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I'm in, with the same parameters as last year: - 96 books - ≥10% nonfictiction - ≤25% rereads - Booklord Challenge #3 is probably going to give me the most trouble, though, both because my shelves are pretty white-heavy and because figuring out an author's ethinicity is often a lot harder than figuring out their gender (to the point that I often cannot be arsed).
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Jan 3, 2017 17:33
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Franchescanado posted:I'm having a bit of an weird issue with this too, but with LGBT. I'm trying to mark my Goodreads so I have a list to draw from, but it's a blurry line to define sometimes. Michael Chabon has written several gay/bisexual characters, he quietly identifies as bisexual, but he's married to a woman. I'd say if he identifies as bi that counts. I mean, unless he's also poly he's not going to be "actively bi" regardless. For my part, this is going to be a really easy challenge, because I read a lot of SF/F and a lot of my favoured authors there are LGBTQ of some sort, C.J. Cherryh and Melissa Scott foremost among them. I could probably do "20% books by queer authors" without much trouble. Sandwolf posted:What's everyone's first book of the year? Mine's God Knows by Joseph Heller, read Catch 22 last year for the first time and fell in love with it, so I'm trying Heller's foray in religion. My first logged book is Inheritor by C.J. Cherryh, but I started reading it in 2016. I've just started on The New Space Opera 2 short story collection, since while I want to read the first 15 Foreigner books this year, I don't think I want to read them all in one sitting. Next up after that is probably clearing out some of my Diane Duane backlog (Rihannsu or the Middle Kingdoms books), or Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (the latter will be my first nonfiction this year regardless).
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Jan 3, 2017 21:43
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Corrode posted:Challenge made. Challenge accepted.
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Jan 3, 2017 23:24
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mdemone posted:Aw crap, I'm doing well on non-white authors but falling behind on women authors. Luckily I have a few coming up in the pipeline, including three by Kathy Acker who I've always wanted to dig into. I am (as predicted) the opposite, most years I'm at ~50% books by not-men authors and like two or three books by non-white authors (out of 100+ books). On the plus side, I was planning to finally check out Octavia Butler this year anyways... I also haven't read any nonfiction, but it's early days yet, and a lot of my nonfiction is in hardcopy, which is always easier to read when the toddler isn't around.
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Jan 23, 2017 18:43
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1. Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh 2. Invader by C.J. Cherryh 3. Inheritor by C.J. Cherryh I don't, in general, think that Foreigner is Cherryh's best work, and I'm kind of disappointed that she seems to have gotten into a groove of writing ~infinity Foreigner books rather than, say, more books in Compact Space, or the sequel that Cyteen wants (and didn't get in Regenesis). Despite that, these books are an old favourite, warm, comfortable, and familiar. They don't have nearly the degree of nostalgia attached to them that the Chanur books do, but they're relaxing in a way Chanur generally isn't. That said, ever since I heard someone say that "all of C.J. Cherryh's books end with a bus ride to a gunfight", I can't unsee it, and it's really obvious in the first three Foreigner books. I'm planning to read up through book 15 this year, although not all at once. 4. The New Space Opera 2 by Gardner Dozois (ed.) There were no stories in this that I absolutely loved and compelled me to seek out the rest of the author's work, but lots that I liked; I don't think I can pick out a favourite. The weakest ones were definitely Cracklegrackle by Christina Robson and The Far End of History by John C. Wright, though. All in all, a solid collection. 5. Precursor by C.J. Cherryh 6. Defender by C.J. Cherryh 7. Explorer by C.J. Cherryh Foreigner arc 2. This, for me, is where it gets interesting, with the Atevi reaching out into space and encountering another alien species, against the backdrop of the tension between Phoenix command and the Pilot's Guild. If I have one complaint it's that first contact with the Kyo seems to go a bit too quickly and easily -- granted, no faster than in The Pride of Chanur, and it's explicable by the fact that the Kyo seem to have encountered a number of other spacefaring species already and Prakuyo presumably has specialized training for that, but it still bugs me. On the other hand, this trilogy features a lot more Illisidi, which forgives many sins. This is where my reading of Foreigner stopped last time (on account of running out of books). A bunch more have been written since then, and my plan this year is to continue reading through to the end of Arc 5. 8. The Book of Night with Moon by Diane Duane 9. To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane Same setting as So You Want To Be A Wizard, different protagonists -- this time the team of feline wizards responsible for maintaining the Grand Central Station worldgate complex in NYC. Neither, I think, is as tightly plotted as SYWTBAW, but Moon is an old favourite that I've read probably a dozen times over the years and keep coming back to. It's a warm, cozy hit of nostalgia that I can read in an afternoon and enjoy the book equivalent of having an old, lazy cat sprawled across my lap. Queen I've only read once before, and on re-read, I see why; it's good enough, but I only like it, I don't love it. Apparently there was a third book, The Big Meow, but it was crowdfunded and released online on a site that no longer exists.  10. Critical Failures by Robert Bevan 11. d6 by Robert Bevan 12. Fail Harder by Robert Bevan Perennial favourites of the SF/F thread here, a tale of four assholes who piss off the GM in a game of This is...I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, the protagonists are a group of painfully unfunny douchenozzles who probably deserve to spend four books and change getting dicked around by a vengeful wizard god. On the other hand, the situations they find themselves in -- and the ways they escape -- are often genuinely (if morbidly) funny. At this point I'm much more interested in their continuing misadventures than in the overarching plot of their attempts to get back home. I don't think I can take long runs of this, but I will likely return to it later. Horse. 13. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut My first Vonnegut! I've had two others on my shelves for years (Cat's Cradle and Timequake), but somehow never got around to them. But this was the BOTM, and it was a blast. I went through it in a day and enjoyed every page of it, and I think it might benefit from a slower reread sometime next year. It also reminds me, although I can't put my finger on why, of some of Stanislaw Lem's work. 14. The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem And here's Lem! All I knew going into this was that it was an Ijon Tichy book, so I was expecting something similar to The Star Diaries. What I got was a drug-fuelled descent into madness, like if Memoirs Found in a Bathtub mellowed out a bit and took a massive hit of LSD. A+, would recommend. And as I cast back my mind to ten years ago and remember what The Star Diaries were actually like, maybe that shouldn't have been so surprising. I should reread them. Booklord Challenge Update (bold == updated this month) As with other years, I'm counting books that hit multiple categories for all of them, but if I later get a chance to de-duplicate categories I will. pre:1) 96 books, ≥10% nonfiction, ≤25% rereads
14/96 books, 0 nonfiction (0%), 8 rereads (57%)
2) ≥20% by women
8/14 books (57%)
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Feb 2, 2017 16:05
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15. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield This was fantastic. It's structured as a series of anecdotes about Hadfield's life and career, and his path from being a kid looking up at the moon during Apollo 11 to commander of the ISS, but each chapter also connects that to some lesson about the skills needed to be an astronaut -- and how those skills are applicable to day to daylife on earth (hence the title). 16. A Choice of Destinies by Melissa Scott An alt-history novel wondering what would happen if Alexander the Great had had to turn back before starting his Indian campaign. It was alright, but I suspect I would have gotten a lot more out of it had I more than vague knowledge of Alexander's life and campaigns. 17. Uptown Local and Other Interventions by Diane Duane Despite the title, only two of the stories in this collection are about wizards. (At least overtly. One could probably argue that all of them are interventions, and those two are just the only ones written from the wizard's perspective.) It starts out kind of slow -- the first story is both the longest and, for me, probably the least interesting -- but picks up after that. 18. Old Man's War by John Scalzi 19. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi 20. The Sagan Diary by John Scalzi I've gotten a lot of solid book recommendations off of Scalzi's blog but I've never actually read his books. Then my e-reader died and it turned out the backup only had The Dracula Tape and the first three Old Man's War books on it, and I'd already read the former. These were not particularly unusual or thought-provoking, but they were fun and I'll likely go back and read more of his stuff later. I'd put him more or less in the same bucket as Zahn, I think. 21. Burning Bright by Melissa Scott Like Mighty Good Road and Trouble and Her Friends, this features a lot of politics and threats and very little actual violence, and a central conflict that's resolved via informational leverage rather than by a shootout. This seems to be a favoured plot structure of Scott's (similar to Cherryh's "bus ride to a gunfight"), and she does it well. The Roads of Heaven are still my favourite of her books, though. 22. Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexeivich Monologues from people who lived near Chernobyl or were in some other way involved with the disaster, collected in the ten years following. I've read stuff before about the disaster itself, but this is the first look I've had from the point of view of people who just lived in the Zone. It's...horrifying. A few parts had me swearing out loud at the book, like the scientist talking about how they were testing samples from towns near the reactor and saying "this isn't milk, it's nuclear waste"...and then they turn on the TV and it's a public service announcement talking about how the meat/crops/livestock in the Zone are totally safe for human consumption, nothing to worry about. Booklord Challenge Update (bold == updated this month) pre:1) 96 books, ≥10% nonfiction, ≤25% rereads
22/96 books, 2 nonfiction (9%), 8 rereads (36%)
2) ≥20% by not-men
12/22 books (55%)
3)
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Mar 3, 2017 17:58
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I've kept reading but I haven't updated since February. At this point I think I'll just do highlights/lowlights and the booklord stat block for the last four months and then try to get back into monthly updates at the end of July. I've still been keeping notes on what I'm reading, just not posting them. In the meantime, someone please wildcard me. Talas posted:31. Cyteen: The Betrayal. C. J. Cherryh. First part of the Cyteen "trilogy". The story is interesting, but the writing is poor and kind of boring.  There's only two Cyteen books (Cyteen and Regenesis). I wish it were a trilogy; Regenesis was kind of filler that didn't address any of the big questions raised by Cyteen and I think it would really benefit from a third book, set decades later, to round things out.Ben Nevis posted:33. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire - I'd seen Seanan McGuire's name kicked around so grabbed this one from the library. All the ghosts in New York are being kidnapped. This was decent but largely felt unfinished. McGuire talked a fair bit about how ghosts work, but it never quite was worth it. The main plot is given short shrift for ghost details. A major aspect of ghost stuff is mentioned but not meaningfully impactful, which made me wonder why it was included at all. The ending, which should have been sweet and emotional just felt unearned. I love McGuire to bits, but I do think DoDoDoD was one of her weaker efforts. (Parasitology has a solid claim on her worst work overall.) I had similar complaints about her earlier fixup of ghost stories (Sparrow Hill Road). I do think that both Sparrow Hill Road and Dusk work better if you've read InCryptid*, not because you get more out of the ghost stories as such, but because they feel more like filling in background of a universe you're already familiar with and thus their deficiencies are less glaring. Honestly, what I want to see more of from her, ghost-wise, is just more standalone short stories; Sparrow Hill Road had a bunch of individual stories in it I really liked, but I felt the attempt to stitch them together into an overarching plot fell flat. Her best stuff overall is probably InCryptid ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer joins the World Wildlife Federation"), although later October Daye books also make a good showing. * Dusk isn't explicitly part of the InCryptid setting, but it is compatible with it, and it makes me happy to think of being part of it.
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Jul 5, 2017 14:52
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I've been really awful about updating this so I'm just going to post my current booklord state and some thoughts on the new books added to it.pre:1) 96 books, ≥10% nonfiction, ≤25% rereads
73/96 books, 13 nonfiction (18%), 12 rereads (16%)
2) ≥20% by not-men
36 books (49%)
3) I was recently reminded of the existence of Dave Barry and checked out these two collections I hadn't previously read. The first is the usual assortment; the second, a collection of columns specifically about politics around the 2000 elections, closing out with two about 9/11 (which seem shockingly naive and optimistic in retrospect). They were amusing, but not as funny as they were when I was younger, despite getting more of the jokes. 50. Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick Holy poo poo, this is nonfiction but reads like a goddamn techno-thriller. It was recommended to me as "if you liked The Cuckoo's Egg you should read...", and that recommendation was spot on; I couldn't put it down. I was 9 when all of this was going down and barely cognizant of current events in my home country, let alone in the US, so I missed most of this when it happened. And even with my currently high level of cynicism it was pretty shocking to see the degree to which law enforcement just stopped giving a poo poo about constitutional rights and the due process of law once they decided they wanted to make an example of him. 51. Anabasis by Xenophon The "March of the Ten Thousand", Xenophon's journal of Cyrus the Younger's disastrous campaign for the throne and the subsequent escape from Persia of ~10k Greek mercenaries he brought with him. This has been used as inspiration (or in some cases outright ripped off) by a lot of authors over the years, especially in MilSF, and I figured I should finally give the original a look. It really does read like a journal or a history, not a story; it's a fairly bare recitation of events, which may be useful for historians but means it's not a very engaging read. 57. Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin Ok, this is technically a podcast, but at 23 hours long the only thing distinguishing it from an audiobook is the somewhat more conversational tone and the fact that there's no text version available. And I find that tone a lot easier to follow in listening than normal audiobooks. This is Carlin's take on WW1, focusing primarily on the western front, but still containing an awful lot of things I never learned in school, including spending the first several hours untangling the causes of the war and the clusterfuck of alliances and agreements originally set up by Bismarck. He also recommends a whole pile of books and authors, some of which I'll likely check out later. 68. The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton This is completely uninteresting to me as a how-to, since I have no interest in fishing, but is fascinating as a literary artifact. It's still written in modern english, but the style and word choice is completely different from what I'm used to, which is enough to keep me interested even if I don't care about the subject matter. Also, the opening dialogue is...a thing. The book presents itself as a conversation between Piscator (angler), Venator (hunter), and Auceps (falconer), and the first chapter goes like this: PISCATOR: so I'm an angler VENATOR and AUCEPS: lol, fish suck PISCATOR: what's so great about your hobbies then AUCEPS: [a page on why falconry is great] VENATOR: [another page on why hunting is great] PISCATOR: [most of a chapter on why angling is great] AUCEPS: oh look, there's my stop, great talking to you, bye forever VENATOR: i am completely overcome with the glory of fish! please teach me, o great master! PISCATOR: if you insist  The rest of the book is framed as Piscator teaching Venator in the fine art of angling, including some highly questionable asides into ecology in general -- did you know, for example, that some species of pike are born from seaweed, and that some species of frog turn into slime for the winter and spontaneously reconstitute into frogs in the spring? 72. Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain by David Gerard The first half is about Bitcoin, and it's fascinatingly dumb. The second half is about Etherium and it's so much dumber than I could have imagined. This was an amazing read if you like pointing and laughing at trainwrecks, which cryptocurrencies definitely are.
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Sep 1, 2017 16:16
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Hi thread, I've still been reading books but I just haven't had the energy to keep the thread updated as I do so. I've got two books on the go right now (Probably Space by Nancy Kress and Soonish by the Weinersmiths), but I don't think I'll finish either before the new year (and I may not finish Probability Space at all), so I'm calling it here. In the end I completed the challenges I set for myself, comfortably meeting my goals for number of books read and amount of nonfiction; since I started keeping track I've been consistently reading 120-ish books a year, and this year is no exception. pre:1) 96 books, ≥10% nonfiction, ≤25% rereads
121/96 books, 15 nonfiction (12%), 20 rereads (17%)
pre:2) ≥20% by not-men
65 books (54%)
3) pre:
5) At least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it.
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
6) A book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!)
The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton
7) Something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016).
The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
8) Something which was published before you were born.
The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem
9) Something in translation.
Anabasis by Xenophon
10) Something from somewhere you want to travel.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
11) Something political.
Boogers Are My Beat by Dave Barry
12) Something historical.
Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
12a) Something about the First World War.
Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin
13) Something biographical.
Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
14) Some poetry.
The Sagan Diary by John Scalzi
15) A play.
Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
16) A collection of short stories.
Uptown Local and Other Interventions by Diane Duane
17) Something long (500+ pages).
Explorer by C.J. Cherryh
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Dec 29, 2017 15:49
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