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I wound up reading a total of 58 books last year, so gently caress it I'm going for 60 this time around and I'm going to make sure I write a review on goodreads for each one, I only reviewed the second half of last year  Goodreads
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Jan 2, 2014 12:22
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Finished #1, and it turns out my eBook contained more than the actual book. 1. Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang I loving loved this to no end, it's my favorite book of short stories I've read. goodreads review
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Jan 2, 2014 17:51
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Finished book 2. 2. Desolation Road by Ian McDonald. I can't put in words how much I loved this; it's sci-fi Gabriel Garcia Marquez but so much more. Pretentious Goodreads review.
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Jan 8, 2014 00:00
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showbiz_liz posted:Master and Commander aka "hey you wanna know the difference between a maintopmast staysail and a mizzen topgallant staysail? Too loving bad I'm telling you anyway."
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Jan 14, 2014 18:08
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Two more under my belt. 3) Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. I'm glad I've read this, but I'll never read it or anything else he's written again because gently caress that prose and pacing for the rest of time. Goodreads 4) The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh. Almost the exact opposite of "people on a ship together" in terms of... well, everything. The writing's simple, the pacing's fantastic, the captain's a woman and I never once read the words "mizzenmast" or "larboards." Also, there's space cats. I sort of needed something light; who woulda thunk I'd find it in C.J. Cherryh.Goodreads
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Jan 22, 2014 16:31
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Possibly the last book I'll finish in January; definitely the last good book of fiction I'll finish. 5) Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson. What an incredible read; it's a story about technology and mythology colliding in the modern Middle East, it's about security and love and jinn and I wish I could put my finger on the one thing standing in my way of saying that I love it. goodreads review
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Jan 29, 2014 04:59
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Oh yeah, Alif was definitely the last good book I'll finish in January. 6) Game of Bones by T.B. Thread Goddammit, you motherfuckers got together and wrote a book and somehow I never knew that T.B.Thread was "the bookbarn thread" because gently caress. This is the best book about lemoncakes I've ever read. goodreads
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Jan 29, 2014 15:52
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January's all done. I forgot there was a "what did you finish reading" thread so I'm gunna make my updates more spread out and lumped-up 1. Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang. Amazing and incredible and made me want to cry goodreads 2. Desolation Road by Ian McDonald. Sci-fi Gabriel Garcia Marquez but so much more; I loved it to the ends of the earth goodreads 3) Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. I read it, I'm glad I did, I never will again goodreads 4) The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh. Best book about cat people in spaceships ever goodreads 5) Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson. Fantastic, unique, missing something to stick in my mind like an anchor goodreads 6) Game of Bones by T.B. Thread. Terrible, hilarious. goodreads 7) Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan. Fantastic look at an industry I want to join. goodreads 7/60, let's hope I can keep varying poo poo a bit all year
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Jan 31, 2014 23:51
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Probably not going to finish anything else by the end of the month, so let's go for an update. 8) The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks I didn't realize board game fanfic could actually be good, let alone great. longer goodreads review 9) Grave Peril by Jim Butcher I'm rereading Dresden Files. I remember liking this book more. goodreads review 10) Wetbones by John Shirley This is the grossest book I've read. I loved it. goodreads review 11) Summer Knight by Jim Butcher This is where the series really kicks off. Great, if flawed, introduction to Butcher's "epic" side. goodreads review 12) The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers Too influential to really shock me, this was still a fantastic and bleak collection of antique horror. goodreads review 13) Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives by David Eagleman Speculative theology at its best. The closest a book has come to changing aspects of my life. goodreads review 13/60 Oh my god what a fuckin' white male month. Next month I'll do better, ugh. At least I'm reading a lot more short stories than before; I'm working through an anthology of Lightspeed Magazine's best, then hopefully I'll pick something a little less white male. Who am I kidding; March will probably be spy thrillers and whiskey swillers.
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Feb 26, 2014 06:29
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14) Fudoki by Kij Johnson Absolutely the most cat-thing I've read; not just because it was full of cat things, but because it started out wonderful and engaging and just sort of got sharp and awkward by the end. longer goodreads review 15) We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson So engaging and weird and upsetting. Shirley Jackson always has this way with making people just seem dismally hosed in life, and the line "I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die" was an amazing piece of hosed up catharsis. The book's like a hundred pages long, everyone should give it a shot. goodreads review 16) Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey gently caress this book. Not for its sexual content at all, that was fine, but the horrible loving plod plod pointless pacing gently caress. It started out fantastic and engaging and hilarious in its synopsis (a pimp constantly sends out his finest ho to get knocked around so she can afford a sweet back tattoo is what I called it) but then it just kept going and going and loving going on forever about nothing and when the million pages were finally finished, it turns out I was at book one of a series. I'm done with long genre books for a little while, they wind up making me too upset. goodreads review 17) Death Masks by Jim Butcher I was glad my wife started this book around the time I finished Kushiel; we're reading Dresden together and I needed something short and quick and snappy and pointless. Great fuckin' fun story about some fallen angels, vampires, wizards and I read it in maybe five hours? goodreads review 17/60 I said I was going to do better for reading non-White Male Genre Authors for March and I would have really bumped my ratio higher if it wasn't for Kushiel's Dart taking me forever. It's not that I read slow, it's that that book started making me hate the idea of relaxing with a book. Outside of my Dresden rereads and this Lightspeed anthology I've been picking my way through between books, I'm just saying gently caress genre for April altogether. I'm starting April with Mo Yan and trying to stick to authors who have won Nobel Prizes, or at least want to tell stories that aren't about how the notEuropeans needed to fight the Dragon with Purple Prose to help the loving King be Imperialistic and ugh. Kushiel's Dart really rubbed me the wrong way.
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Mar 31, 2014 20:31
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Walh Hara posted:Those are pretty hard to come by. I'm of course a month too late with these suggestions, but if you ever want to give female or non-white genre authors another try, consider: I've got Connie Willis on my to-read list. Honestly, it's not that I have a super hard time finding non-white non-male genre authors (I grew up in a single-mother household that worshiped Octavia Butler, Diana Wynne-Jones and Marion Zimmer-Bradley; two of my favorite modern authors are Kameron Hurley and G. Willow Wilson) so much as... you know, making myself read them instead of the sheer amount of terrible books by white men that I wind up picking up.
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Mar 31, 2014 23:26
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18) Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan Utterly charming and Chinese as hell; despite all the similarities on paper to 100 Years Of Solitude, this book has an incredibly different style and mood. Mo Yan managed to write himself into this book as a self-insert and make it just work so, so well. There's a hell of a lot to say about this book; I only briefly touched on it on Goodreads but I encourage anybody who wants to read a bizarre dark comedy about reincarnation and modern Chinese history to read this dang book. longer goodreads review 19) The House of The Spirits by Isabel Allende Eh. After Life And Death, I wanted to read something I'd had on my bookshelf forever and this, ehhhh. The thing with a really good magical realism story, the thing with a really good story about family conflict, is you need to have characters and Allende just kind of filled this book with two dimensional caricatures instead of fully realized people doing their thing. It didn't help that she is a student of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and he died halfway through my reading of this; I blame it for only finishing three books this month. longer goodreads review 20) Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball Best book of the month. gently caress. This is a treatise on lies, an exploration of deception, and it completely turns the concept of a mystery on its head - from the very start of the book, we know whodunnit, we know the main character is innocent, AND it's set years after the main crime in the book was completely made public, yet it is still the tensest book I've read in a while. longer goodreads review 20/60 Well, at least only 1/3rd of my books were written by white men this month. I'm most of the way through The Inconvenient Indian right now and enjoying the hell out of it, despite it being a total bummer trip. I don't know what my theme for May is going to be yet; maybe I'll just read some dumb poo poo and pad it out with short stories and not stress out so much and maybe even get a dang job that gets in the way of my reading time.
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May 1, 2014 16:23
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Spadoink posted:A friend of mine picked up IQ84 and now won't go anywhere else near his other writing, she is so mad at that book
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May 4, 2014 03:28
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Big month. 21) The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King Exactly as much of a bummer as it should have been; if more non fiction books were this personal and interesting, I'd probably read more. Not growing up in America, it left me amazed at how many really interesting things have happened in modern Native American history that nobody ever told me about, and I'm surprised a bunch of this isn't in movies. longer goodreads review 22) Fledgling by Octavia Butler Octavia is a goddamn genius, and I was surprised when I realized I'd never read this. She is the loving ruler of making you feel super uncomfortable for really important reasons, and everyone should read this if they have any interest at all in the concept of the vampire. longer goodreads review 23) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin This book is so much better if you don't actually read it. There's cool concepts and poo poo but absolutely no characterization and a really terrible clunky prose that made me mad to try and read. longer goodreads review 24) Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg This is a fuckin' terrible book. It's scifi by someone who thinks scifi is a joke, who jumped into the field just to "show them how it's done" I guess. I don't know; my goodreads says it all. It's a hundred and sixty pages, it took four days to read while I was unemployed. longer goodreads review And then I realized there was a new Dresden in a couple weeks and panicked and really ramped up my re-read; this is my first re-read of the series; I'm definitely not going to reread them every year. 25) Blood Rites by Jim Butcher Not as good on a second read; what seemed like cool hints at first was super blunt foreshadowing the second time around. Still, it made me do fantasy casting for two characters and I normally hate doing that, so I guess there's that. longer goodreads review 26) Dead Beat by Jim Butcher This is the best fuckin' Dresden Files book. It just succeeds in every goddamn way. longer goodreads review 27) Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher It explores how hard it is to be a Warden some, but overall this just kind of felt like I was going through the motions. No goodreads, because I had a horrible migraine the day I finished. 27/60 I can't wait until I finish Dresden; I'm going to finally say "gently caress it" and tackle either Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest. Or I'll just work through a bunch of my goodreads list some more, who knows.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:19
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Probably not going to finish anything else this month; mostly because I have no idea what I want to read next. 28-34. Finished Rereading The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. There is a hell of a lot more craft to these books than you'd think looking at them from the outside; every book drips with foreshadowing, and a significant number of the stories really benefit from a re-read. I'm not going to reread these every year; this was my first and only time doing so. Dead Beat and Changes are still my favorites. 35. Skin Game by Jim Butcher. Not as amazing as I was hoping for; after the Changes/Ghost Story/Cold Days three punch, it felt like a step back. Which wasn't a bad thing, at all; it was just not as intense. longer goodreads review 36. Desert Places by Blake Crouch. I don't know why I picked this up, or why I read it all the way to the end. This book's a garbage dump for people with bad taste. I don't remember why I gave it three stars, I don't have a single good memory of reading it. longer goodreads review 37. Bone Dance by Emma Bull. I was all but begging this book to be better than it is. It wasn't. It's a post apocalyptic cyberpunk/voodoo story about a gender-ambiguous VHS tape hunter as they fight mind-jumping Horsemen of the Apocalypse... and yet it's just boring. What a disappointment. longer goodreads review 38. Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan. This book on the other hand, gently caress. What an intense haunted apartment story, that deals really heavy blows to anybody who has suffered from addiction, obsession, depression, or a crummy childhood. I gotta read more Sarah Langan; she does horror really, really well. longer goodreads review 39. Infidel by Kameron Hurley. A fantastic sequel to God's War, that felt a little shallow at the end. The book is full of really worried people following around Nyxnyssa, the main character, because even if she's sick, weak, and self-destructive, she's still a goddamn monster and you don't want to cross a goddamn monster. I need to find part three of this trilogy; Hurley writes really, really interesting hosed up people, and I just can't think of a single other author writing insect-ridden depressing feminist Muslim scifi. longer goodreads review 39. Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. This whole book's written in patwah; it's Caribbean scifi, it falls apart at points and it's utterly unique. I want more people to read this book. longer goodreads review 40. Despair by Vladimir Nabakov. This book is loving hilarious and I love how the main character's egocentric psychopathy comes through in the page. gently caress, I should read more Nabakov all the time. If more people wrote like Nabakov, there would be less people in the world who say they hate reading. longer goodreads review 41. The Bread We Eat In Dreams by Catherynne M. Valente. A collection of short stories, all themed around fairytales and myth. Some of this book took my fuckin' breath away, other parts had me skimming, but it has a lot more hits than it does misses. Highlights are White Lines On A Green Field, Voice Like A Hole, and The Wolves of Brooklyn. longer goodreads review 41/60 I'm reading a lot more than I thought I would. Highlights of this month were Despair and Audrey's Door; one was an author I know I love, one was an author I'd never heard of before. Both are people I should always read more. Five books this month were written by women, and I'm finally done with Dresden Files, so I will get more diversity and difference in my reading. I also gave up on The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay; I tried, I really did, but after getting over halfway and still thinking "this is just bullshit swords and kingdoms fantasy only with more Spanish sounding names than usual" I dropped it. I made it through Blake Crouch's worst book, I have forced myself through some really terrible things, but for some reason I just couldn't read that. It's joined the ranks of Malazan, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Prince of Nothing; books that came highly recommended that I couldn't even force myself through.
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Jun 29, 2014 12:30
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42. Three Parts Dead by Max Gladsone A great book to not give a poo poo about. I gave it three stars on Goodreads because despite all the cool stuff going on, it's so hard to care about anything inside. longer goodreads review 43. The Secret History by Donna Tartt I'm looking down on all y'all for not picking this book for last Book Of The Month, and for ignoring it this time too. This is Gatsby done stronger; it's loving phenomenal. longer goodreads review 44. This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It by David Wong Eugh. John Dies At The End was wonderful; this fell apart throughout and only got such high marks on my Goodreads page for having an amazing, satisfying, well crafted, beautiful ending. longer goodreads review 45. Agyar by Steven Brust I love Steven Brust but man, I don't love this. If you wanna read a short vampire book that never uses the words vampire, blood, or undead, give it a shot. Otherwise, I just couldn't care. longer goodreads review 46. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple Oh my god read it read it read it read it. I'm in love with the titular character; she's so loving engagingly weird and interesting and believable and if you don't know someone like her, I'm sorry that your life lacks so much. longer goodreads review 47. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie I'm on the opposite page to ltr here. It started interesting, with promise, but none of the character's actions made a lick of sense and everyone was blind and an idiot. This book was a nosedive. longer goodreads review 47/60 Despite some real mediocre books, I read two of my favorite books of the year this month. The Secret History is beyond great, and it took me some time afterwards to absorb the similarities between it and The Great Gatsby but I honestly think it's a stronger book. Where'd You Go Bernadette has joined the ranks of Frankenstein and House Of Leaves in terms of amazing epistolary novels that just blew me away. If the rest of my year has this ratio of good to clunk, I'm really looking forwards to some of the books I'll be reading.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:54
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48. Shadow of a Dead Star by Michael Shean Debut cyberpunk noir novel that surprised me, despite being about an angry white man, by being completely aware that it was about an angry white man. It had an abrupt ending that screamed "sequel" but overall, surprisingly good. I normally quit reading cyberpunk or noir books a quarter of the way through; this had me reading the sequel. longer goodreads review 49. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler Disappointing. I was told this was a hilarious book set in the wild west that dealt with racial politics in American history. Hilarious is the wrong word to use; it had boring characters, a lovely story, and made me think that Karen Joy Fowler hates women. longer goodreads review 50. Redeye by Michael Shean Holy poo poo am I glad I picked up the sequel to Shadow. Badass book about a badass lady doing badass things that actually had tense, well-written "hacking battles" along with gross weird body horror stuff. So good. longer goodreads review 51. Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway Best book of the month. If Neal Stephenson read some Douglas Adams then went off to write a Guy Ritchie movie involving an 80 year old lesbian superspy. Phenomenally written. longer goodreads review Short month, but then,  I had a breakdown go me. I meant to read more women authors than just one this month, but hey, poo poo happens. Michael Shean was my surprise author to find; I actually went and had lunch with the author too and he's a really down-to-earth guy who shares my opinion that books about dudes doing dude things are boring as poo poo. Angelmaker though; gently caress, Nick Harkaway deserves more fans. It wasn't as bizarre as Gone Away World, and it had a couple of problems, but overall what a fantastic fuckin' book.
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Sep 1, 2014 14:02
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Groke posted:Goddamn, forgot to update this thread for the longest time.  I beat my challenge 52. Dragon by Steven Brust I've been deliberately avoiding him this year so I don't just read a bunch of short things to beat the challenge. This was great though; a really fuckin' good look at what fantasy war would probably be like for the soldiers. longer goodreads review 53. Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb Too great; it made me really mad that people don't put her higher than GRRM or Rothfuss on their favorite authors list. longer goodreads review 54. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb This fuckin' lady. This book loving cemented what the theme of this trilogy is: goddamn consequence. Everything you do can, and probably will, come back to you. longer goodreads review 55. Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb Kick in the teeth ending to a fantastic trilogy, but not in the way I wanted. This was a pretty flawed end to an otherwise incredible trilogy. longer goodreads review 56. The Missing by Sarah Langan Part two in a series apparently, but it stands amazing on its own. This book was some hosed up horror, and Sarah Langan can write mental illness like a motherfucker. longer goodreads review 57. The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron Kinda wish I'd just read The Croning again, to be honest. Most of these stories were forgettable and the same thing over and over: person finds something weird, something weird tries to eat them. Sometimes, the story's about the thing what wants to eat. longer goodreads review 58. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters lovely fuckin' "period" yawnfest about "what if ghosts were the really obvious metaphor people use them as all the time forever" longer goodreads review 59. The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan I counted the whole trilogy as one book, because I've read the story of "poor person becomes dope wizard" a lot before. Just, y'know, not from a really well written outsider's perspective, and not in such an interestingly female way. longer goodreads review 60. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood This was an insanely good book that has actually left me afraid to read the sequel, because I either don't want it to disappoint me, or I don't want every other book after it to disappoint me in comparison. longer goodreads review 61. Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan You know those books that are recommended too many times and you just have a kind of gut reaction to want to avoid them? If this book is on that list for you shut up and read it now. longer goodreads review I really hosed up during September/October; I planned on reading a bunch of horror, but wound up giving up on something like six books in a row because they were just godawful. I also slipped back into reading mostly fantasy/scifi, but hell, I know what I like, and I've tried to be a little more discerning than I used to. I know there's still a couple weeks to go, but I'm preemptively giving my Book Of The Year to either Silence, Once Begun by Jesse Ball, or The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Both stuck with me like crazy and I could talk for days about either. Runner's up go to An Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King, Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang, and Fledgling by Octavia Butler. All three were fantastic too, and two of the three brought me to tears (Fledgling just made me feel super gross) but didn't quite stick in my head as much. This year, I tried to read a lot more female authors; out of the 43 authors I have read so far, 22 were female. I could have done better, and next year I'm not doing a big fuckin' planned reread of the Dresden Files, so it should be a lot easier. I think next year, my challenge will be to mostly read books that were released in late 2014/2015... or at least, in the last five years. A lot of stuff I read this year was older, and between Alif the Unseen, Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha series, Angelmaker, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and Redeye, I'm realizing that I need to read more modern things. There's some really good poo poo getting published lately. Anyone know of any decent awards I should follow? I picked up Ancillary Justice earlier in the year because I heard it won a Hugo and a Nebula, and it just kinda really sucked buns.
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Dec 19, 2014 17:18
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