Too long since I did a book post!
I have not done a book post since August 2! I have probably forgotten books-I didn't realize it was that long. But here's what I can remember or still find lying around because I haven't put it (back) on a shelf yet.
I try to keep spoilers at a minimum (with one exception, properly warned below), and I welcome discussion and questions!
A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger
Bruce Holsinger: medievalist by day, novelist by night! Well, something like that, anyway. His specialty is the later Middle Ages. He wears his learning lightly: I never felt these novels were at all academic, but they show a deep knowledge of things medieval that often goes beyond my own (what did people wear? How did prostitutes live? How might trans people have lived in the Middle Ages?). I cannot recommend these novels highly enough for those who like historical mysteries or even just historical novels.
In A Burnable Book John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer, is the protagonist, first-person narrator, and unexpected detective pressed into service to find a missing book and untangle a murder. We know very little about Gower-we don't even know how he made his living, and Holsinger has filled in the blanks imaginatively. I found the mystery compelling, and one of the characters, Eleanor/Edgar Rykener, steals every scene she or he appears in, sometimes as Eleanor, sometimes as Edgar.
The Invention of Fire is also very good, although probably not as good as the first one. Some of the element of surprise has worn off: we know a few of these characters already, and in this one, I figured out a major point long, long before Gower did. (To be fair, I figured out one in the previous book as well, but I think there I didn't figure it out so far in advance, and it was clearer there that we were meant to figure out what Gower couldn't.) But Holsinger has a new plot device to play with: that fairly new invention, the handgonne.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel Yes, I read this after everyone else. It's a stunning book, beautifully narrated. I took rather a long time to read this because there were times I was afraid to pick it up again-it all seemed too real. If you've read it, I'd like to talk about the ending in another post.
The Civil War series, in Marvel Comics, by too many cooks
I didn't like these. I started reading Captain America comics that brought in the Winter Soldier after falling in love with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and with encouragement from sholio, and I like the ones before The Civil War. I like the ones I've read after. To me, the conflict felt very contrived, and I do tend to import the movie characterizations into the comic books mentally, and, well, Tony Stark is a massive-I don't even know what the word is, but it's probably unrepeatable. I spent the better part of twelve comics being annoyed. Plus, they started storylines for other comics, so now I kind of want to know what happens in the next Spider-Man after The Civil War, but I don't want to give them more money for producing such a series. I'm now bracing for a whole Marvel movie to annoy me, because I'll no doubt see it anyway, even while complaining.
tldr: I think I should have skipped the series and had Brilliant Husband just summarize the upshot. He'd already bought them years ago, so at least I don't want my money back.
Marvel Comics: The Death of Captain America and The Man with No Face by Ed Brubaker
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED, GET OUT OF HERE NOW. GO TO THE NEXT BOOK OR SOMETHING.
I suppose spoiler alerts become a bit less pressing some years after publication.
Anyway, "The Death of Captain America" is not a metaphor. Cap dies. I expect he'll be back eventually? I don't know. I'm still fairly new to the world of actual comics. So the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes finds himself being pushed kicking and screaming into picking up the shield. I like these. I wish Cap didn't die, but I'm enjoying this storyline. I need to figure out which one is next and whether I've got that one already.
OKAY, DONE WITH SPOILER
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: I got this because astrogirl2 made it sound irresistible, which it pretty much was. It really sucked me in, and it surprised me repeatedly; I kept thinking that I knew what was happening, but I rarely did. Clay Jannon, the first-person narrator, has been laid off from a job in computer design, and the next one he finds is in a weird, 24-hour bookstore. It's a small, really independent bookstore with a special group of readers who borrow, not buy, volumes that are not available to the general public. Clay becomes curious. Clay becomes suspicious. I can't say anything more. It's a heck of an adventure.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie: Book 1 of the Imperial Radch Trilogy
I think astrogirl2 also put me onto this one, and when I heard another person or two recommend it, I had to get it ASAP-and so should you. This novel is mind-bending in multiple good ways. There's plenty of adventure and plot, even though there's a lot else going on. It features a somewhat mysterious protagonist in a universe that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me in some ways at first. Everything did make sense, gradually, in a way that gave me few "aha!" moments but was satisfying. It also made me think about gender in really interesting ways. The protagonist has trouble identifying genders: different peoples have different ways of signaling gender, and she travels widely, and she tends to default to "she." It's fascinating to be reading along with "she" pronouns being used for a second character all over the place and then suddenly have third character identify the second as "he." Feminist though I am, my default still tends to be "he." When the default is "she," I really have to rethink my assumptions-and I had to reread some scenes, because the pronoun matters to me in ways I think it shouldn't.
That sounds heavy-handed, and Brilliant Husband found the pronoun confusion a bit intrusive, if I recall correctly (and please correct me if I don't, BH!). I found it thought-provoking without being distracting. And there's plenty else to think about: the programming of human beings to be . . . well, something other than what I'd normally consider humans. How a hive mind might work in human bodies. How an empire maintains itself.
The Kingdom of Gods by N. K. Jemisin: Book 3 in the Inheritance Trilogy-oh, crud, it's not a trilogy any more. I just went to Amazon to double-check this, and there's now a novella that follows the trilogy. Well, I must read it!
I've enjoyed all the books in the trilogy. This one surprised me-I had trouble for a bit wrapping my head around the fact that Sieh narrated this one when the previous two were each narrated by a woman, not a god. In this one, Sieh makes friends with human children, which proves even more dangerous than I thought, and in ways I didn't expect. I love the world-building here, and I love seeing how the world changes between the first and the second and then the second and third books, which are set quite far apart in time. In this universe, gods and godlings are not truly immortal, and they can make more godliness, and they interact with humans in many interesting ways.
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett Do I need to write up a book by Terry Pratchett? I enjoyed it. I am very fond of Sam Vimes. And Carrot. And Angua. And Death, for that matter.
Freeman by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
I have read Leonard Pitts's newspaper columns for years-or I did, but our newspaper doesn't get them, and I rarely think to look them up online. I didn't know until this year that he's also a novelist, and a good one. With the end of the Civil War, Sam realizes that he can try to find the wife he hasn't seen in fifteen years. He sets out walking from Philadelphia to the last place he knew she was, in Mississippi. The novel is also the story of Prudence, who seems a little lacking in her name virtue, and her "sister" Bonnie, who leave Boston to go South and set up a school for ex-slaves. Prudence is white. Bonnie is not. And it's the story of Tilda, the wife that Sam lost fifteen years before. It's heart-wrenching, so brace yourself-but it's well worth reading (especially if you like historical novels).
I try to keep spoilers at a minimum (with one exception, properly warned below), and I welcome discussion and questions!
A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger
Bruce Holsinger: medievalist by day, novelist by night! Well, something like that, anyway. His specialty is the later Middle Ages. He wears his learning lightly: I never felt these novels were at all academic, but they show a deep knowledge of things medieval that often goes beyond my own (what did people wear? How did prostitutes live? How might trans people have lived in the Middle Ages?). I cannot recommend these novels highly enough for those who like historical mysteries or even just historical novels.
In A Burnable Book John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer, is the protagonist, first-person narrator, and unexpected detective pressed into service to find a missing book and untangle a murder. We know very little about Gower-we don't even know how he made his living, and Holsinger has filled in the blanks imaginatively. I found the mystery compelling, and one of the characters, Eleanor/Edgar Rykener, steals every scene she or he appears in, sometimes as Eleanor, sometimes as Edgar.
The Invention of Fire is also very good, although probably not as good as the first one. Some of the element of surprise has worn off: we know a few of these characters already, and in this one, I figured out a major point long, long before Gower did. (To be fair, I figured out one in the previous book as well, but I think there I didn't figure it out so far in advance, and it was clearer there that we were meant to figure out what Gower couldn't.) But Holsinger has a new plot device to play with: that fairly new invention, the handgonne.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel Yes, I read this after everyone else. It's a stunning book, beautifully narrated. I took rather a long time to read this because there were times I was afraid to pick it up again-it all seemed too real. If you've read it, I'd like to talk about the ending in another post.
The Civil War series, in Marvel Comics, by too many cooks
I didn't like these. I started reading Captain America comics that brought in the Winter Soldier after falling in love with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and with encouragement from sholio, and I like the ones before The Civil War. I like the ones I've read after. To me, the conflict felt very contrived, and I do tend to import the movie characterizations into the comic books mentally, and, well, Tony Stark is a massive-I don't even know what the word is, but it's probably unrepeatable. I spent the better part of twelve comics being annoyed. Plus, they started storylines for other comics, so now I kind of want to know what happens in the next Spider-Man after The Civil War, but I don't want to give them more money for producing such a series. I'm now bracing for a whole Marvel movie to annoy me, because I'll no doubt see it anyway, even while complaining.
tldr: I think I should have skipped the series and had Brilliant Husband just summarize the upshot. He'd already bought them years ago, so at least I don't want my money back.
Marvel Comics: The Death of Captain America and The Man with No Face by Ed Brubaker
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED, GET OUT OF HERE NOW. GO TO THE NEXT BOOK OR SOMETHING.
I suppose spoiler alerts become a bit less pressing some years after publication.
Anyway, "The Death of Captain America" is not a metaphor. Cap dies. I expect he'll be back eventually? I don't know. I'm still fairly new to the world of actual comics. So the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes finds himself being pushed kicking and screaming into picking up the shield. I like these. I wish Cap didn't die, but I'm enjoying this storyline. I need to figure out which one is next and whether I've got that one already.
OKAY, DONE WITH SPOILER
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: I got this because astrogirl2 made it sound irresistible, which it pretty much was. It really sucked me in, and it surprised me repeatedly; I kept thinking that I knew what was happening, but I rarely did. Clay Jannon, the first-person narrator, has been laid off from a job in computer design, and the next one he finds is in a weird, 24-hour bookstore. It's a small, really independent bookstore with a special group of readers who borrow, not buy, volumes that are not available to the general public. Clay becomes curious. Clay becomes suspicious. I can't say anything more. It's a heck of an adventure.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie: Book 1 of the Imperial Radch Trilogy
I think astrogirl2 also put me onto this one, and when I heard another person or two recommend it, I had to get it ASAP-and so should you. This novel is mind-bending in multiple good ways. There's plenty of adventure and plot, even though there's a lot else going on. It features a somewhat mysterious protagonist in a universe that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me in some ways at first. Everything did make sense, gradually, in a way that gave me few "aha!" moments but was satisfying. It also made me think about gender in really interesting ways. The protagonist has trouble identifying genders: different peoples have different ways of signaling gender, and she travels widely, and she tends to default to "she." It's fascinating to be reading along with "she" pronouns being used for a second character all over the place and then suddenly have third character identify the second as "he." Feminist though I am, my default still tends to be "he." When the default is "she," I really have to rethink my assumptions-and I had to reread some scenes, because the pronoun matters to me in ways I think it shouldn't.
That sounds heavy-handed, and Brilliant Husband found the pronoun confusion a bit intrusive, if I recall correctly (and please correct me if I don't, BH!). I found it thought-provoking without being distracting. And there's plenty else to think about: the programming of human beings to be . . . well, something other than what I'd normally consider humans. How a hive mind might work in human bodies. How an empire maintains itself.
The Kingdom of Gods by N. K. Jemisin: Book 3 in the Inheritance Trilogy-oh, crud, it's not a trilogy any more. I just went to Amazon to double-check this, and there's now a novella that follows the trilogy. Well, I must read it!
I've enjoyed all the books in the trilogy. This one surprised me-I had trouble for a bit wrapping my head around the fact that Sieh narrated this one when the previous two were each narrated by a woman, not a god. In this one, Sieh makes friends with human children, which proves even more dangerous than I thought, and in ways I didn't expect. I love the world-building here, and I love seeing how the world changes between the first and the second and then the second and third books, which are set quite far apart in time. In this universe, gods and godlings are not truly immortal, and they can make more godliness, and they interact with humans in many interesting ways.
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett Do I need to write up a book by Terry Pratchett? I enjoyed it. I am very fond of Sam Vimes. And Carrot. And Angua. And Death, for that matter.
Freeman by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
I have read Leonard Pitts's newspaper columns for years-or I did, but our newspaper doesn't get them, and I rarely think to look them up online. I didn't know until this year that he's also a novelist, and a good one. With the end of the Civil War, Sam realizes that he can try to find the wife he hasn't seen in fifteen years. He sets out walking from Philadelphia to the last place he knew she was, in Mississippi. The novel is also the story of Prudence, who seems a little lacking in her name virtue, and her "sister" Bonnie, who leave Boston to go South and set up a school for ex-slaves. Prudence is white. Bonnie is not. And it's the story of Tilda, the wife that Sam lost fifteen years before. It's heart-wrenching, so brace yourself-but it's well worth reading (especially if you like historical novels).