1 | Title | Author | Notes | Completed | Total: 83 | Est year: 90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | Aurora | Kim Stanley Robinson | Bog-standard generation-ship scifi. Boring as hell. I had at least a dozen ideas of how it was gonna turn out, and they were all more interesting than what actually happened. | 2023-01-02 | ||
3 | Klara and the Sun | Kazuo Ishiguro | Near-future AI robot companions for children; supposedly "what does it mean to be human" but really I found it not at all compelling and seemingly ignorant of every other similar work. Again, I had a bunch of ideas of how it might be more interesting either plot-wise or in terms of how it addresses the ethical issues, and it disappointed. | 2023-01-03 | ||
4 | Lost in the Moment and Found | Seanan McGuire | Wayward Children series. Not the best. | 2023-01-11 | 1 | |
5 | Black Water Sister | Zen Cho | Gods and spirits and gangsters in Penang. OK. | 2023-01-22 | ||
6 | Scale | Greg Egan | An actually readable Egan! People exist at different sizes from what we'd think of as normal, halving down to 64 times smaller. Politics and detectiving. Good. | 2023-01-29 | ||
7 | A Hacker's Mind | Bruce Schneier | Hacking government, laws, society, cognition. A bit fluffy and overlong. | 2023-02-12 | ||
8 | Meditations | Marcus Aurelius | Good translation which exposes how really it's just like a modern tech CEO's personal gratitude journal ramblings. (Though probably the arrow of causality is the other way - modern tech CEOs are obsessed with Stoicisim and seek to emulate Aurelius' writing.) | 2023-02-17 | ||
9 | Siren Queen | Nghi Vo | Chinese girl reaches stardom in (magical) early Hollywood movie studio. Fantastic. | 2023-02-19 | 1 | |
10 | The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi | Shannon Chakraborty | Utterly fantastic in every sense of the word. Pirates, magic, and djinn in 12th century Oman. | 2023-03-07 | 1 | |
11 | Dead Country | Max Gladstone | Back to the Craft universe. Utterly great, and somewhat more ... personal? than previous. Taba Abernathy confronting both her origins and the future. Hints of the upcoming problems; not sure yet if this is a Climate Change Allegory. | 2023-03-10 | 1 | |
12 | Backpacking through Bedlam | Seanan McGuire | Middling entry in the Incryptid series. Never thought I'd see the day when [spoiler] actually happened. Is she actually starting to wrap this series up? | 2023-03-13 | 1 | |
13 | The House the Walked Between Worlds | Jenny Schwartz | Baba Yaga's nth-great-granddaughter is a sorcerer, has adventures with her elf, dinosaur, and naga friends across multiple worlds. Great literature this is not, but it's fun. | 2023-03-15 | 1 | |
14 | House in Hiding | Jenny Schwartz | Not as good as the first. | 2023-03-17 | 1 | |
15 | The House That Fought | Jenny Schwartz | Not as good as the second. | 2023-03-19 | 1 | |
16 | Assassin of Reality (Vita Nostra 2) | Marina & Sergey Dyachenko | Sequel to (the outstanding) Vita Nostra. Not as weird as the first and not as good; I think if I were to recommend someone read Vita Nostra I might just have them read the first even if it doesn't really end. | 2023-03-21 | 1 | |
17 | The Sinister Booksellers of Bath | Garth Nix | Another left-handed booksellers book; old gods and magic in England. Just ok. | 2023-03-23 | 1 | |
18 | Stateless | Elizabeth Wein | Same author as the very good Code Name Verity, but this one seemed really simplistic and never really caught me. Teenage aviators race around inter-war Europe, with murder and intrigue. Meh. | 2023-03-25 | ||
19 | Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell | Phil Lapsley | History of phone phreaking. Good. | 2023-04-02 | ||
20 | Infinity Gate | M. R. Carey | Many-worlds and organics-vs-machines war. OK. | 2023-04-11 | ||
21 | The Girl With All The Gifts | M. R. Carey | Zombies, but some of the kids aren't mindless. Good. | 2023-04-15 | ||
22 | Travel by Bullet (Dispatcher 3) | John Scalzi | 3rd book in series where if someone murders you you instantly come back to life somewhere you feel safe. A bit dragging and way too much "the detective gathers everyone together and explains everything out loud". | 2023-04-24 | ||
23 | Rose/House | Arkady Martine | Haunting and gorgeous. 2100s sante fe desert architectural masterpiece with an AI genius loci... murder mystery. | 2023-04-26 | ||
24 | The Mythic Dream | various | El-Mohtar! T Kingfisher! Novik! McGuire! Martine! Roanhorse! Great collection of short stories reinterpreting classic myths. | 2023-05-03 | ||
25 | Deadly Memory | David Walton | 2nd in series - dinosaurs had a complex tech civilization, now one has been revived just in time for a worldwide plague. Par. | 2023-05-08 | ||
26 | Lords of Uncreation | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Finale of Architects series, wraps up well. | 2023-05-11 | ||
27 | Sleep and the Soul | Greg Egan | I was very confused about when things would start tying together before I realized it was a short story anthology. I got Eganned. | 2023-05-11 | ||
28 | Scarlet | Genevieve Cogman | The French revolution and the Scarlet Pimpernel - but there's vampires. OK. | 2023-05-14 | ||
29 | Red Team Blues | Cory Doctorow | Crypto mystery. Pretty good. | 2023-05-16 | ||
30 | Season of Skulls | Charles Stross | Laundry Files / New Management ... as a Regency novel. Good. | 2023-05-18 | 1 | |
31 | Titanium Noir | Nick Harkaway | Billionaires get life extension, which puts them through puberty again and makes them get physically bigger. Murder mystery. Fantastic. | 2023-05-22 | ||
32 | Yellowface | R. F. Kuang | Plagiarism and the writing industry and possibly a ghost. I kept waiting for the 'real' plot to start, and it never did. | 2023-05-27 | ||
33 | Castle Hangnail | Ursula Vernon | Good YA. Girl, magic castle. | 2023-06-09 | 1 | |
34 | Descendant Machine | Gareth Powell | Time travel sci fi shooting fate-of-the-universe aliens. Middling at best. | 2023-06-13 | ||
35 | Danger and other Unknown Risks | Ryan North | Graphic novel. Magic after the end of the world. OK. | 2023-06-17 | 1 | |
36 | Burning Paradise | Robert Charles Wilson | Alien hive intelligence subtly controlling earth to make it more peaceful. Great. | 2023-06-25 | ||
37 | Last Year | Robert Charles Wilson | Humans discover time travel, use it to make the past a tourist attraction. Forgettable. | 2023-06-28 | ||
38 | The Two of Swords Volume One | K. J. Parker | Like "16 ways to defend a walled city". Totally non-magical fantasy warfare, told from the very human people involved in it, with an extra helping of basically Freemasons who may or may not be running things. Great. | 2023-07-05 | ||
39 | The Two of Swords Volume Two | K. J. Parker | " | 2023-07-07 | ||
40 | The Two of Swords Volume Three | K. J. Parker | " | 2023-07-09 | ||
41 | Sharps | K. J. Parker | Same universe. Fencers travel to neighboring country their at war with for a sports tournament. Good. | 2023-07-12 | ||
42 | Pulling the Wings off Angels | K. J. Parker | What happens if you can hide from God? Good. | 2023-07-15 | ||
43 | Devices and Desires | K. J. Parker | Stunningly complex story of an engineer who must start a war that kills hundreds of thousands, just to find his way home. Fantastically good. | 2023-07-23 | ||
44 | Evil for Evil | K. J. Parker | ||||
45 | The Escapement | K. J. Parker | ||||
46 | Bea Wolf | Zach Weinersmith | Graphic Novel reinterpretation of Beowulf, featuring kids defending their treehouse. Great. | 2023-07-25 | ||
47 | Tress of the Emerald Sea | Brandon Sanderson | YA. Girl sails magic seas to rescue her prince. Good. Cosmere universe, vaguely. Sent to Capy too. | 2023-07-28 | 1 | |
48 | Yumi and the Nightmare Painter | Brandon Sanderson | YA. Vaguely Korean/Japanese culture thing with living nightmares. Cosmere universe. OK to good. | 2023-07-29 | 1 | |
49 | The Hammer | K. J. Parker | A colony trying to be independent. OK. | 2023-08-02 | ||
50 | The Folding Knife | K. J. Parker | Politics of empire. Probably my fav standalone. Great. | 2023-08-08 | ||
51 | The Boy on the Bridge | M. R. Carey | Sequel to The Girl With All The Gifts. Autistic boy in research caravan in zombie world. OK. | 2023-08-09 | ||
52 | Blue and Gold | K. J. Parker | Novella. Politics, alchemy, and the secret of blue paint. OK. | 2023-08-10 | ||
53 | Mightier than the Sword | K. J. Parker | Mediocre KJP novella. | 2023-08-10 | ||
54 | Valhalla | Tom Holt | The afterlife is a commercial franchise, and not well-run. | 2023-08-13 | ||
55 | Thornhedge | T. Kingfisher | Retelling of Sleeping Beauty where SB is the villain. Fantastic. | 2023-08-14 | 1 | |
56 | The Long Game | K. J. Parker | Novella in his demons world. OK. | 2023-08-17 | ||
57 | Legends & Lattes | Travis Baldree | Orc quits war to start a coffee shop. Reminiscent of Becky Chambers. Good. | 2023-08-19 | 1 | |
58 | Colours in the Steel (Fencer 1) | K. J. Parker | Citystate where law cases are decided by lawyers fencing to the death. OK. I noped out of book 2/3 - too violent and giving me nightmares. | 2023-08-22 | ||
59 | Inanna: The Sumerians | Emily Wilson | Sumerian gods are ancient aliens. Very good despite that. | 2023-08-24 | ||
60 | Strange the Dreamer | Laini Taylor | Aliens/gods kill humans, humans kill gods, their human/god hybrid offspring are emo about it. YA targeting 15 year old girls. Meh. | 2023-08-26 | ||
61 | Sleep No More | Seanan McGuire | October Daye 17, and everyone has .... AMNESIA! OK. | 2023-09-07 | 1 | |
62 | Empire of the Sum | Keith Houston | History of the pocket calculator, from scratches on bones to the TI-81. OK. | 2023-09-09 | ||
63 | Winter's Gifts | Ben Aaronovich | In the Rivers of London universe, but starring the FBI agent. OK. | 2023-09-13 | 1 | |
64 | The Book that Wouldn't Burn | Mark Lawrence | New long, sprawling story from ML. Magical library, time travel, Magicians' Nephew/Magicians style pools, technology-magic. Excellent. 1 of 2. | 2023-09-16 | 1 | |
65 | Starter Villain | John Scalzi | Guy inherits his dead uncle's business - of being a supervillain. Union dolphins. Funny. | 2023-09-19 | ||
66 | Ninth House | Leigh Bardugo | Yale secret societies really do have magic. Great. | 2023-09-28 | 1 | |
67 | Hell Bent | Leigh Bardugo | Second book. Great. | 2023-10-02 | 1 | |
68 | Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance | Donald A. MacKenzie | Sociological history of nuclear missile guidance. I was hoping for more technical details, not just the sociology of it. | 2023-10-04 | ||
69 | Six of Crows | Leigh Bardugo | Magical Rotterdam; magic-users persecuted in some areas. Gangs, heists. | 2023-10-08 | 1 | |
70 | Crooked Kingdom | Leigh Bardugo | Sequel, good. | 2023-10-10 | 1 | |
71 | King of Scars | Leigh Bardugo | Same universe, same timeline, mostly in Ravka (Russia-analogue). Good. | 2023-10-15 | 1 | |
72 | Rule of Wolves | Leigh Bardugo | Sequel, good. | 2023-10-21 | 1 | |
73 | The Terraformers | Annalee Newitz | Far future terraformers, slaves to a corporation. Sentient flying moose. Eco-terrorists. Everyone reviews it as great, I thought it was tedious and awful and I quit halfway through. | 2023-10-23 | ||
74 | The Black Prism | Brent Weeks | Extremely Classic Unexamined High Fantasy with characters including "Lord Omnichrome" and "High Luxlord Prism". Quite good. | 2023-10-31 | 1 | |
75 | The Blinding Knife | Brent Weeks | cont | 2023-11-03 | 1 | |
76 | THe Broken Eye | Brent Weeks | cont | 2023-11-06 | 1 | |
77 | The Blood Mirror | Brent Weeks | cont | 2023-11-12 | 1 | |
78 | The Burning White | Brent Weeks | Oh no it turned into "heeeeey C.S. Lewis hold my beer" level of Christian allegory. GDI. | 2023-11-16 | 1 | |
79 | Carrying the Fire | Michael Collins | Surprisingly good autobiography and history of the Apollo program. | 2023-11-20 | ||
80 | Apollo 8 | Jeffrey Kluger | Straightforward recounting of Apollo, especially Apollo 8. | 2023-11-21 | ||
81 | The Way of Shadows | Brent Weeks | Straight fantasy. Not as good as the Luxlord books. Lots of women breasting boobily. Meh. | 2023-11-24 | 1 | |
82 | Shadow's Edge | Brent Weeks | cont | 2023-11-26 | 1 | |
83 | Beyond the Shadows | Brent Weeks | Wrapped up decently - all the dozens of pieces on the board ended up where they were supposed to go. | 2023-11-28 | 1 | |
84 | Memory Reborn | David Walton | Conclusion of Living Memory series - dinosaurs and viruses. OK. | 2023-11-29 |
1 | Title | Author | Notes | Completed | Total: 82 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | The Untold Story | Genevieve Cogman | book 8 Invisible Library. | 2022-01-03 | |
3 | Where the Drowned Girls Go | Seanan McGuire | Wayward Children series. Mermaid-girl goes to a different, much stricter school, and discovers rot at its heart. Started getting good just as it was ending. | 2022-01-04 | |
4 | Quantum of Nightmares | Charles Stross | Laundry 11. Acceptable. | 2022-01-14 | |
5 | Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft | G. Pascal Zachary | History of the creation of Windows NT in the early 90s. Not as good as The Soul of a New Machine, but interesting. | 2022-01-16 | |
6 | Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants | John D. Clark | Written in 1972. Lots of reminiscing about the chemical industry in the 50s. Fun. | 2022-01-21 | |
7 | Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City | Tom Holt | Sardonic fantasy similar to Ursula Vernon. Fun. | 2022-02-18 | |
8 | How To Rule an Empire and Get Away With It | Tom Holt | Continuation by a new narrator, also fun. | 2022-02-20 | |
9 | A Practical Guide to Conquering the World | Tom Holt | Best of the three. | 2022-02-23 | |
10 | Dealing with Dragons | Patricia Wrede | Fun YA fantasy-trope-aware. | 2022-02-24 | |
11 | Searching for Dragons | Patricia Wrede | 2022-02-26 | ||
12 | Calling on Dragons | Patricia Wrede | Best of the 4. | 2022-02-28 | |
13 | Talking to Dragons | Patricia Wrede | Not nearly as good. Probably because it was the first one she wrote. | 2022-03-02 | |
14 | Spelunking through Hell | Seanan McGuire | InCryptid book, Alice Price-Healy-centered. BIG reveal and change. | 2022-03-05 | |
15 | Escape from Yokai Land | Charles Stross | Laundry 12 (novella). Hello Kitty nightmare. | 2022-03-06 | |
16 | Last Exit | Max Gladstone | Magic/alternate-worlds/tentacled-horrors-ish America. Will definitely win the Hugo. | 2022-03-12 | |
17 | Coraline | Neil Gaiman | Reread after watching the movie (after Celeste read the book). The book is better. | 2022-03-13 | |
18 | The Kaiju Preservation Society | John Scalzi | Godzilla is real and there's a secret World Wildlife Fund to help them. Fun and quick. | 2022-03-16 | |
19 | Battle of the Linguist Mages | Scotto Moore | Spells in a WoW-like dance-music game work in the real world to help save the universe. Started out great, dragged on way too long. | 2022-03-20 | |
20 | Permutation City | Greg Egan | Reread. | 2022-03-29 | |
21 | The Circus Infinite | Khan Wong | Trying to be Becky Chambers but not quite nailing it. | 2022-04-02 | |
22 | Iron & Velvet | Alexis Hall | Fairie/vampire/warewolf private-detectiving. Basically Anita Blake, but lesbians. Didn't make an impression. | 2022-04-12 | |
23 | Amongst Our Weapons | Ben Aaronovitch | Rivers of London series. Much better than the last few. Left-over magic from the Spanish Inquisition causing trouble. | 2022-04-17 | |
24 | Braking Day | Adam Oyebanji | Generation ship approaching destination encounters unexpected turmoil. Would have been better without all the 1950s-scifi language; not quite prefixing 'space-' to every noun, but close. | 2022-04-19 | |
25 | Stringers | Chris Panatier | Bizarre! Guy with some knowledge of his past lives gets abducted by aliens (with his stoner friend and a jar of pickles), ends up saving the universe. Good. | 2022-04-22 | |
26 | Trans Wizard Harriet Porber and the Bad Boy Parasaurolophus | Chuck Tingle | Holy shit. I never knew Chuck Tingle was actually... good? This was honest-to-god a good book with great self-aware metacommentary on itself and the trope. | 2022-04-22 | |
27 | Shadows & Dreams | Alexis Hall | Sequel to Iron & Velvet. Better than the first, but that's about it. | 2022-04-25 | |
28 | Fire & Water | Alexis Hall | Third book. Someone tries to become a god. OK. | 2022-04-27 | |
29 | Nettle & Bone | T Kingfisher | Another gem. Princesses and curses and very sensible witches and their chickens. | 2022-04-28 | |
30 | Smoke & Ashes | Alexis Hall | Fourth book. OK. | 2022-04-29 | |
31 | First, Become Ashes | K M Szpara | What if Hogwarts but magic *isn't* real, the whole thing is just a sex abuse cult. Maybe. AWFUL. | 2022-04-30 | |
32 | The Girl and the Moon | Mark Lawrence | Book of the Ice 3. For a book where the very premise is 'deus ex machina', there's too much deus ex machina. | 2022-05-03 | |
33 | Seasonal Fears | Seanan McGuire | Sequel-ish to Middlegame. Personified seasons of the year fight for their crown. Fantastic. | 2022-05-07 | |
34 | Electric Midnight | Nathan van Coops | Another time travel detective novel. Timeline with synthetic AI humans. Forgettable. | 2022-05-12 | |
35 | The Clockwork Game | Nathan van Coops | Locked-room time travel mystery. Meh. | 2022-05-13 | |
36 | The Unspoken Name | A. K. Larkwood | High fantasy multiple-worlds, politics and intrigue. Fantastic. | 2022-05-15 | |
37 | The Thousand Eyes | A. K. Larkwood | Continuation, even better. Tightly plotted. | 2022-05-18 | |
38 | A Thread Across the Ocean | John Gordeon | History of the first transatlantic cable. The story got lost in the details. | 2022-05-20 | |
39 | The Dark Side of Disney | Leonard Kinsey | A book that should have been a website. A few anecdotes of sneaking into the tunnels and advice on how to, or how not to, jump the turnstiles. | 2022-05-21 | |
40 | Light from Uncommon Stars | Ryka Aoki | Trans violinist meets agent of hell, and also space aliens. Heavy-handed. | 2022-05-23 | |
41 | Anathem | Neal Stephenson | Reread. Still amazing. | 2022-05-30 | |
42 | Wicked | Gregory Maguire | The moral ambiguity of the Wicked Witch of the West. Good. | 2022-05-31 | |
43 | Book of Night | Holly Black | Shadow magic in central Massachusetts. Great. | 2022-06-15 | |
44 | The Grief of Stones | Katherine Addison | Sequel to Goblin Emperor/Witness for the Dead. Murder mystery in an extremely engaging industrial-era fantasy world. | 2022-06-18 | |
45 | A Spindle Splintered | Alix E. Harrow | Fairy tales encounter the multiverse, great. | 2022-06-20 | |
46 | A Mirror Mended | Alix E. Harrow | Continuation, meta-stories. Great. | 2022-06-21 | |
47 | Jade City | Fonda Lee | Feuding clans in an east-asia analog world where jade jewelry confers magical kung-fu powers. I got 400 pages into this 600 page novel still wondering when something actually interesting was going to happen; checked a plot summary, and the answer turns out to be never, so I skipped out. | 2022-06-26 | |
48 | A Wizard of Earthsea | Ursula K. Le Guin | I kept waiting for the tropes to be subverted, then remembered that this IS the origin of the tropes. That's the trouble with classics. | 2022-06-27 | |
49 | Locklands | Robert Jackson Bennett | Founders Trilogy book 3. Delves way deeper into the technology underlying reality. I love this series because it's a SF world that's completely different (and more advanced) than ours - but NOT just "our timeline but later". No spaceships; a completely different underpinning of technology altogether. | 2022-06-28 | |
50 | What Moves the Dead | T Kingfisher | Retelling of Fall of the House of Usher. OK but I don't like horror. | 2022-07-12 | |
51 | A Prayer for the Crown-Shy | Becky Chambers | Monk and Robot series. Like a warm hug, but similar to the first one... there's just no plot. I love the world she builds but give me a plot! | 2022-07-12 | |
52 | The Bohr Maker | Linda Nagata | Nanotech/cyberpunk. Good. | 2022-07-21 | |
53 | The Golden Swift | Lev Grossman | Sequel to The Silver Arrow. Young-YA. Good. | 2022-07-23 | |
54 | Dark Earth | Rebecca Stott | Sisters in 6th century britain, a society aware of the lost empire and picking up the pieces. | 2022-07-25 | |
55 | Deception Well | Linda Nagata | Extremely alien. | 2022-08-06 | |
56 | Vast | Linda Nagata | Even more alien. Worth reading the previous two just to get to this. | 2022-08-08 | |
57 | Witchmark | C L Polk | Fantastic series in a world where magic is outlawed - but the rich are aware of and use it, and imprison and exploit the poor who use it. | 2022-08-10 | |
58 | Stormsong | C L Polk | Great sequel. | 2022-08-12 | |
59 | Soulstar | C L Polk | Great conclusion. | 2022-08-14 | |
60 | The Midnight Bargain | C L Polk | Regency novel with magic. Fun and well-concluded. | 2022-08-23 | |
61 | Eyes of the Void | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Book 2 of The Final Architecture. Got better midway when things started happening. | 2022-08-24 | |
62 | Stiletto | Daniel O'Malley | Sequel to The Rook - magical britain's secret agents. Good. | 2022-08-27 | |
63 | In Mercy, Rain | Seanan McGuire | Novella in the Wayward Children series. | 2022-09-03 | |
64 | Be the Serpent | Seanan McGuire | October Daye 16. Fantastic, so much going on and so many threads tied up. | 2022-09-04 | |
65 | The Sisters of Saint Nicola of the Almost Perpetual Motion | Garth Nix | Novella. Alien invasion thwarted by scientist-nuns and druids. | 2022-09-05 | |
66 | Nona the Ninth | Tamsyn Muir | Book 3 in Locked Tomb. More magic skeletons. A bit more of the backstory. Do I have any idea what's going on? Not so much. But I love it. | 2022-09-19 | |
67 | The Golden Enclaves | Naomi Novik | Scholomance book 3. Magic school, metaphor for boomers ruining the world and climate change, probably. Good conclusion. | 2022-10-03 | |
68 | The Philosopher's Flight | Tom Miller | basically a Great War (WW1) memoir but from the perspective of a male rescue/evacuation aviator in a world where only women fly (and it is DISGUSTING AND UNNATURAL that a man would be doing this) ... except the flying is by magic (but a very physics-based magic) and magic is women's work ... except the flying is by magic (but a very physics-based magic) and magic is women's work | 2022-10-10 | |
69 | The Philosopher's War | Tom Miller | Concludes well. | 2022-10-11 | |
70 | Babel | R F Kuang | Oxford and the Opium war, where the act of translation produces magic. Anti-colonialism. The first half was great, the second half started to get tedious. | 2022-10-16 | |
71 | The World's Religions | Huston Smith | Quite good general overview. | 2022-10-20 | |
72 | The World We Make | N. K. Jemisin | Second book of "what if cities had living avatars" series. OK, not great. Anticlimactic ending. | 2022-11-12 | |
73 | Valuable Humans In Transit | qntm | Collection of short stories, mostly good. | 2022-11-16 | |
74 | The Lost Metal | Brandon Sanderson | A Mistborn book. Starting to integrate much more with the rest of the Cosmere universe. Good. | 2022-11-20 | |
75 | Living Memory | David Walton | Dinosaurs had super-advanced biotech and knew the asteroid was coming (much good it did them). Paleontologists. Good. | 2022-11-22 | |
76 | Even though I knew the end | c l polk | Angels and demons and private investigators in 1930s Chicago. OK. | 2022-11-24 | |
77 | The Mountain in the Sea | Ray Nayler | Sapient octopuses and AIs. Very good. | 2022-11-25 | |
78 | Children of Memory | Adrian Tchaikovsky | 3rd in Children series. Goes meta from previous two a bit. Wins the highest honor: how the story and ending went were better than my speculations while reading. | 2022-11-27 | |
79 | mr penumbra's 24 hour bookstore | Robin Sloan | Dan Brown meets Google. Written back when people thought everyone at Google was cool and everything Google did was cool. Meh. | 2022-12-01 | |
80 | City of Last Chances | Adrian Tchaikovsky | City with magic, under occupation and on the edge of revolution. I tried to like it but just never did. Bailed out about halfway. | 2022-12-14 | |
81 | Sea of Tranquility | Emily St. John Mandel | Pandemics, time travel, and the simulation hypothesis. Good. | 2022-12-19 | |
82 | My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth | Wendy Simmons | Did what it said on the tin. Read at the library. | 2022-12-27 | |
83 | Tomorrow Detective | Nathan van Coop | Formulaic entry in the series. |
1 | Title | Author | Notes | Completed | Total: 88 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | The Dark Archive | Genevieve Cogman | book 7 Invisible Library. I think IL may be jumping the shark. Fairies with AI and maybe even bitcoin? | 2021-01-04 | |
3 | The Machine that Changed the World | Roos et al | NF. Sweeping review of how Toyota's manufacturing system trounced the world. | 2021-01-08 | |
4 | Across the green grass fields | Seanan McGuire | Magic door to the land of talking horses. | 2021-01-12 | |
5 | Sabriel | Garth Nix | Didn't I say no more magic skeletons this year? Magic skeletons. | 2021-02-01 | |
6 | Lirael | Garth Nix | Pure unadulterated High Fantasy. Not a send-up of, not a reimagining, not a reboot or gritty urban version -- this is the pure, base element. | 2021-02-05 | |
7 | Abhorsen | Garth Nix | First book is good but the second and third are better. | 2021-02-13 | |
8 | Clariel | Garth Nix | OK. You find out something important near the end (if you haven't figured it out already), but then don't really learn the hows and whys, which is disappointing. | 2021-02-21 | |
9 | Goldenhand | Garth Nix | Better than Clariel; still doesn't clear up the thing I wanted to know. | 2021-02-23 | |
10 | Calculated Risks | Seanan McGuire | InCryptid book 10. More cuckoos. | 2021-02-26 | |
11 | Fake Accounts | Lauren Oyler | My first real delve into Millenial literature. Great. | 2021-03-01 | |
12 | Paladin's Strength | T Kingfisher | More sarcastic and angsty were-nuns and paladins. Great. | 2021-03-03 | |
13 | A Desolation Called Peace | Arkady Martine | Another masterpiece (sequel to A Memory Called Empire). Space opera encoding a reflection on culture, personhood, and collective identity. | 2021-03-07 | |
14 | One Day All This Will Be Yours | Adrian Tchaikovsky | This Is How You Lose The Time War, but with dinosaurs fighting Hitler. Shallow but fun as hell. | 2021-03-07 | |
15 | Record of a Spaceborn Few | Becky Chambers | Reread in prep for new book. | 2021-03-23 | |
16 | The Fall of Koli | M. R. Carey | Last of trilogy. Massively better than previous two. Feels like maybe the author had a chat with Karl Schroeder. Is it deus ex machina if the deus in the machina has been a main character the whole time? | 2021-03-27 | |
17 | White Nile | Alan Moorehead | Classic history of the exploration of the Nile river and subsequent colonization of east africa. Stunning. | 2021-04-01 | |
18 | The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet | Becky Chambers | Reread in prep for new book. | 2021-04-02 | |
19 | The Angel of the Crows | Katherine Addison | Sherlock Holmes is a literal angel, Watson is a hell-hound, there are vampires and warewolves. Idea: 8/10 Execution: 4/10. I bounced off at 65% through; it just never managed to grip me. | ||
20 | there is no antimemetics division | qntm | A SCP novel. Not quite as good as "Ra" but fun and mindbending. | 2021-04-09 | |
21 | The Seventh Bride | T Kingfisher | A girl and a sorceror and a hedgehog. | 2021-04-10 | |
22 | Bryony and Roses | T Kingfisher | Beautiful hilarious retelling of Beauty and the Beast | 2021-04-12 | |
23 | The Halcyon Fairy Book | T Kingfisher | Original fairy tales with Kingfisher's inline commentary. | 2021-04-18 | |
24 | The Girl and the Mountain | Mark Lawrence | This story has gone totally off the rails. Post-singularity overlords and their evil left-behinds manipulating tribal primitives (who are of course strong and brave). | 2021-04-17 | |
25 | The Absolute Book | Elizabeth Knox | Why is this reviewed so well? It's Dan Brown level dreck. I couldn't get past 30%. | ||
26 | Victories Greater than Death | Charlie Jane Anders | A future of aliens and starships where foremost on everyone's mind is earth 2020-era identity politics? I couldn't get past the first 50 pages. | 2021-04-19 | |
27 | The Galaxy and the Ground Within | Becky Chambers | SQUEE another Chambers. A warm hug. Travelers stranded at a space-rest-stop find they have something in common. | 2021-04-22 | |
28 | Sparrow Hill Road | Seanan McGuire | Spinoff of Incryptid series, focusing on Rose, a road ghost, and her battle against the one who made her that way. A bit repetitive. | 2021-04-23 | |
29 | The Girl in the Green Silk Gown | Seanan McGuire | Also a little longer than it had to be but the pieces all came together really well. And Cerberus is a good dog. | 2021-04-25 | |
30 | Cage of Souls | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Far future, humanity dying, narrator in horrible prison, surprise rapture? Yup that's Tchaikovsky. Left me wanting more, which I suppose can be a good thing? | 2021-04-29 | |
31 | Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage | Alix Harrow | Novella. American Indians and white settlers and faery-place-magic. | 2021-05-01 | |
32 | The Raven and the Reindeer | T Kingfisher | Kingfisher's take on the story. Beautiful and typically hers. | 2021-05-02 | |
33 | Summer in Orcus | T Kingfisher | Narnia-like tale with Baba Yaga and talking birds. Possibly metaphors for overbearing mothers, too. Great. | 2021-05-03 | |
34 | The Box | Marc Levinson | How the shipping container changed the world. Fascinating, but I learned most of what I actually wanted to know in the first 1/3 or so. | ||
35 | Nine Goblins | T Kingfisher | Hilarious. Goblins and elves and magic and zucchini. | 2021-05-04 | |
36 | Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir | Same basic plot as The Martian, but with higher stakes, a quirky alien buddy (who, of course, is just like a human in every way but appearance), and IN SPACEEEEEE ... even more so than Mars. Fun but forgettable. | 2021-05-07 | |
37 | Jackalope Wives | T Kingfisher | Short stories. Great. | 2021-05-08 | |
38 | Angel of the Overpass | Seanan McGuire | Final chapter in Ghost Roads series. Casually solves the mystery of where the crossroads came from! | 2021-05-11 | |
39 | Black Sun | Rebecca Roanhorse | Political intrigue and magic in a pre-Columbian Aztec-like society. Ends on a cliffhanger; eagerly awaiting sequel. | 2021-05-20 | |
40 | Toad Words And Other Stories | T Kingfisher | Short stories. Great. | 2021-05-22 | |
41 | Medallion Status | John Hodgman | His reflections on becoming moderately famous, and then not being even moderately famous any more. A little navel-gazy but that's sort of the point. | 2021-06-03 | |
42 | The Penelopiad | Margaret Atwood | A play - the Odyssey from Penelope's POV. | 2021-06-14 | |
43 | The Sand-Reckoner | Gillian Bradshaw | Reread. Fictionalized account of Archimedes' early life. Great. | 2021-06-16 | |
44 | Singularity Sky | Charles Stross | The singularity meets a soviet-style reactionary society's advanced navy, who experience an Outside Context Problem. Fun but forgettable. | 2021-06-29 | |
45 | Iron Sunrise | Charles Stross | Same universe as Singularity Sky. Ok. | 2021-06-30 | |
46 | Accelerando | Charles Stross | Vastly better than the first chapter would have you expect. Wild ride of transhumanist ideas. | 2021-07-01 | |
47 | Glasshouse | Charles Stross | Same universe as Accelerando, more story-based. Great. | 2021-07-03 | |
48 | Halfway through the wood | Seanan McGuire | Novel-length story from Patreon, filling in gaps in Incryptid series. | 2021-07-04 | |
49 | The Nightmare Stacks | Charles Stross | Elves invade the UK. Fun. | 2021-07-06 | |
50 | The 22 Murders of Madison May | Max Barry | Parallel-universe-jumping serial killer kills the same person over and over until he finally gets his. Meh. | 2021-07-08 | |
51 | The Magicians [series] | Lev Grossman | Reread. | 2021-07-13 | |
52 | Psalm for the Wild Built | Becky Chambers | New series new world! Still 100% Chambers. I wish I had 10% the optimism about humanity she has. | 2021-07-15 | |
53 | the annihilation score | Charles Stross | Laundry agent with demonic violin gets involved in police bureaucracy. | 2021-07-17 | |
54 | The delirium brief | Charles Stross | more laundry | 2021-07-19 | |
55 | the labyrinth index | Charles Stross | more laundry | 2021-07-21 | |
56 | dead lies dreaming | Charles Stross | laundry-adjacent | 2021-07-24 | |
57 | The Bloodline Feud | Charles Stross | Alternate-universes-travel, Medici-style mercantilism feuds. Great. Book 1 of 6. | 2021-07-27 | |
58 | Walking the Nile | Levison Wood | NF. Badass-ish ex-soldier walks the entire length of the Nile northbound, seeing the sights, and occasionally having his companions die (!) But I got bored halfway through. | ||
59 | The Traders' War | Charles Stross | Excellent. Book 2/6 | 2021-07-29 | |
60 | The Revolution Trade | Charles Stross | Excellent. Book 3/6 | 2021-08-01 | |
61 | Empire Games | Charles Stross | Excellent. Book 4/6 | 2021-08-03 | |
62 | Dark State | Charles Stross | Excellent. Book 5/6 | 2021-08-05 | |
63 | Shards of Earth | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Somewhat generic space opera but good. | 2021-08-10 | |
64 | The Chosen and the Beautiful | Nghi Vo | The Great Gatsby, retold with magical realism. Good. | 2021-08-18 | |
65 | The Great Gatsby | F Scott Fitzgerald | I'd never read it. | 2021-08-22 | |
66 | Wendy, Darling | A.C. Wise | Peter Pan (eldrich transdimensional horror, maybe) comes back for Wendy's (who spent her teens in an abusive mental institution) daughter. Meh. | 2021-08-25 | |
67 | The Space Between Worlds | Micaiah Johnson | Multiverses and classism. Ok. | 2021-08-28 | |
68 | The Gunslinger | Stephen King | Book 1 of The Dark Tower. Very clearly early-author, not great writing. Good worldbuilding. | 2021-09-07 | |
69 | The Drawing of the Three | Stephen King | Somewhat better? | 2021-09-11 | |
70 | The Waste Lands | Stephen King | I'm hitting abort. It's just such a slog. | ||
71 | The Book of All Skies | Greg Egan | I don't know why I bother any more. Unreadable. | ||
72 | When Sorrows Come | Seanan McGuire | Jesus, you guys, just f'n get it done already. Ok, good. [This probably could have been a novella.] | 2021-09-16 | |
73 | The Just City | Jo Walton | The gods Athena and Apollo set up Plato's Republic for real. A little pedantic. | 2021-09-21 | |
74 | The Philosopher Kings | Jo Walton | Much better! More happens. A little literal deus-ex but I mean, that's the premise. | 2021-09-25 | |
75 | Necessity | Jo Walton | Even better. Great series. | 2021-09-27 | |
76 | Invisible Sun | Charles Stross | Long and excellent conclusion to the series. | 2021-09-30 | |
77 | The Last Graduate | Naomi Novik | Sequel to A Deadly Education. Wonderful. | 2021-10-02 | |
78 | Paladin's Hope | T Kingfisher | A Paladin book. Lots of good gnole content. Too much gay sex for my tastes. | 2021-10-10 | |
79 | Afterparty | Daryl Gregory | Drugs that make you see god. Vaguely Gibsonian, good. | 2021-10-20 | |
80 | The Dispatcher | John Scalzi | World in which people who are murdered immediately "respawn". Fun/forgettable. | 2021-10-24 | |
81 | The Dispatcher: Murder by other means | John Scalzi | Sequel. | 2021-10-25 | |
82 | The Witness for the Dead | Katherine Addison | Goblin Emperor sequel. Good worldbuilding but not much of a story. | 2021-10-26 | |
83 | The Dawn of Everything | David Graeber | How humanity ended up stuck under states. | 2021-11-01 | |
84 | Terciel and Elinor | Garth Nix | Sabriel prequel. Entirely forgettable. | 2021-11-03 | |
85 | Termination Shock | Neal Stephenson | Climate change and geoengineering. Pretty good. He still doesn't know how to end a book. | 2021-11-19 | |
86 | Elder Race | Adrian Tchaikovsky | I was disappointed because the ending was less interesting than the one I predicted. | 2021-11-20 | |
87 | Time of Death | Nathan van Coop | Time-traveling detective. Meh. | 2021-11-27 | did a bunch of Wheel of Time rereading this week |
88 | Leviathan Falls | James S A Corey | Final Expanse book. Decent wrap up. | 2021-12-03 | |
89 | You Sexy Thing | Cat Rambo | Becky Chambers-esque. Staff of a space restaurant go on an adventure. Didn't really tie together at the end. Could have been so much better. | 2021-12-14 |
1 | Title | Author | Notes | Total: 89 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | Delta-V | Daniel Suarez | meh | |
3 | The Quantum Garden | Derek Künksen | interesting ideas meh writing | |
4 | Children Of Ruin | Adrian Tchaikovsky | uplifted portia spiders. so good i didn't mind the spiders | |
5 | Children Of Time | Adrian Tchaikovsky | same but octopuses. | |
6 | Recursion | Blake Crouch | many-worlds travel. good. | |
7 | Come Tumbling Down | Seanan Mcguire | decent entry in doors/children series | |
8 | The Secret Chapter | Genevieve Cogman | forgettable Library politicking | |
9 | Last Tango In Cyberspace | Steven Kotler | trying too hard to be early Gibson | |
10 | Instantiation | Greg Egan | not a great collection | |
11 | Various Short Stories | Seanan Mcguire | ||
12 | Ra | Sam Hughes | magic is physics, but physics is faked by magic. great. | |
13 | Paladin’s Grace | T Kingfisher | rollicking ride | |
14 | Daughter From The Dark | Sergey and Marina Dyachenko | not anywhere as good as Vita Nostra; didn't really go anywhere | |
15 | Circe | Madeline Miller | gorgeously written, captivating reimagining of Circe's story. timeless. | |
16 | Imaginary Numbers | Seanan Mcguire | yay cuckoos! lots more detail on Sarah | |
17 | False Value | Ben Aaronovitch | Rivers of London is stretching thin | |
18 | The Goose Girl | Shannon Hale | coming-of-age fantasy. good but kinda forgettable | |
19 | The Scorpion Rules | Erin Bow | coming-of-age sort of post-apoc scifi. quite good. | |
20 | The Swan Riders | Erin Bow | sequel, also good. | |
21 | The City We Became | N K Jemisin | cthulu in manhattan. very good | |
22 | Providence | Max Barry | meh | |
23 | When We Were Magic | Sarah Gaile | bad writing, story went nowhere | |
24 | The Ten Thousand Doors Of January | Alix Harrow | amazing. a self-aware Doors-to-other-worlds story. Hugo 2020. | |
25 | Gideon The Ninth | Tamsyn Muir | wise-cracking teenage space necromancers. pacing a little off but very good. Hugo 2020. | |
26 | Shorefall | Robert Jackson Bennett | good sequel. annoying cliffhanger. | |
27 | The Vela (Serial) | Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Sl Huang, and Rivers Solomon | refugees in space. ok but stopped just as it got interesting. | |
28 | Network Effect (Murderbot) | Martha Wells | couldn’t even finish it | |
29 | The Last Emperox | John Scalzi | accountants and politics and murder. good conclusion to trilogy. wish it went on longer. | |
30 | Agent Of Time | Nathan Van Coops | fun if forgettable time travel murders | |
31 | The Book Of Koli | M R Carey | somewhat formulaic post-apoc world where nature has turned on humanity (via gene-hacking gone bad). good enough i preordered the next one though. | |
32 | The Water Knife | Paolo Bacigalup | horrifying bloody brutal near future water wars in the american southwest. too gory. lots of explicit torture. | |
33 | Stars Uncharted | S K Dunstall | Fairly forgettable "people do stuff in space" with genemodders inserted mostly as "tech the tech tech, captain". I'll still read the next one though. | |
34 | The Spy And The Traitor | Ben Macintyre | cold war spies and double agents! long, detailed, great. | |
35 | Stars Beyond | S K Dunstall | sequel to stars uncharted. forgettable. | |
36 | Countdown To Zero Day: Stuxnet And The Launch Of The World'S First Digital Weapon | Kim Zetter | Too sensationalistic; typical "every chapter must end in a cliffhanger" writing. | |
37 | Empire Of Gold | S A Chakraborty | Still can't remember who's who, but still a great story and world. Also, magical pirates. Wrapped up well. | |
38 | Gods Of Jade And Shadow | Silvia Moreno-Garcia | Mayan gods fight with mortal proxies in Prohibition era Mexico. Simplistic, predictable story with little to no depth. Could have been so much better. | |
39 | Where The Mountain Meets The Moon | Grace Lin | Kids book weaving together several chinese tales. Capy loves it. | |
40 | A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking | T Kingfisher | YA. Wonderful. A 14 year old wizard who can command bread saves the kingdom. Timely moral about othering and dereliction of responsibility. | |
41 | Red Sister | Mark Lawrence | Martial-arts and magic-wielding nuns and novices at a monastery on a colony world succumbing to a dying star, trapped in a thin band of viable land at the equator kept open only by an ancient sunlight-focusing moon artifact. Fantastic. | |
42 | Grey Sister | Mark Lawrence | Sequel - still great | |
43 | Holy Sister | Mark Lawrence | Conclusion - still great even if the ending was a little deus ex, which he really could have avoided just by dropping more hints earlier. | |
44 | Harrow the Ninth | Tamsyn Muir | sequel to Gideon. Very different from the first; lots of moving parts. Grief and loss and, of course, bones. So many bones. | |
45 | Ship of Fools | Richard Paul Russo | Horror sci-fi. Very atmospheric, lots of politics and build up to ... nothing. I'm annoyed. | |
46 | The Doors of Eden | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Parallel timelines over evolutionary history; hyperintelligent trilobites, mole-people, advanced neanderthal civilizations, in what becomes essentially an anti-isolationism moral. Extremely good. | |
47 | A Tale of Time City | Diana Wynne Jones | Reread; one of my favorites as a kid. YA. | |
48 | The Tiger and the Wolf | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Shapeshifters; everyone is a tiger or wolf or deer or crocodile or whatever. Warfare and alliances between tribes, and a coming-of-age story of a girl who is two shapes. Not his best, but if it were someone else, I'd call it great. | |
49 | Bound | Mark Lawrence | book 2.5 of the Sister trilogy. Basically porn / fan service. Real dumb. | |
50 | The Girl and the Stars | Mark Lawrence | Same world as the Sister trilogy; follows a girl who lives on the ice in the far north. Reveals a little more about the Missing. Good though no real payoff, but sets up for the next book. | |
51 | The Expert System's Brother | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Fallen colony world has forgotten its origins and technology has become ritual magic; exiled protagonist works to change this. Mediocre. | |
52 | The Bear and the Serpent | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Sequel to Tiger/Wolf. Abandoned 15% in. Too much blow-by-blow fighting, not enough plot. A review confirmed the whole rest of the series is like this. | |
53 | A Canticle for Liebowitz | Walter M. Miller Jr | The classic. Post-apocalyptic fall-and-rise-and-fall of civilization. Amazing. | |
54 | A Killing Frost | Seanan Mcguire | October Daye 14. A pretty good one. | |
55 | Tales from the Folly | Ben Aaronovitch | Rivers of London short story collection. I gave up halfway through. | |
56 | Snuff | Terry Pratchett | Holy crap; somehow I MISSED a Terry Pratchett book! It came out in 2011, when I was a bit distracted. Watch novel; emancipation/recognition of the goblin race. | |
57 | Raising Steam | Terry Pratchett | Reread; I don't really remember it at all. Industrial Revolution - trains. | |
58 | Mordew | Alex Pheby | Grimdark magic in a sort of Gormenghastish world. Slow to start but got more gripping and I'll definitely read a sequel if any. Ridiculously overkill unnecessary glossary taking 20% of the pages of the book. | |
59 | Howl's Moving Castle | Diana Wynne Jones | YA/juv. We watched the Miyazaki the other day and I realized I'd never read the book. | |
60 | The Silver Arrow | Lev Grossman | YA, read to capy aloud. Magic train helping animals migrate, ecological morals. | |
61 | The Trials of Koli: 2 (The Rampart Trilogy) | M R Carey | Further adventures in postapoc britain. Another huge cliffhanger. | |
62 | Prince of Fools | Mark Lawrence | Extremely generic fantasy, complete with vikings and taverns and swords. Turns out there's sort of a reason for this, if you persist through all three books - a particle accelerator a thousand years ago fucked up the fabric of the quantum, or something, and made perceptions shape reality, but ... who cares. It's still generic and not great. | |
63 | A Deadly Education | Naomi Novik | a deadly education is sort of ... hogwarts meets ender's Battle School. it's a magic school but practically everyone fuckin dies and the very walls are trying to kill everyone and kids are all in cutthroat brutal cliques that make the hogwart houses look like the dumbass dining clubs they really are. very much a Gideon the Ninth protagonist feel. it's also actually about unexamined privilege. | |
64 | One Word Kill (Impossible Times 1) | Mark Lawrence | YA time travel. Fun but immediately forgettable. | |
65 | Limited Wish (Impossible Times 2) | Mark Lawrence | sequel | |
66 | Dispel Illusion (Impossible Times 3) | Mark Lawrence | Rather clever wrapup tying lots of bits together. | |
67 | River-Horse | William Least Heat-Moon | Trip across America in a boat (author of Blue Highways). I felt he spent too much time talking about the boat, and not enough about the places he saw. | |
68 | Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games | Sid Meier | Fun autobiography by the Civilization (et al!) guy. Discusses a lot about how he works to "find the fun". | |
69 | The Archive of the Forgotten | A.J. Hackwith | Hell's Library book 2. I didn't really get engrossed in book 1, and quit at 20% of this one. | |
70 | The Once and Future Witches | Alix Harrow | Witches and/or suffragettes in alternate magic-is-real Salem. Exceptionally good. | |
71 | Serpentine | Philip Pullman | Short story about Lyra. | |
72 | The Mezzanine | Nicholson Baker | Lush train-of-consciousness. I think it would have worked better for me if it were 1/4 the length. Still amazing. | |
73 | Galatea | Madeline Miller | Short story; Pygmalian as obsessive abuser. | |
74 | Piranesi | Susanna Clarke | Weird dreamscape world; confusing to start but excellent. | |
75 | Firewalkers | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Three-foot locusts attack in a postapoc world where billionaires escape up space elevators and those left behind fight for the scraps. | |
76 | Rosewater | Tade Thompson | Nigerian psychics and aliens. Very good but I feel like it went off the rails towards the end. Not sure I can handle two sequels. | |
77 | A Fire Upon the Deep | Vernor Vinge | Reread - ANNOTATED edition containing Vinge's editing remarks. Along with A Deepness in the Sky one of the best scifi books ever written. | |
78 | The Saints of Salvation | Peter F Hamiltion | How is it he has managed to write the same goddamn book so many times? Oh lordy lordy there's some space aliens gonna take over the galaxy, with secret agents, and wormholes! | |
79 | The Wee Free Men | Terry Pratchett | Never read this one before either! Reading it to C, finished it myself. Extremely good introduction to Pratchett-ethics and witch-as-observer-of-what's-really-there. | |
80 | A Hat Full Of Sky | Terry Pratchett | Apparently I missed the entire Aching series. Another masterpiece of Pratchett-witch ethics. Very much looking forward to kids being old enough to read and understand. | |
81 | Wintersmith | Terry Pratchett | " | |
82 | I Shall Wear Midnight | Terry Pratchett | " | |
83 | The Shepherd's Crown | Terry Pratchett | The very last Pratchett :( A noticably weaker book - he didn't really get to finish it before he died - but still fabulous and, of course, gut-punching. | |
84 | Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower | Tamsyn Muir | Princess-in-a-tower trope turned on its head, Tamsyn Muir style. Grimly funny. | |
85 | The City in the Middle of the Night | Charlie Jane Anders | 2020 Hugo. How social and political constructs break down under stress, through a lens of humans and aliens on a tidally-locked planet undergoing ecological collapse. | |
86 | The Light Brigade | Kameron Hurley | Future war, corporate dystopia, time travel. Hugo 2020; I thought it was extremely heavy-handed and did not enjoy it at all. | |
87 | Uncommon Carriers | John McPhee | McPhee rides along with truckers and river towboats, tours the UPS sort facility. Skip the Thoreau section, otherwise fascinating. | |
88 | Black Hole Survival Guide | Janna Levin | Interesting stylistic choices. I would have found it more interesting if I didn't already have a decent knowledge of all the stuff it's teaching. | |
89 | Dark Lord of Derkholm | Diana Wynne Jones | DWJ took all the tropes from her "Tough Guide to Fantasyland", made a world out of them, and then let our-world tourists in, with all the abuse-of-the-locals that implies. Super fun. | |
90 | Year of the Griffin | Diana Wynne Jones | 2nd book in series. What happens after they kick the tourists out. |