a local brothel.

Brian is dragged into a plot involving rightwing nutjobs and ends up in possession of a mysterious box that must never be opened - just as racial tensions boil over into a full-scale local uprising. Told in a terse, disjointed present tense, this doesn't always make a lot of sense, but Brian is as confused as you are, and often drug-addled to boot. At the mercy of anyone who can grab his wheelchair, he has little control over events - at a key point he's simply taken off to hospital for a regular check-up by a well-meaning carer. He's not in any position to be a hero, but it's also not in his nature. Even when he attempts to claim some agency, he is at the mercy of his obsessions - stopping to take a salt bath in a looted bath store during a riot. Key scenes - such as an attack by pigeons - underline his helpless rage at the world.

I found story references to things that we know haven't happened in our present awkward (actually a clue to a late plot kink involving parallel worlds), undercutting the suspension of disbelief on a first-time read. However, I could believe in Brian's character arc; while he shows some signs of growing as a human being (having found someone more vulnerable than he is), he is ultimately still defined by his obsessions and most deeply-held fears choosing a suicide mission over turning into a fish.

It's a bit like a mash up of Jeff Noon, The Wasp Factory and the worst of the evening news: disjointed, unpleasant and walking a fine line of you simply abandoning it as a bad job. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I can't help but think that Hill is one to watch.

>36 imyril: That sounds horrible! I don't think I would have finished it. Well, I probably wouldn't have picked it up either. But I'm almost getting depressed just reading your synopsis. Reading the book must have been worse...

>37 zjakkelien: heh, you definitely need a love of dystopia and a thick skin. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but it's an intriguing concept and I will watch out for reviews of future work by Hill (ahem, I might not just buy the books blind tho ;)

>36 imyril: I enjoy dystopias but that sounds a bit too bleak (and icky) even for me! Thank you for reviewing it so I know to avoid it!

>36 imyril: The Manchester setting (my hometown) and the likening to Jeff Noon has piqued my interest. I'll pick it up if I see it but perhaps just put the author on the ones to watch list.

>40 AHS-Wolfy: it's not as lyrical as Noon, but you could envision a 'verse where Hill's world ultimately becomes Noon's - he's playing in a similar sandpit. And Noon is never afraid to make you squirm, although The Folded Man feels... dirtier. Vurt is all bodily fluids and sticky sharing, but The Folded Man smells like a tramp who hasn't even been out in the rain in weeks.

Ahem. So to speak :)

60) Broken Homes - Ben Aaronovitch


I know some people have issues with PC Grant, but I can't help but enjoy this series (although I thought Whispers Underground was sub par). Broken Homes is a return to form romp, with Peter Grant and Lesley May trying to figure out whether their old enemy the Faceless Man has taken an unlikely interest in brutalist architecture, and if so, why (as a sideline to solving 2 unpleasant murders). The combination of magical education and police non-procedural continues to entertain.

I have a real soft spot for fiction that know their location as well as I do, allowing me to visualise exactly where the action is taking place. Aaronovitch does good London, so the only thing that made me blink here was the sudden insertion of the Skygarden Tower for the Heygate Estate (mostly famous to non-Londoners as a key location in Attack the Block). I quickly forgave him; the Skygarden Tower is an interesting concept, although I may not forgive him for Sky.

This instalment takes a couple of unexpected turns, one of which I have to assume leads to the Thing That Really Annoys People regarding Lesley in book 5 (note: I don't know the details of this thing; I just know that there is one. I intend to keep reading, with the forewarning that I may get very angry when I find out). In general, I found Lesley a little bewildering in book 4, partly because I couldn't remember whether she'd always been quite so blunt and direct in asking about Peter's sex life and partly because of the sudden emphasis on her somewhat Life on Mars attitudes to policing. I'd always thought she was a model WPC; here she develops much harder edges. And the twist at the end caught me sideways - I didn't see that coming at all.

None of this reduced my entertainment, combined as it was with colourful Zach and the resplendent Lieutenant Varvara Tamonina, who deserves far more page time than I suspect she'll get given Nightingale's plans for her.

Now the only real question is whether I move swiftly along into London Falling or The Rook and just declare October my London fantasy policing month :) ...I think so.

oh both London Falling and The Rook are excellent. The second one being quite funny.

I am eager to read Broken Homes and hope to get to it soon!

I've picked up The Rook :) it's been sat on TBR much too long!

I've also just twigged that Foxglove Summer isn't out yet, so the thing that I thought might lead to GAH must actually be the thing that has caused GAH for other readers. It certainly surprised me, but didn't make me see red. I am keeping the faith that Aaronovitch (and Lesley) know what they're doing. And I'm curious to see where it leads.

...this probably also indicates my low level of emotional engagement with these books though. I'm entertained, but not attached.

61) The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances - Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal)


This was a random gift from Mr B, because he thought (correctly) that it would make me laugh. This is not a serious book about running for people who are terribly serious about running. This is from the Oatmeal, so it's a daft illustration of the crazy reasons we have for doing some really stupid things, like running up a mountain in 40C heat chased by giant hornets.

I took up running because I was rubbish at making time to go to the gym and I was losing the battle with weight creep. I like food. I like alcohol. I like clothes that fit. These things don't always make perfect partners, so I let a friend bully me into run club ('I don't run', 'They don't make sports bras good enough for me to run' and 'I got hit in the throat by a seesaw as a child and I've had all sorts of psychosomatic responses to breathing hard ever since' don't wash in the face of a determined Canadian) and she was absolutely right - all my excuses were rubbish, and I'd just been doing it wrong.

Matthew Inman appears to have had similar (but not identical) motivations and reactions, so his technicolour illustrations of the Blerch, a racing T-rex and the really grumpy woman at the gym who doesn't want men to talk to her (seriously, what IS that? We're there to sweat, not flirt!) kept me giggling from start to finish.

Lots of fun. And tomorrow, I'll go for a run.

62) The Rook - Daniel O'Malley


I bought this on a whim ages ago, and have heard lots of good buzz about it here in the Green Dragon.

Supernatural London is getting to be a crowded place, so it's no small endeavour to launch another ship to sail those waters. Thankfully O'Malley has come up with a resourceful heroine, loveable allies, a suitably iconic supernatural agency to keep tabs on all the unmentionables, and a big sense of humour. Having grown up in Holland, I may have found the fact the villains were Belgian a smidgeon funnier even than intended.

The things that bothered me were almost entirely down to the fact that O'Malley isn't British, and he's trying to write convincing Brits. He does pretty well - he's got dry snark down just fine - but he inevitably makes a couple of basic cock-ups that stand out (such as Myfanwy having a 6-digit pin for her credit card, or wondering if she could remember how to drive a manual. No, she's British. She may be wondering whether she can remember how to drive at all, but it would never occur to her to wonder about her gear stick). These things are entirely incidental to the plot, and there aren't many of them, but they shook me out of the world each time.

However, this is nitpicking. By and large, this was a rollicking joyride of daft proportions, with colourful characters and a pleasant absence of paranormal romance (although there were heavy hints that this will almost certainly be in store for Myfanwy in future instalments). It doesn't take itself too seriously, which largely helps the suspension of disbelief (the episode with the prophetic duck was a joy), and it is randomly peppered with what appear to be offhand allusions to other supernatural fictions that it has cheerfully adopted as part of the universe (I spotted Midwich and Narnia; I'm fairly sure I was meant to pick up a couple more). And I loved that it is almost entirely gender-neutral.

I do think it showed itself as a first novel in a few places, so I can only expect to enjoy future instalments more as O'Malley gets comfortable. But this was certainly entertaining.

I really loved The Rook. Such a pleasant surprise, and a man writing such a great female character was a plus.

I loved that he wrote several (Ingrid is wonderful!) and although there are plenty of powerful men dotted about they're basically just supporting characters :)

Have you read Blackbirds? Chuck Wendig also wrote a great female character, although the novel is dark and close to horror, I was still delighted to see such a powerful female lead.

>49 majkia: Book bullet! :)

Glad you enjoyed The Rook. I've just heard that book 2 Stiletto will be released in the UK on February 10th next year (so only 4 months to wait *sigh*)

63) The Lady Astronaut of Mars - Mary Robinette Kowal


This is a Tor short, and it's a delightful and moving little gem. Elma is the eponymous Lady Astronaut - now in her 60s, but still dreaming of space flight. Once the poster girl of the colonisation programme, she may have one last shot at flying through the dark as mankind reaches beyond our solar system in search of new planets to inhabit. But the cost is high, and the story focuses on her inner conflict, alternating her current situation with memories of that first mission to Mars.

I found this careful, simple and moving - a pleasure to read, with only the Wizard of Oz cross-over elements leaving me a little confused (apparently this was originally written for an anthology called Rip Off, that took well-known characters and placed them in other contexts) although thankfully they didn't distract from or undermine the main story.

Lovely, although it did feel like it could have been the beginning of a book rather than a short story - although it is complete in itself, and packs a solid emotional punch.

I'm struggling to get engaged with Look to Windward, although I remember enjoying it last time - there's too many distractions (which I think reflects well on the way the Culture works - oh look, a shiny thing! Can we play with it? Can we eat it? No, I don't want to sleep with it... well, maybe - no, no, I don't. Gosh, it's shiny... etc)

So I'm putting it aside and have picked up Three Parts Dead instead, which has promptly swallowed me whole. I'll return to the Culture next week when I have a long train journey and a couple of nights away alone.

>31 imyril: I finally finished Inversions and, like yourself, enjoyed more the second time round.

I hadn't caught the detail of which of the cousins DeWar (what a super name) and The Doctor were and hence missed the gender switch.

Your idea that they cousins could have been on their own mission rather than a fully endorsed Culture mission would be supported by events in some other Culture novels that describe how individuals want to do their own thing and how the Culture accommodates such personal adventures, albeit while providing technology to protect the individuals concerned.

I notice a comment elsewhere that you were not enjoying Look To Windward as much on your reread. (No, I am not going to have you force me to read another IMB immediately for comparative purposes but I am inclined to read LTW again.) I really enjoyed it when I read it and one of the things I liked about it was the apparent hands-off approach of the Minds, while they were actually well aware of what was going on the whole time.

>54 pgmcc: I have put Look to Windward down for a few days, although I've found that I'm struggling to concentrate on Three Parts Dead too (after a flying start), so I suspect the problem is me rather than either book - my head is playing up at the moment, which plays havoc with my concentration and engagement.

In other news, I'm off North today for a week to tour around our old homeland in honour of the 30th anniversary of my grandfather's death. This will involve my first non-ceremonial visit to church in I don't know how long (i.e. without the excuse of a wedding or a funeral), and trying to remember who all my grandmother's old friends are (as I've not seen most of them in 25 years). Also lots and lots of cups of tea. I'm looking forward to seeing our old home though; it's been 4 years or so since I went up.

However, I'm kicking off the trip with a day in Northallerton to sift through the county records office in search of 18th century ancestors. I'm really excited about this (lovely though it will be to trip up memory lane in general) - I love researching genealogy and a day with a microfiche will crucify my head but satisfy my soul :) ...plus there's good cake in Northallerton. Bonus.

64) Look to Windward - Iain M Banks


Here's a funny thing: I really want to like Look to Windward more than I actually do. Even trying to sort out my star rating I could feel myself wanting to bump this up to 4 stars, but I can't really justify it, because I simply didn't enjoy the reading experience that much.

To be clear: it's not a bad book. Indeed, by the general standards of scifi, I'm being wilfully unkind in saying it's not that great - it tackles big ideas on a big bold canvas with some intriguing characters and beautiful writing (I've subsequently started Ancillary Justice, and I can't help but note how much simpler the language is). But by the Banksian standards against which I measure his Culture novels (set for me by the first 3 novels, all of which get 5 stars), I didn't feel it measured up.

And I can't deny it's an 'important' Culture novel. For me, these central books are all about the ethics of Contact, and here we get the consequences of Contact getting it wrong. A miscalculation has resulted in the deaths of 5 billion Chelgrians, when the response to a Culture-puppeteered political shift is bloody civil war. In the aftermath, Contact try to encourage a Chelgrian exile (Ziller) on a famous Orbital (Masaq) to meet with the new Chelgrian ambassador (Quilan) to assuage the Culture's guilt; but Quilan's true mission - hidden even from himself - is vengeance.

All of which sounds great, and provides us with the opportunity to look at life in the Culture up close for once. We continue the theme of Contact ethics, returning to Inversions's question of whether the Culture are right to interfere and questioning the depths of their conscience (as the gigadeath makes them feel bad, but doesn't affect policy in any way). We also revisit the theme of whether hedonistic, backed-up life in the Culture can have meaning (touched on in Player of Games) and introduce the concepts of controlled afterlives that will be revisited in Surface Detail. But this isn't a bridging novel - it's the natural consequence of finally looking at the Culture full-face.

The problem for me is pacing and focus. Look to Windward wanders, getting sucked into its own fascination with the crazy stupid lives (although to be fair, I loved the Culture cocktail party chitchat, unburdened with details of who is speaking, and recognisable gibberish to anyone who has ever been sober in conversation with drunk people) and the habitats of Masaq. This is probably the most detail we have had on a Culture habitat, and part of me wanted to love it on that account (ooh, place-making! Mad ideas! So this is what they get up to at home! Etc), but in fact I found it didn't engage me - unlike Consider Phlebas, which similarly explores imaginative worlds whilst advancing the plot. Add in Chel and the airsphere, and we get a lot of description and exposition.

Exploration of the characters is likewise leisurely, with relatively little in the way of character development. The (largely alien) POVs are there to show us the Culture, not to evolve in response to it. I doubt anyone is surprised when Ziller's ego will not permit him to miss the symphony debut, or when Quilan begins to have doubts about his mission; his desire is always for oblivion, not vengeance).

I was left entirely cold by the side-story on the airsphere, not least because it seemed to be utterly irrelevant, making me wonder if I'd missed something (I realise there's the overlap with where Quilan trains, and that Eweirl is responsible for Sansemin's death - but Uagen Zlepe just seems surplus to requirements, not least given his untimely death). This segment seemed to exist largely to underline that we are not meant to sympathise with the Chelgrian cause (but there was little chance of this), to revisit Consider Phlebas's theme that not every story influences larger events, and to give us the Yoleusenive's perspective from the far future in the coda. Which also serves only to emphasise how meaningless all this is in the long run.

If you approach this as the last Culture novel (which it seemed to be for a very long time), you could argue it comes full circle and makes a whole of what has gone before. But it ultimately isn't the last novel - and regardless, I clearly prefer the urgency of the more plot-driven adventures of the first trilogy over the more reflective explorations of the second.

>56 imyril: You're doing it again.

I will not be rereading Look to Windward for some time. Hopefully I will not experience the reduced level of enjoyment you found on your reread. I remember moving it into if not into favourite Culture novel then joint favourite with Player of Games.

>57 pgmcc: well I'm clearly repressing a desire to like it more than I do, and I'm sure your insights would help give me new perspective... ;)

>58 imyril: Oh you are good!

>59 pgmcc: *curtseys*

No rush. I know there's some wine and cheese in your immediate future :)

65) Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie


I doubt I can say anything that hasn't been said already this year about Ancillary Justice, so I'm going to try to be brief for once ;)

Some interesting ideas here, which I enjoyed without ever finding my sympathies on the side of the Radch - they are, after all, a ruthless hegemony in the spirit of the Roman Empire, which requires rather specific thoughts on civilisation and worth to get behind without reservation.

I found the novel accomplished and was comfortable with the central conceit - the misgendering didn't get in the way of my reading, and I didn't really struggle to work out the true genders of the key characters. I appreciated the more detailed commentary on the complexities of Radch gender (and culture in general) when Breq and Seivarden arrived on the station towards the end.

I never quite got over my unintended meta in which the Culture could be keeping a benevolent eye on all of this from a safe distance (which puts an entirely new twist on Anaander Mianaai), but it too didn't get in the way of enjoying the novel as it was written.

In spite of my appreciation, I didn't get sucked into the novel and although I'll read the sequel in due course, I'm in no rush. That said, I suspect this is one of the novels that improves with rereading - I think there are subtleties to be missed when you have little appreciation of Radch culture and history.

>61 imyril: I did like it better on my second read; the first time around, some energy was expended on figuring out how it all worked. The second time that was out of the way, so I could focus on other things.

>62 zjakkelien: that's good to know. I think I'll save this for next year, which will also reduce the wait for the third installment :)

In other news, I'm still not grown up enough to read The Woman in Black at bedtime. Unlike Arthur Kipps, I'm rubbish at confronting the fear in the black of night.

:) yeah, that one creeped me out too.

66) The Woman in Black - Susan Hill


I first read The Woman in Black in my early teens, a set text for English that we never actually studied (but being me, I read everything on the list). I remember sitting alone at home on an autumn afternoon as the light died, tucked up on the sofa in the grip of the dark, haunted atmosphere within its pages. My ears strained to hear and not-hear any sounds in the empty house (3 storeys and not much given to creaking, being largely made of poured concrete) and I hunched down on the book so as not to catch a sight of my reflection - or anything else - in the windows as dark fell. When it was done, I found the courage to go close the curtains and turn on every light in the house, then put on the television and remind myself that it was just a story.

I may have reread it over ten years ago, and have seen the play twice since moving to London, but I couldn't remember the details by the time I saw the recent film; I was just certain they had made many changes, Hammering it up. Rereading it now, I appreciated both the glorious faux-Victorian complexity of the language and the sheer simplicity of the haunting tale. No need for a plethora of deaths or a demonic monkey toy (although a small leather monkey is one of the child's toys at Eel Marsh House, it isn't on view), let alone the egregious gore of modern horror. I still love The Woman in Black for its effective use of suggestion (so well-adopted in the stage play, where the entire tale is largely conveyed by 2 versatile actors, good use of lighting and a bare minimum in props).

And yes, I had to put it down last night when I found myself ensuring I was lying in the middle of the bed lest a hand reach out and grab a trailing foot, my ears half-strained for the familiar creaking of pipes and roof. Ahem. My brain. It doesn't need this sort of encouragement ;)

Struggling to get back into Three Parts Dead, so I have set it down for a while and stayed in London's past with Sedition, which is off to a cracking start - colourful characters with a vindictive streak, dirty 18th century streets, and a daft plot to attract eligible husbands for social climbing daughters by having them taught to play that newfangled machine, the pianoforte. It's billed as Dangerous Liaisons meets Fingersmith, and I can see those strands emerging. I just want to curl up with a big pot of tea and a moist slab of ginger cake and read the afternoon away (sadly I have guests arriving and work to do, so that will have to wait until later).

I thought The Woman in Black was a great gothic tale when I first encountered it. I may need to revisit it, although my memory seems to suggest that the tide that periodically isolated the house from the rest of the region was one of the elements that gave me the fidgets, the creeps, the willies. But I thought it was one of the few successful ghost stories I'd read from a contemporary writer. (Usually I have to resort to the 19th century for getting those ghostly shivers.)

>67 jillmwo: the tide is a brilliant device, as is the sea fret that is just as effective. The sequence where Arthur decides he can walk home and is caught by fog on the causeway is perfectly spooky.

67) Sedition - Katharine Grant


This caught my eye in the book shop browsing for Christmas gifts, and I picked up a copy for myself in the charity shop by chance as it seemed it might need vetting before blithely gifting it to (grand)mothers :)

Billed as 'the bastard child of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Sarah Waters', this more or less lives up to that promise in terms of plot: some City businessmen made good wish to purchase titled husbands for their daughters, and come up with a hare-brained scheme involving piano lessons to show off the girls' wealth and accomplishments. However, the music master appointed to teach them has been incentivized by the bitter piano maker to seduce each girl before they master Herr Bach.

Monsieur is not to know there is nothing he can teach young Alathea musically or sexually, or how much more persuasive and inventive she is than he. Add in the disfigured daughter of the embittered piano maker, and you have far too many adjectives and a few too many conspirators plotting against each other ;) Expect everyone to be out to sleep with and harm almost everyone else, and you won't be far off the mark.

Many of the characters felt cartoonish - the aspiring parents and the Drigg daughters in particular are well-trodden stereotypes even the Brothers Grimm would recognise, although I appreciated the understated friendship that bound Harriet to Georgiana and the unexpected bond and character reversals of Annie and Alathea.

This is colourful but surprisingly modest for a bawdy novel of seduction and liberation; unlike Waters, Grant prefers metaphors and implication over full-bodied romping. Her focus here is on the girls' emotional and attitudinal shifts, transfigured by all their lessons in unexpected ways - some gaining grace even as they lose their reputations, others settling further into their thin stereotypes.

I found it entertaining, but it lost me at the climax, which strayed into farce with shades of Regency morality tale in terms of just desserts dished out.

Only safe for grandmothers who are comfortable with (non-graphic) lesbian romping and incest.

Pet peeve: authors who can't use a map, or choose to ignore geography because they want to drop in a placename that has no place on the sensible course of the journey in question.

Next up: 10 days in furthestflung Scotland (the Hebrides), accompanied - appropriately enough - by Hebridean Journey.

Book reports entirely dependent on wifi!

Have a wonderful time in the Hebrides! It's one of my favourite parts of the world.

I'm looking forward to those big skies and stormy seas. And I'm hoping for a clear night to see the northern lights - the geomagnetic forecast for next weekend is quite promising at the moment!

68) Hebridean Journey - Halliday Sutherland


I didn't quite know what to make of this book - it was part of a windfall of old books when a close friend's grandma decided to downsize her collection (I mostly got weird or scarily colonial history and anthropological volumes). As I couldn't find out anything about it or its author on the internet, I didn't even know if it was fiction or non-fiction - it took me quite a while to decide that it's the 1930s equivalent of a blog.

This is an account of a few weeks Sutherland spent travelling across the Hebrides, and he eventually clarifies that this is not intended as a travel guide. It's more of a trip report (no photos though ;) and while he takes in most of the Hebridean islands (Rum was still privately owned) he doesn't necessarily take in all the sights. He visits acquaintances and friends of friends; he knocks on croft doors to ask for accommodation and buttermilk; he recounts some religious history and local mythology; and includes any other diversions and conversations that entertained him.

His views are at times colourful and it's sometimes difficult to tell whether he is deadly serious or seriously tongue in cheek as it's tricky to judge the attitudes and knowledge of the times (for example, he at times opines on something that I know full well to be untrue - but I don't know if this was common knowledge in the 30s). In other places, he's either having a good laugh or was an eccentric gentleman - he devotes some pages to recommending rising early when staying with friends even if it is not your usual habit, in part so they will think you industrious and in part because you will find they adjust their habits to match your supposed habit and make you a cup of tea (...but if you rose at 8 as usual rather than at 6, you wouldn't put them out and they'd still make you a cup of tea!)

Overall, this was occasionally diverting, sometimes dull - like many blogs ;) I peg this as a curiosity, and I'm glad I read it while travelling the islands it describes, but I won't be rushing to unearth any of his other books (there is a Lapland Journey as well).

69) Deep Sea and Foreign Going - Rose George


I found myself completely absorbed by much of this book, which is a journalist's account of a trip on a Maersk container ship and her review of the workings of the shipping industry. Your mileage may vary, but I was fascinated (and at times disgusted) by the commercial realities and the human stories - from the impact of flagging out to the economics of piracy and the intimate loneliness of modern seafaring life.

I suspect I will reread this; I certainly found plenty of food for thought (not least in the closing chapters on environmental impact) and was touched by the chapter on the church's involvement to try and reassure seafarers that somebody out there cares in the face of elaborate corporate structures that remove any accountability for ship owners or flag states and leave the sailors literally at sea with little protection and less oversight.

Well written and unexpectedly engaging.

Back from the Hebrides after a fabulous 10 days away!

I will try to write a trip report in due course, but have returned straight into a contract so it may be a wee while before I get it together. In the meantime, here are some pretty photos - the last/first one of the man on fire was a fabulous night - full moon over a sea loch with fireworks and a floating guy. On Skye. Only slightly Wicker Man, honest. And brilliant.

Love the photos - glad you had a good trip.

>75 imyril: Those are lovely photographs. Thank you for sharing.

I'm not really familiar with Instagram, so I'm not quite sure which are from the trip and which are not, but they are all lovely!

The man on fire is quite impressive. Very nice pictures!

Thank you everyone. It is delightfully easy to take beautiful photos in Scotland :)

>78 MrsLee: This trip starts at the man on fire; the cake and tea are from the famous Betty's tea rooms in Yorkshire a few weeks ago. Instagram doesn't seem to believe in showing dates or letting you make collections, but it is quick to pop stuff up on the go so I've never quite got round to looking at Flickr et al that are better galleries.

Thank you for the explanation. :) It is a terrific way to get a quick impression of a trip.

In books, I headed back to SF/F and found myself once again struggling to even read the first chapter of The Steerswoman (it seems to be my SFF Jane Eyre - I want to read it, really I do. Oh well, one day I'll be right for it) and instead getting instantly engaged by A Matter of Oaths. I recall someone saying this turns out to be the first in a series, which is just find by me.

>82 imyril: A pity you are struggling with that, imyril, I thought it was excellent. Any idea why you are struggling?

>83 zjakkelien: There's nothing I can put my finger on. I think if I can come back to it on an occasion when I can just sit and get a few chapters in, I'll be fine - on both occasions I've picked it up I've been tired and only read a few pages. I'm not letting it put me off - I will definitely come back to it, as I've heard so many good things!

>84 imyril: I see, that happens sometimes. Well, then I hope you will find the right mood for this book in time!

70) A Matter of Oaths - Helen S. Wright


I think I enjoyed this more than it deserves in some respects, but as I continued to find it engaging from start to finish I'm not going to worry about that too much. This is a debut novel, and it shows in some occasional awkwardness in language and characterisation (Joshim, in particular, felt told not shown for much of the first half of the book) and a touch of unmerited smugness in the closing chapter. I'm also not entirely sure that the comms snippets that gave the reader knowledge of enemy activities were a good idea - I felt this reduced tension rather than raising it (as I think the knowledge that there were bad guys was intended to, but in knowing their identities it removed ambiguities that would have otherwise increased tension at crucial points). On the flip side, these were the only info dumps in the early stages, and did provide much-needed context.

However, I liked it for how little we are told outside them - everything else emerges through the plot, which happily bounds along with few distractions. Respected patrol ship Bhattya needs a new First Officer; disgraced but talented Rafe needs a new berth; and formidable Commander Rallya knows that retirement is creeping up on her, and she needs to find a suitable successor. But Rafe's disgrace isn't a minor thing - he has broken his Oath and been punished with an identity-wipe that has removed all knowledge of who he was and why he broke it - and no self-respecting crew would take him on in case he did it again. Worse, there are those who remember far too much about both, and it slowly becomes clear that they aren't finished with him - or with Bhattya.

It's a happy space opera stew of familiar tropes with immortal warring Emperors, cyberpunk in place of science, amnesia, a strong dose of 'I'm getting too old for this shit' and a dash of romance (happily not between Rafe and Rallya!)

I liked the offhand way in which it was clear that few characters were white and several primary characters were gay or bisexual. I could have wished for more women in the foreground (while there are several female junior officers, they are basically wallpaper, leaving us with Rallya and eventually Emperor Julur's security lead Braniya, who is far from sympathetic), but Rallya - strong-minded, sharp-tongued, irascible and supremely self-confident - is a joy. We don't often get female Commanders let alone ones nearing retirement, although there were sections early on in the novel where some fairly nasty behaviour initially went unexplained and threatened to make her out a complete bitch (thankfully it becomes clear she's misbehaving purely for the badness of it - most of the time, anyway).

I would remain delighted to discover there was a sequel, but this appears to have been a misunderstanding on my part - and as it's been 15 years since this first came out, it seems unlikely there ever will be. It remains an entertaining diversion I can see myself revisiting in the future.

Thank you @sandstone78 for putting it on my radar!

>86 imyril: I'm glad you liked it! I happened to find it through one of Jo Walton's tor.com posts years ago, and was very pleased by it.

I do wish there was a sequel, or at least that Wright would write more books, related or unrelated- besides the obvious, ah, that brilliant last page twist! but is that, I wonder, the unearned smugness you are referring to?, I noticed on my recent reread that there were definitely plot threads that kind of went nowhere... I'm thinking particularly of the whole deal with the Outsiders taking brain tissue, which really didn't end up having anything to do with anything, beyond being a vehicle to show that Rafe had unexpected command knowledge, did it? The plot ended up turning to Rafe's identity and that all sort of got left behind- presumably, as the speculation was, the Outsiders were trying to grow their own webs, but we didn't really learn why, did we?

The story moves along so smoothly I didn't really notice it at my first reading, though, and at the same time I feel like it stands well enough alone- it has the quality that, say, Burning Bright does for me, where nothing more really needs to be said, the author has characterized the characters well enough that I can well imagine what comes next. There's a particularly "open" quality about the worldbuilding that lends itself to idle speculation and, if one was inclined, fan-fiction, I think.

I agree that it would have been nice to have more female characters in the spotlight, though, but yes, Rallya!

>87 sandstone78: I didn't like it as much as Burning Bright, which I found far more satisfying in the intricacy and depth of characters and politics, but it was very good popcorn reading.

I called the last page twist when Julur started toying with Rafe - taken with the 'youthful features', 'near-human rapid healing' and 'I never knew my father', I had initially guessed that Lin was Ayvar's son rather than his lover - but once I'd made that jump, it was a tiny step to 'wait, just because they're not related doesn't mean there aren't more immortals'. And that seemed a far stronger reason for Julur to be keeping Rafe alive than 'I can let Ayvar think he's dead then tell him in 100 years that he wasn't but he is now. Stings all over again, doesn't it?' long-term spite.

There's certainly a sequel in the emerging three-way power struggle, especially if Rafe takes over the Guild from Rallya (likely; his secret will still be safe with Ayvar by then). I can see how that story could pick back up on the Outsiders thread too - if the Guild are bound to a third immortal (sympathetic to Ayvar), then of course Julur would pursue this. As perhaps would other humans, in fear of immortal control. Although you're absolutely right - I lost sight of the Outsiders thread on this first read too!

It does stand alone though - although there's so much sketched but not explored that suffices here, but would be intriguing to delve into in more detail in a sequel (or fan fiction).

I quite liked Jualla as well; I would have liked to have seen more of her - she had the ingredients of a really interesting character (fair to a fault, but disgruntled; ambitious, capable, and loyal) who sadly got very little page time.

71) The Quick - Lauren Owen


I have a soft spot for vampire novels, as long as they're not paranormal romance. I have strong opinions about vampires and faerie being dark and terrifying; I can accept alluring and seductive, but not sparkly gushing. That said, I didn't realise The Quick was a vampire story when I picked it up - it is described as modern take on gothic horror, and for some reason I thought it was going to be about magicians.

As a vampire novel, it has lots of traditional elements: secrecy, the upper echelons of high society, troubled priests, forbidden romance (James Norbury falls for the man he rooms with, which is unacceptable in Victorian London) and dogged heroism (Charlotte Norbury's determination to save her brother from the vampiric Aegolius Club). I liked that while Victorian vampire novels tend to involve women only as victims, Owen has 3 strong women in Charlotte, 'professional' vampire-hunter Adeline and streetwise Liza, vampire child of the Alia. I also liked the details here - this is a Victorian London that feels fairly real; bustling streets, dirt and noise, the baying of the mob and the disinterest of strangers all ring true (as does the geography, my bugbear from Sedition) - and that Owen has vampires of all classes; her East End Alia are a viciously delightful answer to the Aegolius Club's superior gentlemen and you could choose to read much into Mrs Price's rejection of Edward's desire to use his vampirism to 'improve the lot of unfortunates' and his intention to stop gaining consent to the Exchange.

But I wasn't entirely satisfied with the book overall. Like Sedition, the pacing felt off (especially in the second half) and I found the narrative structure awkward. The novel is split into 5 or 6 parts; the first lengthy section focuses on James Norbury, his slow-blooming romance and the first hints that some of the cast may not be what they seem. The second is a disjointed collection of notes and diary entries from an array of characters we haven't previously met, that confirm suspicions that this is a vampire novel and give us their perspective (sort of - the notes are actually written by a human associate). The next section re-introduces Charlotte in her search for her disappeared brother - well into half the book, it still feels like slow build-up.

My problem is that the climax doesn't quite pay off all this world-building and scene-setting - and that there's a further (lengthy) part of 'and what happened after', where once again I felt the final pay-off failed to deliver. I'm not a huge fan of the movie thriller trope where after the big climax and the villain's death... the villain turns out not to be dead and comes back to have one last go when everyone relaxes. Thankfully The Quick doesn't do this, but it doesn't really do much else, either. It just sort of meanders and ties up loose ends - unnecessarily, I think.

It's well-written and engaging, and I enjoyed it (and in spite of my carping, would recommend it) - but it didn't feel balanced, so I've docked it half a star for sort of just meandering along and along and along and rushing a bit and then meandering again until it finally reaches the sea. I can see Hollywood picking it up and making a better film of it with good use of the cutting room floor.

The quick is on Mount Tbr; I'm glad you still recommend it in spite of your reservations.

>90 Sakerfalcon: It has plenty to enjoy - just settle in for a meander :)

And I'd read the sequel, so really, I may be being a bit harsh.

I don't think I'll let myself use half stars next year - I'll force myself to go one way or the other, in which case this would go up to 4* (and Sedition would go down to 3*).

72) The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins


I don't read much YA (unless it was something I originally read at that age), so I didn't join in the rush to read The Hunger Games a few years back. I did see the film though, and walked out frustrated that I felt there had been a good story that had been stifled in Hollywood casting and art direction. People who knew the books disagreed, which didn't encourage me to immediately pick up the books.

So it's taken me a while to get to them, and I'm glad I finally did. I can only respect Collins for her rapid character sketch and world-building (although I'd like to see some detail teased out in future books to convince me this 'works', there was enough here given the novel's single-minded focus on the Games).

I liked Katniss Everdeen too - spiky, tough, reserved, capable and unemotional - her matter of fact narration sucked me right in and I enjoyed her journey. The eventual romance (one of my sticking points in the film) made more sense with Katniss' interior monologue intact, and I liked that we had no sight of the machinations outside the Games.

Possibly a 4.5 - I really did think this was absolutely cracking through the first two-thirds. It suffered slightly from the fact I'd seen the film - this reduced the tension (and my enjoyment) of the final third, although it picked up again once Katniss was out of the arena and ultimately leaves me curious to read the next instalment at some point.

I can see now why fans of the book admired the film - in retrospect, it's one of the most faithful movie adaptations you could wish for. I suspect I would enjoy the film a lot more if I re-watch it now (I'd probably still object to Gale, Peeta and the other supposedly underfed tributes being so Hollywood shiny ;)

Wow! That's quite a change of heart you have had. It encourages me. I have The Hunger Games on my Kindle, but am still avoiding it. I haven't seen the movies, either. One of these days I will get around to trying it. :)

I recommend it. The movie suffered for not quite capturing Katniss' tone of voice (and for just being too shiny. When my brain is supplying the visuals, that's not a problem :)

Oh - be warned, it is a first person present tense narration, which I know can be a big turn-off for some!

I enjoyed the first two books of the series. I felt that Mockingjay was quite weak. I'm guessing that since it is being made into two movies that the final story is being expanded for the theater.

" be warned, it is a first person present tense narration, which I know can be a big turn-off for some!"

Ugh, that just knocked it down towards the bottom again. Glad you warned me though.

>96 MrsLee: I had a feeling that was a red flag for you :)

>95 suitable1: I'm looking forward to the sequels at some point, although knowing the second is a Games retread doesn't make me want to rush into it...

I'm struggling with Alif the Unseen. I picked it up because it won a fantasy award, but I'm now a quarter of the way through with nothing untoward happening - and Alif isn't a very appealing hero so far. I am currently still biting with 'I've started so I'll finish', but I'm not sure how much longer I can last.

...and I keep remembering Mum brought me the latest Simon Serrailler novel when she visited. That's a whole lot of temptation right there.

Ha! I should have whinged sooner. The very next chapter introduced a grumpy djinn.

No, it's no good. I've fought my way to 60% of Alif the Unseen and I'm just not enjoying it. I've found djinni and a magical book that is the code to reality, but the fundamental problem is that I just don't like Alif and I don't like what the author is doing with the characters around him.

Alif himself is a selfish navel-gazing self-pitying man-child, whose redemption holds no interest for me. He may well be a fair depiction of a young man in a Gulf state (it chimes true with Girls of Riyadh, my closest point of comparison), but the author does little to challenge his views of the world, so I take no pleasure in viewing it through his eyes.

Vikram the Vampire was the only plus point, but given his dialogue is largely made up of insults or sexual commentary, he's at best offensively entertaining, and his role is little more than that of a deus ex machina who can move Alif along to the next plot point (arguably this is the traditional role of the djinn, but it's a bit thin). Plus his motivation in helping Alif is far from clear. He's dressed up as a bad-ass - if his interest is in the Alf Yeom, it would be more in keeping to simple take it from Alif and leave the young man to the State; a tricksy djinn would ring true. He goes well above and beyond what would be appropriate for taking his sister in during a sandstorm (and given Alif's dreams, you could easily argue she'd already amply rewarded him).

The women are sidelined, serving Alif's needs - the beautiful noblewoman love interest who betrays him; the demure and pious sister-neighbour who will clearly be Alif's reward for becoming a better person if he survives; and the nameless American convert (author stand-in) who exists to pour scorn on the West, to add counterpoint to Alif's frustrations at being excluded from Gulf society, and to have hysterics (repeatedly). I have a real beef with major characters not being given names; it's dehumanising, which I find more problematic than usual in this case.

It seems wholly unlikely at this point that there will be a turnaround big enough to make up for what has gone before, and the fluffy fantasy-hacking is really putting my teeth on edge. So I'm giving myself permission to abandon it.

73) Printer's Devil Court - Susan Hill


I've read it so you don't have to. I like Hill's ghost stories - simple as they are ;) - but this one fails to create atmosphere and is chock-full of egregious errors in continuity (one character - who only appears in a single paragraph - changes names between the start and end of that paragraph; later, a portentous comment about a ginger cat is meaningless as the scene involving said cat appears to have been cut from the story, so we have no idea why it is relevant) and syntax (missing commas a-go-go, plus the occasional erroneous or extra word - even in the About the Author). My teeth were grinding from start to finish.

Sadly the whole thing feels like a rough draft from an author more interested in other projects passed by a junior editor with a publishing deadline and no care for detail; it reflects badly on both Hill and on Profile Books.

It's a shame, as I've enjoyed the others in this series (Dolly and The Small Hand, along with reprints of older stories). But I'll think twice about picking up any more, and I'm desperately glad I got this from the charity shop!

>101 imyril: "I've read it so you don't have to. "

Thank you for your sacrifice. :D That is my new favorite review.

>102 MrsLee: *curtseys* you're very welcome.

I am making it up to myself by watching snooker, which I find very soothing with occasional outbursts of hilarity from the unintentionally suggestive commentary). It's also one of those things that you really don't have to pay a lot of attention to, so it's marvellous for multi-tasking (I'm also trying to bake some bread; trying being the operative verb - I may have unintentionally prepared a hockey puck instead).

>101 imyril: Thank you for your sacrifice - it is greatly appreciated as I don't have enough time to read everything I want to as it is :D Hopefully next one up will be much better for you.

Unexpected bread success! 6 lovely crusty white rolls only marginally denser than I'd like and not a hockey puck in sight :)

That makes the day better.

>105 imyril: Congratulations!

>105 imyril: *applause* And I admit I am a bit green with envy.

>107 jillmwo: I guess the trick is to see if I can do it twice ;)

I'm having a winter clear-out today. There's a bag of clothes to go to charity, a box of clothes to go under the eaves until spring, a pile of hosiery that is more holes than hose, and I'm setting aside another book.

The Lost Villages of England (Leigh Driver, not the seminal work by Maurice Beresford) makes a lovely coffee table book, but a terrible read. I have dug lost sites in England, and they're fascinating one at a time - but reading a double-page spread of village after village gets both tedious and repetitive. Driver has some lovely photos and does her best to bring each site to life (and explain why it died out), but I still found myself getting bored. A few stand out, probably because they were already known to me (some of the WW2 evacuations; some of the Iron Age sites) and have an interesting story - but many repeat the sad story of how many villages were lost to enclosure or for the likes of Capability Brown to build a posh garden over the top of.

I will dip in and out of it for years to finish it, but I'm not going to make myself finish reading it cover to cover. It deserves better - it's not a bad book, I'm just not approaching it in the right way.

Sounds like a good bathroom book. :)

>105 imyril: Congratulations! Breads can be very temperamental :)

>110 MrsLee: you're a genius. It would be a perfect bathroom book :)

>111 sandstone78: thank you :)

74) The Soul of Discretion - Susan Hill


Marvellous, I've reassured myself that Susan Hill can write good prose, good characters, and keep me hooked.

I've frequently noted that I enjoy the Serrailler novels because they are about people, not crime. I think of them first and foremost as the unfolding drama of the Serrailler family - and after 8 instalments, you would think we knew all we needed to about them. Not so. I was genuinely shocked at the twists in their tale delivered here, which came as a bit of a double sucker punch (although whether Simon's experiences here will stop him behaving atrociously towards Rachel remains to be seen, I don't have high hopes for Richard's future - I was knocked for six by his behaviour here).

I want to say I struggled to put this down, but I found the criminal subject matter (child abuse and rape) a struggle, so in fact I was alternately reading voraciously and walking away to come up for air. Hill doesn't linger, but the carefully-sketched rape (and the brutal exploration of the aftermath) and the mere hints of the other were quite sufficient to make it a hard read. I think it's only fair to add a Caution notice on this one.

Cat's concerns for her teenage son's reading materials and her growing conviction that we need to embrace death as part of life make for much-needed relief, unlikely as that may sound.

Overall, a successful addition to the saga, although I'm mildly annoyed that it sort of feels like a cliffhanger as it leaves so much unresolved, but technically it wrapped up all the major plot points. It just did it in a way that leaves massive fallout for Book 9! (I note the obvious 'twist' relating to Rupert Barr/Rachel got spelled out, but I wonder how that the oh-so-casual reference to Gerald Hanbury will rebound on Cat and Imogen House?

And he might be a bit young, but odds on for Cat/Kieron? Or is that just me?

Oooh, my next read will be my 75th - that's a massive milestone for me!

Now, do I go with Bellman and Black (having loved The Thirteenth Tale), The Golem and the Djinni or The Cloud Roads (both GD book bullets!)?

One more!

75) The Cloud Roads - Martha Wells


I belatedly caught up on the Green Dragon Group Read :) I picked up The Cloud Roads after everyone else had moved on to The Serpent Sea, and with one thing and another it has taken until now to actually read it.

I found it a slow starter, in the sense that I didn't engage with it through the early chapters; but once the plot kicked in in earnest this improved and I found myself happily chunking through it. This is my first Martha Wells, and while I'm not bowled over, I liked it enough that I'll seek out further instalments of the Raksura at some point as I'm curious to see how the world-building continues to evolve - I'm hoping it develops more nuance, especially as it delves into the links between the Aeriat and the Fell (which I'm assuming it will).

I think my main problem was that I didn't really like Moon very much, and he is our sole point of view. Thankfully there were some great secondary (and tertiary) characters (Frost was an instant favourite, but I really liked Selis and Chime too), and once the broader cast came fully into play I was happier. My other issue was that it felt rather black and white - there are good guys and villains, and where there is any hint that a good guy may have been compromised, they turn out to have excuses - Pearl is in fact acting in the colony's best interests (although this was a good thing in my books); Branch betrayed them to Pearl but not to the Fell; Balm couldn't be held accountable for her treachery. I like a bit more complexity or ambiguity at play - even Ilane was acting in the best interests of her own people.

There's lots I could say, but as most of it has been said by others on the Group Read thread, I shall contain myself :) Suffice to say that I found this straightforward, but entertaining.

76) Bodies of Light - Sarah Moss


I am an unabashed fan of Sarah Moss's work, and her latest novel is no exception. Her first foray in historical fiction, she has chosen to tell the story of Alethea Moberley - the elder sister of May, whose history on Colsay inspires Anna to return to work in Night Waking. Alethea's parents are the oddly matched Alfred Moberley, a Manchester artist and designer in the mould of William Morris, and Elizabeth Sanderson, an evangelical feminist campaigner and lifelong do-gooder (except at home).

Raised to do her duty - that is to say, to do whatever her mother tells her - and to repress her emotions as self-indulgent hysteria and madness, Alethea makes for a quiet, nervous heroine who applies herself to her studies, her housework and eventually her calling as a doctor more to avoid disappointing others than to fulfil a lifelong dream. Yet she is fierce beneath the duty and embraces both duty and calling to make them her own in this fascinating portrait of the struggles of Victorian women to be taken seriously.

I was enthralled by this moving tale and - as with other books by Moss - rapidly found myself fully emotionally engaged, furious with Alethea's parents and sister for their behaviour and at times frustrated with Alethea for martyring herself to their opinions. In between, the glimpses of the impossible position Victorian women found themselves in (not least being subjected to brutal examinations by policemen to prove they weren't ladies of ill-repute when found out after dark) cast the hard-won freedoms of the 20th century into sharp relief. We may sometimes reflect that there's still a long way to go - even in modern Britain - but it is good to be reminded how far we have come.

This won't be for everyone, not least because it's written in the present tense which can be a turn-off, but it is firmly one of my favourites for the year and no doubt one I will revisit in future.

Warm wishes to you all for the seasonal festivities. May they include good cheer, as much food and family as you enjoy, and many interesting new books to explore in the coming year.

We are enjoying a spread out celebration. A good friend joined us last night for a smorgasbord of smoked meats and fish by the fire, and for presents and lunch today. Tomorrow we get to recover, read and run, then it's off up country for Second Christmas and my Mum's birthday. I'm looking forward to a few days with the family.

I hope you enjoy your celebrations. Best wishes to you and yours.

>118 imyril: That sounds like a great Christmas...and a second Christmas. That should be required everywhere. Have a great time. I wish you many books at Christmass.

77) Zoo City - Lauren Beukes


The problem with finishing a book before Christmas and writing it up afterwards is obvious :) But - braced with some strong coffee and a deadline (as we need to jump in the car and head off for family shenanigans) - I'll give it a shot.

Zinzi December is an aposymbiont or zoo: following her brother's death, she has acquired an animal familiar and an appointment with the Undertow. Relegated to the violent slums of Zoo City when she is released from jail, she and her Sloth (by far the most likeable character in the book) survive on her talent for sensing the invisible threads that bind us to things we've lost - retrieving them for a fee. She keeps what's left of her life uncomplicated: no lost persons cases, no emotional ties. But when a client dies unexpectedly, she gets sucked into a case to find one of South Africa's biggest pop stars, and everything gets very complicated quickly.

This is a vividly realised world, horrifyingly believable in the way of the best spec fiction - as long as you accept that some bizarre kink in the recent past has made guilt tangible as a spirit animal (and, if you're lucky, a useful magical talent). I particularly the interspersed background chapters, which helped with world-building and flavour, and admired the atmosphere evoked throughout.

Zinzi is resourceful and intelligent, which makes her a strong (anti)heroine, but she's also a cold fish - she has cut herself off from feelings so thoroughly that I found it difficult to judge whether she cared about anything. By the end of it I didn't really feel I'd got to know her - she was all hard edges and we'd had little to latch onto through all the broken glass. Her sideline in 419 emails was wry, but I appreciated that Benoit eventually called her on it; while she was an unwilling participant at best, it was also clear she didn't particularly care who she hurt.

The ratcheting plot - lost items to lost persons to conspiracy nightmare - bounded along at a pace I'd expect from Beukes, but lost me in the final act when it started to feel first a bit silly (oh look! Everything gets worse! No, much worse! No, MUCH... you get the idea) and then resolved itself in a way that seemed out of kilter with the mood of the rest of novel (I wasn't clear why Zinzi wasn't in jail given the carnage at Huron's house; easier to believe she was a co-conspirator than a victim / do-gooder - especially given she'd been working for him). I think we were meant to take her final choices as a sign of her beginning to heal some of her emotional wounds, but I found it hard to believe in.

Overall, this felt good to a point, but if it had been my first experience of Beukes, I might think twice about reading more. Interesting rather than excellent for me.

78) Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins


I zoomed through the second Hunger Games novel as I wanted to watch the film. Back at home in the Victor's Village, Katniss realises she is still in danger from the Capitol when President Snow drops by to tell her it's all her fault that the Districts are acting up and that he'll kill everyone she cares about if she doesn't fix it.

...which probably sums up my biggest problem with the novel. I needed to accept that and move on, whereas I struggled to suspend my disbelief over the lovestruck teens being the spark for what is essentially multiple disconnected rebellions (as the Districts have no way of communicating with each other).

Once I popped that problem on the shelf and got on with it, the book works well in much the way of the first. Katniss' first person narrative keeps us confined to her skull for understanding what's going on and keeps us close to her as a person (because let's face it - Katniss is a cold fish from the outside; one of my issues with the films is that we lose sight of Katniss' inner turmoil, guilt, grief and anger as there's only so much even Jennifer Lawrence can do with her eyebrows). The bigger focus on romance angst was expected and, as expected, mildly irritating. I like Katniss much more when she's cold, focused and trying to survive than when she's flailing about over her boys and I really have no investment in who she eventually ends up with (I'd quite like to see the answer be neither).

Yes, in many ways this is retreading familiar ground (the train; the training; the arena), but Katniss' situation and slow realisation that she has no control over how the Districts react to her (i.e. her family are buggered whatever she does) lends a different flavour to the dish, the paranoia and feeling of persecution much more personal than the generic horror of the first book.

So - more solid entertainment, but it felt a little thinner than the first book. There's less originality and more rote here, so while it's a solid second instalment I don't rate it quite as highly.

79) I Think I Can See Where You're Going Wrong - Marc Burrows


Brilliant loo book received as a stocking filler - a collection of comments left by Guardian readers under articles on the Guardian website. Carefully curated, some of these (such as the person who sent an email to some corporate VIPs, signing off 'Regards' - only to realise after hitting send that G and T are terribly close together on a keyboard. Oops) will leave you in stitches regardless of whether you have any cultural context on the news stories, Britishisms and 'Guardian reader' persona. Other comments really do benefit from knowledge of the Guardian and exposure to British views on what people who read the Guardian are like (full disclaimer: sometimes, I read the Guardian or the Observer. Mostly, I read the Independent).

...but all of them work best if you've ever seen Dave Gorman's Modern Life is Good-ish and are familiar with his Found Poem. At which point this little book is a devastating gem.

It also goes to show just how hard the British will work to keep a good run of puns going :)

Blimey, milestones. I'm fairly sure I've read more books this year than in any other previous year, and my 9-year Thingaversary is just 15 days away. I think that may merit some fine cheese and a glass of red wine (as well as some books, of course!)

I got lots and lots of cheese for Christmas. I'll share with you!

That's awfully kind of you. We got given lots of wine, so it can be quite a party!

Well, if you only have 15 days til your Thingaversary, you need to begin making your lists! BOOKS THAT YOU MUST HAVE and BOOKS THAT SOUND GOOD and BOOKS THAT APPEAL EVEN IF YOU DON"T HAVE TIME TO READ ANYTHING THAT LONG and BOOKS THAT BUDDIES ON LT HAVE RECOMMENDED and BOOKS THAT ARE WRITTEN IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE BUT WHICH HAVE GREAT COVERS.

Check with @PGMCC for exactly how many books you should buy for a 9-year anniversary. It might be something like 52 or 79, given the man's calculations!

>127 jillmwo: I have a train journey today, so I will get onto my home work :)

>128 imyril:, @jillmwo is good at giving homework assignments. They are generally enjoyable. In fact I do not remember not enjoying any of the assignments she gave me.

Now, in relation to Thingaversary book acquisition. We begin with the number of years: 9.

We then add, as @LunaticDruid recently called it, one to grow on: 10.

Then we add one for good measure: 11.

After that we look at the books in the lists that @jillmwo has you drawing up, let's say 12, which brings us to: 23

Then we multiply by 2: 46

Subtract three to remove any possibility of guilt: 43

Next add 10: 53

This gives us a total of 9 + 10 + 11 + 23 + 46 + 43 + 53 = 195.

Oops! I forgot sales tax. I do not know the sales tax where you live, or where you will be buying your books, but in Ireland the equivalent tax is Value Added Tax (VAT) and it is currently 23% (although books are zero rated but we can ignore that) which means the total number of books for your 9th Thingaversary will be: 239.85 books, or 240 to keep it a nice round number.

Have a great Thingaversary. Enjoy your wine and cheese.

(Note to self: Let @LunaticDruid know the above formula.)

>127 jillmwo:, your categories reminded me of Set Theory. If I were to create a Venn Diagram of the categories you have listed I would find that BOOKS THAT SOUND GOOD and BOOKS THAT APPEAL EVEN IF YOU DON"T HAVE TIME TO READ ANYTHING THAT LONG and BOOKS THAT BUDDIES ON LT HAVE RECOMMENDED and BOOKS THAT ARE WRITTEN IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE BUT WHICH HAVE GREAT COVERS would all be subsets of BOOKS THAT I MUST HAVE.

Just saying!

>129 pgmcc:

You forgot the time zone factor.

>129 pgmcc: >131 suitable1:

Oh. Oh my. I'm going to need a bigger list.

;)

>129 pgmcc: And don't forget to add the "books to read while recovering from so much reading" category. I think the going rate is 1:7.

>132 imyril: & >131 suitable1:

Thank you for pointing out the flaws in my calculations.

Now, let me see: Time Zone Factor - 360 degrees or 2 radians divided by 24 hours gives 15 degrees per hour (or 0.83repeating radians per hour be that's not important right now) so, time zone factor = hours behind GMT * 15. @imyril being in the GMT time zone means the zero factor adjustment which means one does a complete rotation giving us 24 * 15 = 360 books.

This brings us to 195 + 360 = 555.

...and, of course, the "books to read while recovering from so much reading" category as pointed out by @Marissa_Doyle gives us 943.5 books, rounded to 944.

@imyril, Happy Thingaversary. Have you finished that list yet?

...it all got a bit too exciting. I've had to take a pause for for some Kevin Spacey and a fine Shiraz.

>135 imyril: Kevin Spacey is always worth taking a pause for, as is a fine Shiraz.

80) Discount Armageddon - Seanan McGuire


Sneaking in under the wire to finish my 80th of the year - a new high for me! I'm not typically an urban fantasy fan, but the Green Dragoneers sold me on the InCryptid books and I'm delighted to say it was a good buy.

McGuire isn't afraid to tick the basic UF boxes: trashy cover, smoking hot heroine, snark galore and the odd bit of inappropriate sex. Thankfully, she's not above a wink to the audience (the quotes opening each chapter kept me amused, although the location notes were a bit superfluous), a bestiary to make London Zoo weep and serves it all up with lashings of fun.

Extra points for having a spunky heroine who has female friends; more female characters than male (and not being afraid to let many of these be far from sympathetic but still fascinating); and a tribe of religious talking mice with unexpected festivals.

It's OTT, it's pulp at best, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll absolutely be seeking out further installments to see what becomes of Verity's ballroom dancing career. And I'm still considering giving it an extra half star for calling her telepathic 'cuckoo' Miss Zellaby.

So here's to 2014. It wasn't a great year for me personally, but it was a great reading year. In spite of my challenges, I got through more books than ever before and in spite of a couple of dips it felt overall like I had a lot of fun doing so.

I blasted past my original target of books for the year to read and to take off the shelf (I took as many off the shelf as I had hoped to read in total)... and bought as many books as I took off the shelf. Mount Tooby is looking as handsome as ever, and that's before my Thingaversary spree of of 944 (I think that rounds up to 945 to ensure an odd number?)

I didn't succeed in any of my other challenges, but hey - they're not rules, they're more like guidelines, right? :)

Donna Tartt was left on the shelf after The Goldfinch as it took the edge of my appetite to try and revisit The Little Friend. However, I will take the final three Culture books into next year to finish my round-up of the sequence.

I only managed 9 non-fiction, 3 short of target, but this is still more than usual so I'm pretty happy with that.

I spent far more time seeking out female SFF authors than reading classic SFF and I think I enjoyed the year more on account of this. Of course, if I'd allowed the Culture as 'classic scifi' I was laughing, but I was aiming for early classics. I will track early classics, but no target for me next year. I'd rather focus on diversity.

In terms of diversity overall, I almost hit 50/50 on male/female authors after actively focusing on this part way through the year. However, a measly 4 were authored by non-white authors, and I'll look to improve on this next year.

Male / female authors: 50% vs 48.75% (+ 1 co-authored)
Women can too write SFF: 21 - 45.65% of SFF read
Non-fiction and/or personal development: 9 (target 12)
Diversiverse (full year): 5%

Culture completeism: 7 (target 10)
Tartt completeism: 1 (target 3)
Classic scifi: 5 (target 12)
SantaThing 2013: 2 (target 3)

Based on ratings at the time of reading, my favourite books of the year were The Thirteenth Tale and Bodies of Light, the only non-rereads awarded 5 stars. This still feels right - they were excellent, and I've spent the rest of the year recommending them widely.

I like top 3s, but choosing a third is tough as there were lots of strong 4.5* reads: Burning Bright, Tigerman, The Prestige and The Shining Girls and I liked each for different reasons. I think Burning Bright edges the honours list for how completely it swept me away, but this takes nothing away from how very much I loved all 4.

Honourable mentions also go to Ancillary Justice and A Matter of Oaths and Damocles at the top of the 4* list, making this an unusually scifi-slanted year for me this year (although space opera really, on all fronts).

Non-fiction favourite was Deep Sea and Foreign Going, which provided insight into the unexpectedly fascinating world of container shipping. I couldn't put it down, which was startling and satisfying.

Suck fairy special goes to Printer's Devil Court, which was poorly written, badly-edited and felt like a nasty rip-off from one of my favourite authors. Thankfully I had another book of hers to hand to take the bad taste out of my mouth.

I can't complain though: of 80 books, only 7 scored under 3 stars and over half scored 4 stars or higher, so I really did have a very enjoyable year!

My 2015 reading thread will tackle the north face of Mount TBR over here.

Happy new year!