Reading over the holidays
I've been reminded that word of mouth is a good thing, and I don't talk about my book addiction enough. I've been doing a lot more reading on the Kindle; the move keeps me away from my physical books. So presume that all books I talk about are available as ebooks.
Martha Wells: The Cloud Roads
I've owned this for a while in paperback without ever finishing it. My personal taste has leaned away from books with highly alien environments or cultures. Perhaps I'm getting lazy in my old age. This book has some pretty extreme woldbuilding, but it was well worth getting over the information barrier. As a reader, I'm very much looking forward to the sequel. As an amateur author, I'm going to be looking hard at the craft displayed in getting this worldbuilding out to the reader without interfering in what is a very fine story. The sequel, The Serpent Sea is about to come out.
Doyle and Macdonald: The Magewar trilogy
The Price of the Stars is an old favorite of mine - space opera at its finest. The series is mostly available in e-book format now, which fixes my major problem with it. (I bought three copies of the paperback and they all fell apart; it got the worst physical book construction I've ever seen. The entire series was badly bound.) There are at least seven books in this universe, but I recommend highly The Price of the Stars, Starpilot's Grave, and By Honor Betray'd.
Barbara Hambly: Stranger at the Wedding
I'm slowly rebuilding my collection of Hambly novels on Kindle. I happen to really like this one; a fantasy set in a later time period than the normal pseudo-middle-ages. Hambly is an author you can count on for consistency of setting anywhere from early rome to 1920s hollywood. Much of her backlist is now available as ebooks and I'm probably going to buy them all. One warning for some readers: Hambly's work often contains some darkness; this novel's darker themes may be disturbing for some readers.
Jo Walton: Farthing
This book is one fo the few I reread not only for the story but because I think it's an important work. It may be the 1984 of our generation, but somewhat less heavy handed. Seriously, read this book.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some. I'll post about books as I think of it, and may not always do so in the order I consume them.
One final note: I tend not to write bad reviews. This isn't because I like all the books I read, but because I think that good reviews are more strongly correlated. There are a lot of reasons to dislike a book that don't make it a terrible book - for another reader. Books I like tend to share a lot of characteristics, so if you like one on this list, give a different one a try.
(Livejournal note: My posts now start over on Dreamwidth; same account name. Over here they're locked by default, even when I post publicly over there. If you have a dreamwidth account; let me know.)
Martha Wells: The Cloud Roads
I've owned this for a while in paperback without ever finishing it. My personal taste has leaned away from books with highly alien environments or cultures. Perhaps I'm getting lazy in my old age. This book has some pretty extreme woldbuilding, but it was well worth getting over the information barrier. As a reader, I'm very much looking forward to the sequel. As an amateur author, I'm going to be looking hard at the craft displayed in getting this worldbuilding out to the reader without interfering in what is a very fine story. The sequel, The Serpent Sea is about to come out.
Doyle and Macdonald: The Magewar trilogy
The Price of the Stars is an old favorite of mine - space opera at its finest. The series is mostly available in e-book format now, which fixes my major problem with it. (I bought three copies of the paperback and they all fell apart; it got the worst physical book construction I've ever seen. The entire series was badly bound.) There are at least seven books in this universe, but I recommend highly The Price of the Stars, Starpilot's Grave, and By Honor Betray'd.
Barbara Hambly: Stranger at the Wedding
I'm slowly rebuilding my collection of Hambly novels on Kindle. I happen to really like this one; a fantasy set in a later time period than the normal pseudo-middle-ages. Hambly is an author you can count on for consistency of setting anywhere from early rome to 1920s hollywood. Much of her backlist is now available as ebooks and I'm probably going to buy them all. One warning for some readers: Hambly's work often contains some darkness; this novel's darker themes may be disturbing for some readers.
Jo Walton: Farthing
This book is one fo the few I reread not only for the story but because I think it's an important work. It may be the 1984 of our generation, but somewhat less heavy handed. Seriously, read this book.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some. I'll post about books as I think of it, and may not always do so in the order I consume them.
One final note: I tend not to write bad reviews. This isn't because I like all the books I read, but because I think that good reviews are more strongly correlated. There are a lot of reasons to dislike a book that don't make it a terrible book - for another reader. Books I like tend to share a lot of characteristics, so if you like one on this list, give a different one a try.
(Livejournal note: My posts now start over on Dreamwidth; same account name. Over here they're locked by default, even when I post publicly over there. If you have a dreamwidth account; let me know.)