Aviddiva reads avidly in 2016

This is the first year I've tried to keep a reading journal -- have to see if I can be more consistent about it than I was about keeping a diary when I was younger!

I'm starting out the year with something old and something new. I've interrupted my year-end reread of Jodi Taylor's stories of the time-travelling historians at St. Mary's in the middle of book 3, A Second Chance, to pick up The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. So far it's a little bit slow, but the characters are fun and I can tell events are going to start jumping soon.

Oh good, a new person's thread to follow! Welcome! I hope that 2016 brings you many good books. I loved Small angry planet; hope it starts to grab you soon.

Good luck on keeping the journal. Just remember, though, it is for your own delight so if it becomes a chore don't stress over it!

Happy bookish year!

Wishing you plentiful good books to read this year!

Welcome and good luck on keeping the journal!

I have been reading mostly ebooks while at the same time picking up many free "tree" books at our local book exchange. This year I think my goal will be to read more of those, since,
A. The piles are out of control (free books, who can resist?)
and
B. I have to decide which are worth keeping, either for elegant bindings or fascinating content, and which need to be released back into the wild.

I'm so glad that I'll be able to follow your reading adventures this year!

Following! Good luck with your reading and winnowing.

Winnowing in progress. Took back a box of paperback romances and came home with only one (1!) book, a Guide Treves to Rome from 1905 inscribed J.V. Tadich, Rome. October 21 up to 30th. 1905. I think it is possible that this is the John Tadich of the famous San Francisco restaurant Tadich's Grill. These are the kind of things I can't resist, even when I'm trying to cut back. It has some nice maps and illustrations, and amusing advertisements for long gone hotels.

All right, finished The Long way to a Small Angry Planet. After the initial alien species info-dump, which was a bit tedious (although I WAS reading late at night) I enjoyed it a lot. It's a fun character-driven space opera. In fact, it's so character-driven that what happens in the story mostly matters less than who it happens to. It reminded me of the first season of a good ensemble TV show. We get to know the quirky, appealing cast, a series of incidents happen which affect them, but the main story is how they become more connected to each other. We are now well set up for season two, which I hope will include a longer story arc, and which I look forward to reading in the future.

Working my way through my Jodi Taylor re-read. Not sure exactly what it is that keeps bringing me back to her books, except that I really enjoy keeping company with the characters. I've finished A Second Chance, A Trail Through Time, No Time like the Past, and am just beginning What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, which I read earlier this year, but don't remember very well. (It has been a stressful six months or so, and I have to admit to a lot of escape reading, which is like emotional eating - satisfying in the short term, but not good for retention.)

I intend to start reading the St. Mary's books, but haven't got around to it yet. I did enjoy The Nothing Girl, which was nice, but not spectacular. Sometimes you just need the lightweight stuff.

I'm a confirmed St Mary's fan and have read the print and audio versions several times. Every time a new book comes out I read the others to remind me what has happened.

>9 aviddiva: I can never resist an interesting old book with a good inscription either.

Looking forward to following along this year - glad to hear you enjoyed Small Angry Planet, it was a great favourite for me last year. You're spot on with your description of it as ensemble tv - I'm looking forward to season 2 too :)

Finished What Could Possibly Go Wrong and realized the reason I didn't remember it is because it was the most episodic of the series, continuing the ongoing adventures of Max at St. Mary's but without a really strong through plot. My guess is it is setting up the Bad Thing To Come in the next book, but I'll have to wait until May to find out. Still enjoyable. Also read The Player: the wedding Pact #2 by Denise Grover Swank, which I bought on sale on kindle because I had enjoyed the first in the series. This was an OK romance, but I'm not likely to buy the third.

Reading two at once. Started Intertwine, a time slip novel (contemporary young woman finds a locket, feels mysterious connection to young man whose portrait is inside, is somehow transported to rural England in 1812, meets him but loses her memory in the process. I stopped there.) Looked interesting, but is so far just... bland. Unless events get more involving soon I'll probably abandon it. Not sure what it is. It sounds like a lot is happening, but it doesn't feel like it. All the characters are either stuffy or nice. The conflict doesn't feel conflictual, if that makes any sense.

Next up is The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, a recent kindle deal, which is more interesting. One of the things I'm enjoying about it is the main character has some form of synesthesia (sees sounds in color), so the descriptions are particularly vivid. Plus, how can you go wrong with a novel in which someone has a pet clockwork octopus. I'm looking forward to seeing how events unfold in this one.

I'm waiting to see what you and the others who are reading it think of Watchmaker. Between the synesthesia and the octopus,it sounds intriguing. My library has it as an e-book, so I might put a hold on that if the reports are good.

>16 aviddiva: pet. clockwork. octopus.

Oh my.

Will try very hard to follow @SylviaC 's fine example.

>17SylviaC , >18 imyril: imyril ,I'm not sure if the octopus will have any ongoing significance, but it certainly caught my attention.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street was not exactly what I expected, but a good read regardless. It takes place in England and Japan in the 1880's, and the historical details are purportedly accurate. People keep describing it as Steampunk, and I guess it is a little bit, since it has a lot of clockwork combined with a sort of magic, but it's closer to magical realism than a magic system. Most of the Steampunk I've read has been about characters investigating a mystery or fighting some sort of external power or event, but this one is more character driven. Each of the main characters has particular talents and problems to address, and the ways they individually and collectively perceive and address their problems is most of the substance of this story. It is kind of a clever clockwork confection of a novel, itself, with a number of twists and turns, nicely resolved at the end. Although I found it occasionally confusing, I enjoyed it, particularly the whimsical touches such as the clockwork octopus.

>20 aviddiva: my main beef with steampunk is the poor character writing - this sounds far more up my street.

>20 aviddiva: I looked long and hard at that one, but passed it up for the moment. Still keeping it in my radar after your comments.

>20 aviddiva: Still sounds interesting, and if you liked the ending, I probably will, too.

If you subscribe to audible, it's one of their specials right now -- three books for two credits. Also on special is The Return of the King which is a really good narration.

>23 SylviaC: The ending was maybe a little neat, but I did enjoy it. It reads less like genre fiction and more like general fiction, in spite of the magical aspects. If you have an Audible subscription, it's one of a number of books on sale right now (also including The Return of the King), 3 books for 2 credits.

Neat endings are alright, even if they require some suspension of disbelief. I don't have access to that particular sale, because I only have the most basic Audible account, with no credits. (Might be US only, too, since it doesn't even show up on the site for me.) I prefer most fiction in print, anyway.

Went ahead and finished Interwine. It was inoffensive, but I will not be pursuing the rest of the series. I have a YA, The Summer Prince on loan from the library, so I'll probably read that next.

Working my way through Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series on audio. The narrator is a little over-enthusiastic, but he does a good job with the characters. It's a young YA steampunk alternative history of the beginnings of WWI, and one of the main characters is the (fictitious) son of Archduke Ferdinand. Most of the secondary characters are pretty one-dimensional, but the writing is good and the main characters are appealing. The Germans and Austrians are "Klankers," with marvelous steam powered machines, while the English are "Darwinists" who have genetically engineered creatures instead of machines. My one quibble is that the two main characters seem several years younger than their putative ages, so some of their actions and problems don't quite ring true. It's a good listen for the car, though, and I'm looking forward to the third book, Goliath.

I'm following you with a star.

>29 Meredy: Welcome along for the ride.

I finished two books over the weekend, The River of No Return by Bee Ridgeway and Both of Me by Jonathan Friesen, both of which I enjoyed with some reservations.

The River of No Return is the story of Nick, an 18th Century English lord, who finds himself suddenly in the 21st century seconds after facing imminent death at the hands of Napoleon's army. He is met by a representative of The Guild, a secret society of similar time jumpers, and told that time is a one-way river and he can never return to his own century. They take him in, train him, and give him money to live on. He lives more or less happily in rural Vermont for 10 years, then is called back in by by the Guild and informed that he was not given the whole truth. There is a competing organization of time jumpers called the Ofan. The guild wants to send Nick back to his own time because something important is happening then in the conflict between the two organizations and they need Nick to find out about it, because it involves something or someone on a neighbor's estate. I won't add more about the plot, which is convoluted and took far longer to unfold than I thought it needed to. Partly, I spent a long time waiting for events to unfold the way I thought they would based on the jacket blurb which I had misinterpreted. I did think the author could have used an editor, and I was expecting the book to be a stand-alone up until close to the end, when it became clear that many threads would be left dangling. It's not an emotional cliffhanger, but the larger world problem faced by the competing time organizations remains to be solved in later books, and a number of subsidiary characters are left with their own dilemmas pending. I enjoyed the characters and the way time travel is controlled, but the story felt like a lot was happening very slowly -- the urgency of any one event was not necessarily connected to the next person's urgent event, and in between the characters drank tea, went to Gunter's for ices, or were swept up in protests about the Corn Laws. I would read the next book, assuming there is one.

The other book, Both of Me, is a YA that is just about the exact opposite of Ridgeway's book. It is beautifully written, compelling and tantalizing and urgent almost from page one, and I gulped it down in a day. I won't describe it here, since I think part of the pleasure is watching the story unfold along with the confused main character, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it withe the caveat that parts of it are heartbreaking.

Both of me sounds really good. I've become a bit wary of YA in the last couple of years or so (too many Twilight/Hunger Games clones written in bad present tense) but I might have to try that one.

The Captain's Wallflower is a sort of Pride and Prejudice influenced Regency romance which I bought cheaply on Kindle, partly because I liked the premise and (I'm shallow, I admit it) partly because of its very appealing cover. It was nothing outstanding, but pleasant enough, with a few unusual elements, including the use of a dog as a guide for the blind hero.

Unintended Target by D. L. Wood. A reasonable thriller, free on Kindle, that didn't require much thought except to go along for the ride. It had a bit of Christianity thrown loosely in. Sometimes romance novels will include one totally unnecessary explicit sex scene, not because it adds anything to the plot, but because some editor somewhere suggested the reading audience would be expecting it. The Christian bits of this one felt the same way -- not necessary to the book in any meaningful way, but there so that it could be labeled Christian fiction. Aside from that I enjoyed it.

Love Fortunes and other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius. Charming.

Sarina Bowen, The Ivy Years. Well written New Adult romances centering around the hockey team at an Eastern College.

Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen. I seem to be on a YA kick. Knudsen, author of many books for younger children including Library Lion, is reaching out to a teenage audience with this smart, funny horror story set in a suburban high school. Cyn is worried by her best friend Annie's obsession with the new school librarian. She is working hard as the tech director of her school's production of "Sweeney Todd", hopelessly crushing on Ryan, the boy starring as Sweeney, and disturbed when some of her fellow students start wandering listlessly through the halls without noticing what's going on around them. Cyn discovers that the new librarian is really a demon who is enslaving her friend and living off the life force of her fellow students. Cyn herself has some sort of demonic immunity, and the demon won't do anything to Ryan until after the performance, because he is especially talented and all demons love Sweeney Todd. This gives the two a window to come up with a plan to save the school. No sex beyond kisses, most of the violence takes place off the page. As a former musical theater kid, I loved the way Sweeney Todd wound its way through the story. No serious YA philosophical issues or over the top emotions in this one, just an entertaining fight against demonic takeover. Evil Librarian is not written for adults, or even older teenagers, but if you enjoy reading the occasional book written for younger teens, I can recommend this one.

>36 aviddiva: That sounds like fun. I enjoy books set around the stage.

>37 Sakerfalcon:, Not particularly set around the stage, but it does come in and out of the plot.

Happily Ever Ninja by Penny Reid. #5 in Knitting in the City series. Somewhat unusual romance in that it deals with a couple who have been married for a while. Although the action is outlandish, the dilemmas they face within their marriage ring really true.

Was sick for most of the week so I reread a couple of earlier ones in the series, Love Hacked and Friends Without Benefits. Feel-good comfort reading. Now I'm reading two, The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster by Scott Wilbanks, which I bought because it was set in San Francisco and had time travel, and a mystery. So far it's fun as long as you accept the number of things which just seem to happen to the protagonists. The other book I'm reading is The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb, so far I can tell it's beautifully written, but I'm not far into it yet. Will report back.

Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen is an appealing Weird Western coming of age/quest story. Nettie Lonesome is a half black, half Indian foundling, raised by abusive white parents, who limit her skills to farm work and breaking horses. After an encounter with a dangerous stranger, Nettie finds herself with the unexpected ability to recognize the monsters and magical creatures living around her. She dresses as a boy, leaves her home, meets a Skinwalker who takes her on a vision quest, and is cursed by a ghost to seek out a particular monster and kill it. Dressed as a boy, she joins a group of Rangers and heads out into the desert with them to look for the monster. Adventures both magical and personal ensue.

Nettie is a strong, interesting character, with many dualities. She is mixed race, she is a girl who is more comfortable presenting herself as a boy, is emotionally drawn to a man and physically attracted to another woman. I enjoyed her story, and will happily read more about her in the future.

>41 aviddiva: Does that story rework skinwalkers into something not bad? In everything I've read, you would not want to go on any kind of a quest with one.

In this story they are like people - some are well intentioned and some are not.

Starflight by Melissa Landers.

YA Space opera. Young woman mechanic indentures herself to a wealthy former classmate in order to travel to the outer reaches of the galaxy for a new start. Complications ensue and they find themselves on the run from the authorities, taken up by a crew of other misfits on a somewhat shady starship. Other readers have compared this to Firefly, which I've never seen so I can't speak to that. It's a solid story and I enjoyed it, but probably wouldn't reread it. I couldn't help comparing it to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, which was a similar kind of story, but with more interesting characters. Starflight had a more direct and cohesive plotline, while Angry Planet had more character development, and I think felt more original.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufmann and Jay Kristoff. I listened to the audio version of this, and promptly went out and bought the hardcover so I could see the visuals. Both are extremely well done. Although the story is told as a set of surveillance files consisting of memos, emails, descriptions of video footage, personnel lists etc, it still manages to be immediate and involving. Lots of standard science fiction tropes are part of this story, but they are so well presented and there are so many twists that it doesn't matter that you may have seen them before. I recommend this one.

Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. This is a coming of age story written in 1968 that I hadn't read since high school and had completely forgotten about. It popped up in my kindle sale recommendations for $1.99 and I thought, "I remember reading this and really liking it. I wonder if it still holds up?" The answer is, mostly, yes. It's the story of a young woman, just out of high school, who isn't happy with who she is. She knows she doesn't want to be bouncing around the world as the child of her famous parents, but isn't ready to commit to college and doesn't know what she will do instead. Through a friend, she gets a chance to spend a summer pretending to be someone she isn't in order to solve a mystery, and in the process finds out who she might really like to be. It's still a charming story with likable oddball characters, and a sweet romance, and if some of the social expectations seem anachronistic now, the main character's dilemmas are still ones we can easily identify with. TBSL fans might enjoy this one.

Greensleeves was one of my very favourite books when I was in my early teens, then I moved, and no longer had library access to it. I searched for it for 30 years, then suddenly found myself with two hardcover copies and the ebook. I still like it, but I don't agree with all of Shannon's actions and decisions, and feel more ambivalent about the ending. It was one of the really significant books of my youth, so it will always be special to me, even if I can no longer read it with the same wonder.

>46 SylviaC: I was not entirely happy with the ending either, but I still enjoyed revisiting this book.

>45 aviddiva: Glad to hear you enjoyed Illuminae! I really regret not having picked it up in print. Reading it as an ebook diluted some of the magic of the visuals for me. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I was very grateful I'm not a visual reader!

Vivian Apple at the End of the World and Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle by Katie Coyle. After her parents are taken by the Rapture predicted by the charismatic leader of The Church of America, a fundamentalist church that promised upstanding Believers salvation at the imminent end of the world, Vivian Apple and two friends set off on a road trip looking for answers.

I liked the first of these two books a lot. It held a lot of parallels to the current political situation in America, and Viv and her companions were interesting characters asking good questions. The second book was not nearly as thoughtful, and while its non-stop action kept me reading, ultimately it was not entirely satisfying.

>44 aviddiva: I tried to find A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but even ILL cannot locate a copy.

Greensleeves sounds interesting, so I'll keep an eye out for it when I visit used bookstores.

>50 fuzzi: It looks like it's only available on kindle (in the US at least) and will be out in paperback in July.

>45 aviddiva: Glad you enjoyed Illuminae and it that worked pretty well on audio. I read the print version so can't imagine it without the visuals. I'm looking forward to the sequel, Gemina, which is due later this year.

>51 aviddiva: thanks for the info. I guess being on LT means I'm ahead of the curve!

I guess I'm going to have to start looking for The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
:o)

>54 clamairy: Yes.

>54 clamairy: Definitely ;)

>53 fuzzi: Of course it does!

The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb. This is the story of the intertwined relationship between a young rabbi, his wife, and a German Jewish refugee. I often avoid books about triangles, but this one was remarkably free of moral judgement. In beautiful, transparent prose, it explores ideas of what it means to be engaged with both the longings of the heart and the life of the mind, while having to live in the practical world. In a way, what I enjoyed most about this story was its assumption that the questions we pose are as important as the answers. It is full references to Jewish teachings and culture, and as a non-Jew, I probably missed some deeper meanings, but I think the human dilemmas involved are universal. It was written by a friend, and I am happy to be able to recommend it.

Unaccompanied Minor and We Will Be Crashing Shortly by Hollis Gillespie. Action packed tall tale about the improbable adventures of a smart young teen whose entire life revolves around the airline industry. Sometimes TMI about air disaster information, but generally an enjoyable read.

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. I picked this up because I enjoyed Illuminae and wanted to explore more by the co-authors.YA Science fiction. Lilac Laroux , billionaire heiress (with a name that makes her sound like a saloon singer), and Major Tarver Merendson, common class war hero, are left to survive on their own on an unpopulated planet after their spaceship crashes. The somewhat predictable romance driving the novel is saved by the genuine likeability of both characters and several truly unexpected plot twists. The story is told in alternating chapters from each character's point of view. I thought the world building was very good. Nothing approaching the complexity of Illuminae but worth a look. There are two more in the series.

Leviathan Wakes by James Corey. I listened to this on Audio, and liked it a lot, although I think I might have enjoyed it more on paper, because I kept losing attention for just a second, missing parts of the action, and having to back up to catch the bits I missed. There is so little background description in this book that every detail feels important. I did go ahead and get book 2, so I guess I''l see if I feel the same way in the next one. Interesting characters and different sort of premise -- excellent space opera.

Dirty: a Dive Bar novel by Kylie Scott. Start of a new series of contemporary romances by the author of the Stage Dive series, featuring one of the secondary characters in the last book of that series. Not quite as strong as most of the Stage Dive books, but well written and funny, with an excellent runaway bride story and an appealing rocker hero. Recommended.

The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski. I'm a third of the way through this, and while it's good enough to keep me reading, it's also a bit of a slog. One of the jacket blurbs compared it to Heinlein's YA novels, but I'm feeling more like Harry Potter went down Alice's rabbit hole to go to school and landed on another planet with global warming and political intrigue. On the one hand, it's a coming of age story bout a young woman going off to college, complete with frat party and quidditch equivalents. However, the names for everything in her world are familiar words used in unfamiliar ways. Characters connect through the Toynet using computer-like devices called "toyboxes," they travel via the anthrax (modified anthrax molecules form the ladder between worlds), and Jenny's father reminds her to remember to take her HIV (Human Improvement Vector developed from the old HIV virus.) It's all clever, but it does make reading it a bit of a mental exercise. Jenny, our heroine, is the daughter of a prominent political family, so everything that happens is presented with political ramifications, and she is studying botany, so there is lots of genetics thrown in for good measure. I will keep going for now, and see if I get used to it all.

>63 aviddiva: The Highest Frontier sounds pretty interesting! I'm not sure it sounds quite like the kind of story I'd enjoy reading, but I'll definitely be checking it out! ^_^

>61 aviddiva: I loved Leviathan Wakes, and have book two in process (reading) right now. I may eventually buy the books for a reread.

>64 dovelynnwriter: I've read quite a bit more, and it starts to get more involving around chapter 20, but while it's very clever and has lots of obvious parallels to the current US political mess, global warming, academia, organized religion, and media control of information, I'm still having a hard time caring about what happens to most of the characters. Intellectually it works just fine, but I like a little more humanity mixed in with my allegory. I think I've been reading too much YA lit recently, where everything is about feelings. ;) This is sort of the opposite, even though the main character is young and impassioned.

Recording these without much comment since they need to go back to the library.

Piece of Mind by Michelle Adelman. Rather good story of a young woman living with traumatic brain injury.

The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski Got better as it went. Much political allegory. Might look for more by this author.

Thinking of You by Jill Mansell. Easy romantic comedy about a refreshingly middle-aged woman who has a comfortably old divorce and an uncomfortably recent empty nest. Liked it.

Aquifer by Jonathan Friesen. YA Fantasy. Interesting world, otherwise just OK.

Dorothy Must Die. Abandoned unfinished.

Piece of Mind looks good. I'll have to look for it.