lohengrin's Uncreatively Titled Reading Journal 2016

(2015 post)

2015 was marginally better than 2014 in some ways, and actually managed to be worse in others. I continue to shout my annual wish into the void--may this year suck less than the last one!

I have no specific goals for my reading this year, aside from my usual "try to read 6 books a month," and I have added the corollary "but don't stress if you fail." Because if I do have anything resembling a resolution this year, it's to worry less about what I am and am not accomplishing; my stress levels are so high at this point, my hobbies need to go back to being things I purely enjoy and stop being Things I Must Accomplish. At least for this year. We'll see how 2016 treats me.

So, that rather depressing lead-in taken care of, I shall go pick up a book just to enjoy it.

*snort* You stole the title I was going to use for my reading thread this year. :)

May the year be gentle with you, and may you also be gentle to you this year.

I hope that 2016 is indeed a better year for you, and that you find plenty of books to enjoy along the way.

I'll be lurking along. Have a great reading year!

Enjoy your reading and I hope 2016 is good to you!

I hope 2016 turns out to be a good year for you, with less stress and lots of books!

>2 MrsLee:: Whoops! Great minds, and all that? ^^

And first book of the year! Thorn by Intisar Khanani was on sale for $0.99, so I snapped it up and read it right away. Being a Goose Girl retelling, obviously there were a lot of familiar beats, but it still felt like its own story. I can't say it was my favourite GG retelling, but I definitely did enjoy it. Not a bad start to the year.

>1 lohengrin: *delurks* Happy new year! *lurks*

Off to a very slow start this year, surprise surprise. But finally managed to finish a second book, The Price of Valor, third book in Django Wexler's Shadow Campaigns series. I really, really enjoyed it, not surprisingly--I loved both the previous books when I read them last year. And now I have to wait until at least August before I can read the next one! (Depending on how fast my library gets it out for circulation, it could be even longer).

I'm interested to see more of Winter and Raes and Marcus, of course; it's rare to find a book with mutiple viewpoint characters where I like them all, and Wexler manages just that. But I doubt the most burning question will be answered even in the next book, since there's one more after that. That question, of course, being "what is Janus up to, anyway?" I'm still very much on the fence about whether or not he's to be trusted, and I'm sure the answer is going to be complex and nuanced. But every time one of our heroes is warned about how manipulative he is, I wonder if we're being trolled and really he's going to end up being entirely on the side of good after all. But maybe that's just me.

>9 lohengrin: You are one book ahead of me so far!

>10 MrsLee:: The third one is at least as good as the previous two, so you have that to look forward to! I'm all out for now. *pout*

>11 lohengrin: Oh, I meant that you have read one more book than I have this year so far. :) I haven't read the series you are reading.

>12 MrsLee:: Ah! Sorry about that. But man, 2016 is just determined to be hard right from the start, I think?

Two more books down!

Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, and a pretty good one, at that. There are a few interesting twists on the tale, though I felt that, while including Beauty as a previous victim/attempt at curse breaking was interesting, the fact that she committed suicide was a bit unnecessary. Weirdly, I think it suffered from a lack of animal companions--Kingfisher does those so well! But all told, it was a good read.

The Raven and the Reindeer (touchstone not working, but this is the book), also by T. Kingfisher, is a Snow Queen retelling, and probably my favourite of her longer fairy tale retellings so far. Of course, I may just be biased because a) Snow Queen! and b) Gerta dumping Kay for a woman who treats her much better: YES PLEASE. And the animal companion (the raven of the title) was delightful. I also liked that some of the dreams Gerta has of other times and places include characters from Kingfisher's previous fairy tale retellings--it was a nice touch. ^_^

>14 lohengrin: Two book bullets to your credit! When I stop bleeding those will be added to my wishlist!

>14 lohengrin: I just finished The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher and enjoyed it. I'll have to keep an eye out for those titles on Amazon too.

Edit: Fixed the touchstone.

>15 Sakerfalcon: Huzzah! A hit! A veritable hit! But considering how many book bullets I've taken around here, I think my tally is still pretty far in the negative. :)

And I finished another book! Magic Shifts, the most recent Kate Daniels book by Ilona Andrews, finally came into my ebook price range, so I snapped it up and read it right away. I didn't quite enjoy it as much as the previous installment, but saying that I enjoyed it less than my favourite book in the series so far is not exactly damning. I'm glad Kate is not as isolated from her support base as I had feared, though one development in that direction made me sad (Saiman). The revelation at the end was interesting... but I hope it's one that doesn't come into play for quite a while, because I have a strong dislike of any plot that involves the heroine getting pregnant and/or caring for an infant. So, yeah. Ups and downs, but a pretty good installment in the series.

My copy of Chaos Choreography, the latest in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series, finally arrived and of course I devoured it the very same day. I definitely enjoy Verity as a narrator more than I did Alex, and the peek into her life as a dancer was interesting. But... snake cults again?.

I think the next book is Antimony as narrator, which I know a lot of people are looking forward to... but I'm not totally sold yet. She feels very angry-teenager-y to me in the few scenes we've had with her, and that is not my favourite sort of narrator. But I'll still grab the book as soon as I can, once it's out, of course!

>9 lohengrin: I still have that in my wishlist It does sound interesting and I'll get around to it. Someday.

>17 lohengrin: SantaThing introduced me to Kate this year, I wasn't totally taken on the first one, but the style and backstory settled down a bit for the 2nd which I did enjoy. HOw does it compare to say Harry Dresden in terms of continuity, or is it just continuing adventures of Kate? which I'm less keen.

>19 reading_fox: I actually haven't read the Dresden books (I tried, but couldn't stand the narrator/main character at all, sooo), so I'm not entirely sure what you're asking?

Some series are a set of isolated incidents, each book is a complete story, often the same characters might re-appear but there's little linking one book to the next. Think Miss Marple, or Jack Reacher or Star Trek etc. There are a few details that follow through but not many, and once you know who the characters are you can pretty much read them in any order.

Other series are a complete story broken up into many chapters, each book stands alone, but has very strong ties back to previous ones, and links forward. The author knows what will happen in future books because there's a pre-planned narrative arc.

The former is more common in crime stories perhaps, but the latter is hard to do well and my favourite when I can find them. It wasn't clear to me from the first two of Kate's books that there is much in the way of long term thought out backstory, rather the author is inventing new details here and there as necessary. It would be reassuring to know that I'm wrong!

>21 reading_fox:: I suspect it's probably a mix of both. There's definitely an ongoing storyline (the stuff with Kate's family/background, which gets more central once it's finally revealed), and that has the feel of something they've at least sketched out well in advance, but with some of the smaller details and side characters I do get the feeling they're kinda winging it.

I would say certainly after the fourth book or therabouts trying to read them out of order would be a bit confusing. Things get recapped here and there, but more in the "it's been a year since the last book, here's a refresher" sort of way.

I had to renew my library copy of Chimera, the final book in Mira Grant's Parasitology trilogy, because the due date was rolling around and I hadn't even touched it yet. For some reason I would look at it and go "... I don't WANNA." But once I finally did get started, I finished it in one night.

It was definitely a satisfying finish to the trilogy, and a better book than the previous one for sure. There was another incident of a character retroactively providing an in-story excuse/reason for Sal's earlier uncharactertistic behaviour, but otherwise the pacing and writing in this book were smooth. Everything wrapped up exactly right for the trilogy, IMO--nothing too pat, none of the problems were waved away by magic authorial wand, but still a proper ending and not Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies.

Now if the library will just finish processing my Anne Bishop and Patricia Briggs books and giiiive them to meeee....

And the library books arrived! I've already finished Marked in Flesh, the fourth book in Anne Bishop's The Others series, and thoroughly enjoyed it! Things move forward plot-wise quite a bit, and some of the hovering doom from the previous books comes home to roost, but it doesn't skimp on the character moments or growth, either. Looking forward to the next one--it'll be interesting to see where the story goes from here!

That's a lot of exclamation points, and very little of substance. x.x I liked it! I just have very little to say about it that isn't monstrously spoilery, and it's only out a week... I know, spoiler text, but still.

Finished Fire Touched, too! I've been really, really excited about this one since I read the preview in the paperback version of Dead Heat, and it entirely lived up to my expectations! Aside from being just a very enjoyable read, it also was the biggest step forward in the overarching plot since the final pages of Fair Game. Lots of really interesting implications for future books.

The characters were fun as always. I love Mercy herself, and Adam, but I did miss a stronger presence of some of the other wolves (especially Warren, Ben and Honey). Coyote was absent as well, but that was made up for by Baba Yaga, who is just as entertaining. Much to my surprise and chagrin, I admit I got a little misty-eyed over the loss of the walking stick, which was less and less an inanimate object. Still, overall very enjoyable read.

>25 lohengrin: I am way behind on the Mercy Thompson series. Glad to hear that the new book is a good one. I always worry that long series decline in quality. Good that this isn't the case here.

I finally finished my library copy of City of Blades, after six weeks of struggling with it. It was a good book, don't get me wrong! I just wasn't in the right mood for it a lot of the time, I think. And maybe because I wasn't in the right mindset for it, I was really, really, REALLY pissed off by a certain late-book event. Honestly, it bothered me enough that it made me retroactively ticked with a similar event in the first book, since now it seems to be a sort of pattern. :/ Kind of soured me on the author, though hopefully not forever. Maybe when I'm in a better mood I'll calm down about it.

My latest read was an ebook/overdrive rental from my library, Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. It was... okay? There was nothing objectionable about it, really, and I did enjoy it in the end. I'm hoping that a certain "plot twist" (supposedly confirmed in book two) that I figured out in the first chapter was intended to be that obvious, because otherwise the author needs to learn more subtlety. ^^;

I may read the next book, as the library does also have that one.

I unfortunately couldn't afford the hardcover of Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway, which sounds like it is absolutely beautiful. I did get the ebook, however and it was... one of those stories I find I have a really, really hard time saying anything coherent about.

I liked it, a lot. It was short, and lovely, and felt like it was both exactly as long as it needed to be, and much too short because I wanted all the stories set in that world. Also all of the meta and maps and charts the characters talk about. All of it.

The main character was explicitly asexual, which I am happy to see, but my one quibble is probably that I did feel like it was a bit shoehorned in.

>29 lohengrin: I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy of this. Your comments make it sound like I should do so sooner rather than later.

>30 Sakerfalcon:: It's not without its flaws, but for me they in no way detracted from the fascinating world and characters McGuire built. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! ^_^

Ilona Andrews' Alphas: Origins was cheap and I wanted something light and mindless, so I picked it up for kindle and... well. I have no idea what to think about what I just read.

The first half reads like the main romance from the Kate Daniels books turned up to eleven and then turned up some more, until the dial broke. And then someone remembered that there was supposed to be a plot in there somewhere and crammed that all into random infodumps and then a very rushed bunch of scenes at the end. And while those plot bits and the "twist" at the end were interesting, the whole package just ended up feeling kind of meh.

I mean, not forgettable. Definitely not that. But. Enh.

ETA: Maybe it comes from having been active in the fanfic community for nearly 20 years, but I also had a sneaking suspicion that this story was originally a private roleplay between the couple that makes up "Ilona Andrews," and all the plot stuff really was crammed in after the fact when they decided to tidy it up and sell it.

Two library books finished today:

1. The Edge of Worlds, the sixth book/fourth novel in the Raksura series, which I absolutely loved. It was a well-written, fun little adventure story, and most of my favourite characters at least made appearances. I'm a touch on the fence about the ending, both because of the cliffhanger-y nature of it and because it did feel like it came a bit out of nowhere. Still, that was by no means enough to detract from my enjoyment. I'm also really looking forward to seeing more of the crossbreed Queen, who seemed to be trying to figure out how to be more like the Raksura than the Fell, and open to learning where she was going wrong and how to fix it.

2. Beguilement, book one of Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series. It's the Bujold series I've been most reluctant to try out, since the blurbs all sounded very much like a romance novel with fantasy trappings. And in some ways that's exactly what it was, so it was far from my favourite Bujold. Still, it had an interesting enough world that I will probably pick up the next book. I gotta say, though, barring nonhuman/immortal creatures with lifespans in the triple digits, the romantic pairing may have been a record for me in terms of age gap. Thirty-seven years!.

And the Kindle daily deals strike again! Instead of reading any of the books off my shelves, or the library book I've had for five weeks and need to return in one week, I bought Cinder And Scarlet because they were cheap, and then I read them both because they were easy.

I actually quite enjoyed them. Yes, they were very predictable, but I didn't get the feeling that it was accidental--I think the revelations were supposed to be obvious to the reader, and a surprise only to the characters. Maybe that's me being too generous, but that's the impression I got. I did smile at the little Sailor Moon homages, too. I may pick up the next two, eventually, though I'm not in any rush.

Yet another library book: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

I really enjoyed it! But it did remind me that what I like best isn't *post* apocalyptic fiction, but rather apocalyptic fiction (especially if the apocalypse in question is a pandemic). I found myself a little impatient with the parts set in Year 20, and really wanted to be getting back to the bits set earlier. Still, overall it was a lovely book.

Wish I hadn't googled the author, though--I'm always a bit put off by authors who aggressively "defend" their books against "accusations" of being sf/f rather than literary fiction.

I prefer apocalyptic to post-apocalyptic fiction, too. I thought Mandel did a pretty good job of blending the before, during, and after, and weaving together the different character's threads.

I also agree about the irritation with authors arguing against their book belonging to a particular genre. It can still be an excellent book, with an enormous audience, even if it has been given a genre label. Personally I'm far more likely to read a book labelled SF than one labelled Literary Fiction.

>35 lohengrin: I'm always a bit put off by authors who aggressively "defend" their books against "accusations" of being sf/f rather than literary fiction.
>36 SylviaC: I also agree about the irritation with authors arguing against their book belonging to a particular genre. It can still be an excellent book, with an enormous audience, even if it has been given a genre label. Personally I'm far more likely to read a book labelled SF than one labelled Literary Fiction.

Hear, hear...

Whay @zjakkelien said. Personally I regard a shortlisting for a Literary Prize as a fatal flaw when looking for something readable.

>36 SylviaC: >37 zjakkelien: >38 hfglen: What particularly irks me is that the objection often boils down to "my books can't be sf, they're deep."

I remember once, in a university lit class on sf/f, a student was just terribly offended that the professor had included some Borges--she said that Borges wasn't fantasy because it was an allegory, like "real" sf/f couldn't possibly ever have deeper meanings. I wanted to bang my head on the desk.

>39 lohengrin: Yes, just because it fits a particular genre description doesn't mean it can't have depth. sf/f ≠ bad writing

>38 hfglen: Hahaha, I hear you!

I admit I have the same type of prejudices when it comes to books labelled 'literature'. It seems to me people are often trying too hard to be technical, and forgetting to write a readable book. Eugh, I hate that.

>41 zjakkelien: "forgetting to write a readable book"

Or unable to?

>42 hfglen: *grins* Didn't want to be uncharitable...

Whew. July and August were... bad. Really bad. The heat this year has been unbearable and unfortunately my health problems are very much exacerbated by it. Most of July and all of August passed in a fog; I read very little but manga in July, and nothing but manga in August.

I also did not enter any of the manga I bought for those months, or the kindle-sale-ebooks, and now (added to September's books) I find myself with nearly 60 books to enter into my library. *laughsob*

But relief arrives! At least on the weather and reading front, at least a little.

Way back in July, I did also read Mishell Baker's Borderline, which I enjoyed, but rather less than some people here, I think. I don't have BPD myself (though my Austism Spectrum Disorder was misdiagnosed as "Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified" when I was younger), but mental health in general is a bit of a sensitive topic for me. The portrayal was good, don't get me wrong! It just opened a few old wounds. I will still read the next book in the series, though, because I managed to enjoy the story even with that factor, which says a lot for the story!

I finished out July with Bujold's Penric and the Shaman and Melissa F. Olson's Nightshades, both novella-length ebooks by authors I have previously enjoyed.

I enjoyed both of them, though the Penric more than Nightshades. I would have liked more of Penric and less of the Shaman, personally, but I do have a longstanding issue with getting attached to one POV character and then resenting the "intrusion" of new ones, so I don't hold it against the story or the writer--just a personal foible.

Nightshades was an interesting take on vampires, but unlike the Penric novellas it felt more like an excerpt from a novel than a complete work. The cliffhanger ending didn't help, and it involved a plot point that I honestly might hate, depending on how it turns out. So, I'm on the fence about reading the next one (if there is one).

I find I have a lot to say about both the books I've read so far in September, so I shall make a second post on those.

Fast forward through August's book-drought, and this month started off with my library finally coughing up a copy of Daniel O'Malley's Stiletto, which I have been very much looking forward to. I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I did The Rook, to be honest, in part because neither of the new characters were quite as enjoyable to read as Myfanwy, but also because the plotting felt a little too predictable.

Examples:

1. While I enjoyed the tangents in The Rook, like the dragon and the prescient duck, it felt really obvious to me that Marcel's story about WWII was kind of a Chekov's Anecdote--it was going to be important later.

2. That Odette's friends were alive and the bad guys was incredibly obvious right from the first mention of their "deaths."

3. That Odette's new implants/surgeries were not what she thought and would play an important role was also incredibly obvious.

Now if any of those points were supposed to be blindingly, immediately obvious, it didn't feel like they were, so it's still an issue with the writing IMO. Especially regarding the second point, I felt like any time it came up in Odette's pre-reveal POV sections, the way she thought about it and phrased things in her own mind didn't really fit with what she did/didn't know.

Which all sounds very critical, but I did devour the book in a single day. I think I just expected even better from the author, after how much I enjoyed The Rook.

--

The second book I've read in September was, shockingly, non-fiction. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin--a biography of James Tiptree Jr. aka Raccoona Sheldon, aka Alice Bradley Sheldon.

It's a well-researched book, and absolutely fascinating. But I spent a lot of it, especially the parts about Sheldon's childhood, being really quite uncomfortable. Sheldon's background and experiences were... so, so alien as to barely feel real to me. And the running thread of Sheldon's severe and largely untreated depression was, as with Borderline, uncomfortable for me on a personal level.

I found it a little bit odd that the author never really discusses the possibility that Sheldon may not have been a lesbian or bisexual woman, but rather a straight or bisexual transman, though the author consistently refers to Tiptree as "he" and Sheldon as "she." It's impossible to say for sure now, of course. Were Sheldon's hatred of their own body and distressed statements about wanting to be a man actual gender dysphoria? Or just a result of being a woman in a time when women were not allowed to do or be most of the things Sheldon was/did? The author assumes the latter, which is reasonable and fits with Sheldon's own understanding of the situation, but given the lack of understanding of transgender people at the time, I did find it odd that the former possibility never came up at all.

But that was really my only quibble with the book, which was otherwise thorough and incredibly interesting. And while overall the depression and Sheldon's ultimate end hung over the book, it wasn't all misery and death (even Tiptree wrote a few happy endings, after all). Not gonna lie, Ursula LeGuin's letter in reply to Tiptree's outing himself as a woman... I teared up, I really did.

Keeping in mind that Tiptree/Sheldon was "petrified" and more than half-sure that all of Tiptree's friends would be angry at the deception and reject Alice Sheldon, this is part of the response LeGuin sent:

"oh strange, most strange, most wonderful, beautiful, improbable--Wie geht's, Schwesterlein? sorella mia, sistersoul! ... Do you know what? I don't think I have ever been surprised before. Things have happened but when they happen one thinks Oh, of course, this had to Be, etc., deep in my prophetic soul I Knew, etc.--but not this time, by God! And it is absolutely a delight, a joy, for some reason, to be truly absolutely flatfootedly surprised--it's like a Christmas present!"

--

It's been an interesting September, so far!

Good to see you back, here's hoping to a good Autumn for you!

So. Not only am I now absurdly behind on reporting here, I'm six months and 120 books behind on entering acquisitions in my library. I have no idea how I'll ever catch up, it's quite daunting. And yes, I know, a little at a time would be the best, but the anxiety has reached the point that even looking at the list to get started is... yeah. Stressful. :/

>47 lohengrin: Then do not look at the list. Just put the kettle on, make a nice cup of tea/coffee, pick up a good book, sit down in your favourite chair, and relax.

>47 lohengrin: I wholeheartedly endorse >48 pgmcc:'s plan! There will be a time when you can catch up, or not, but so long as you are living life, enjoying reading and whatever, it doesn't really matter. :)