Reading roundup and books of 2017
Happy soon-to-be New Year, folks! May all the good stuff from 2017 stay with us and all the not-so-good stuff stay safely behind as the calendar ticks over! <3
*
OK, I'm going to accept that neither watching 'Jedi' nor me finishing my book is happening today, because there's too much other stuff to do, and call it a year in terms of books and general fandom. So:
Last reading roundup of the year:
47. Alex Gabriel, Love for the Cold-Blooded, Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero -- more quality lit from ikel89 :P This reminded me simultaneously of Not Your Sidekick (for the superhero/supervillain dating premise) and of Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, in that it was a neat-sounding idea with kind of meh execution. The idea is: Patrick, youngest son of a supervillainess working on her epic return, ends up accidentally dating Nicholas, a superhero.
Things that were a lot of fun were Patrick's family (loving supervillain mom, supportive dad, three badass supervillains-in-training sisters, boisterous vegetarian dinners together) and the hinted-at superheroes and villains worldbuilding, like the way the villains have their whole network, refer to themselves as "challengers" and to the superheroes dismissively as "hoagies", and some of the supervillain secondary characters/cameos, like classy Sir Toby whom Patrick fanboys and then minions for and Doctor Destiny, an older lady whose supervillain attack is aimed at preserving independent bookstores. I also appreciated the fact that Patrick had this very consistent admiration for badass women, of which there were many in this book -- his mother and sisters, Doctor Destiny, but also super-intense superhero Nexus (~Batman) and powerhouse Ariadne, and even fictional characters, like the evil queen in the opera Nick takes him to see.
Here's the part that didn't work for me so well: Patrick and Nick's entire relationship. It's not terrible, but it's... weirdly divorced from everything else, I feel like? Like, the author took a bunch of fanficcy relationship tropes and just threw them into the story, quite possibly at random. There's the meeting via mistaken identity, where Nick mistakes Patrick for a hooker and they have sex without Patrick realizing why it's happening. There the coffeeshop interlude which is the RANDOMEST. There's a party with an interrupted make-out session. It just kind of... happens? I never felt any build or arc to their relationship, and the sex felt very... generic, not character-driven at all. To be honest, I didn't like either Patrick or Nick too much either -- Patrick's motormouth narration started out cute, but got old for me pretty fast (also, I have learned for myself that "dude" and "bro" will never work for me as terms of endearment; ugh), and Nick starts out as an Iron Man type (billionnaire genius inventor superhero) but with the OPPOSITE of Tony Stark's charm, which seems like a very odd choice. Nick is intense and awkward, Patrick is babbly and breeze, and I felt no chemistry between them at all, as characters.
And the ending felt like a cop-out, not very satisfying at all.
48. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Godmother -- I started out really enjoying this book, but it was another one of those where I ended up liking the idea better than the execution (seems to be my year for those...) I like a lot of the kinds of book this is -- modern retellings of fairy tales, and the kind where the fairy tales all mash together and interact -- and I did like all of those aspects in the set-up: Sno the rocker's daughter with a jealous model stepmother and the seven Vietman vets with odd nicknames, the modern Puss in boots take, Cinderella working at the stables (the shoe in question ends up being a horse's shoe!), the very, VERY creepy take on Hansel and Gretel with a murderous pedophile in the role of the witch -- those ideas were totally recognizable but original, and the stories were nicely set up. I was less interested in Rose, and the love interest cop's Snow Queen backstory didn't work for me particularly well, but I was fine with the setup of the framing story, too. But once the plot got underway and all the fairy-tales started running into each other, the story lost a lot of its charm for me. And the evil pedophiles plot didn't work for me particularly well once it stopped being a less-is-more creepy thing and started being about body parts in jars and being held up at gunpoint. Spoilers from here? And the evil pedophiles are just so cardboardly evil; I'm not saying I need nuance in pedophiles, but the other characters, even the villains, get some depth and backstory to them -- Snow White's evil stepmother is herself the product of abuse, a beautiful girl who suffered a lot in the foster care system and learned to use her beauty for her own ends; Hansel and Gretel's mother, who ditches them at a mall, is definitely flawed but not actively evil -- so it was disappointing to have the main villain of the story be completely devoid of any kind of positive qualities at all. And conversely, Rose the good social worker and Fred the good cop are SO good and perfect, they really weren't interesting to me as characters, so I couldn't care less about their happily-ever-after. /spoilers I did enjoy the comic relief of Felicity Fortune, the fairy godmother. And it was nice to read a story so grounded in a place I've been (Seattle). On a slightly random note, I found the temporal setting quite disorienting, until I read the afterword -- the book was written in 1994 but set in the "near future", so the technology is definitely early/mid-90s -- nobody has cell phones (though there are "car phones"), computers are big clunky things -- but the vision of lite-dystopian America -- colleges rejecting worthy applicants because of anti-immigrant quotas, stripped down social services budgets, massive layoffs, etc. etc. -- felt disconcertingly modern. There are two more books in the series, and I haven't decided yet if I'll bother with them. Maybe if I come across them at the library/if somebody wants to read along with me?
49. Jonathan Kellerman, Breakdown (Alex Delaware novel) -- It's, you know, Kellerman. More of the same, but I don't read these books for being groundbreaking great literature. I finished the whole thing in about 24 hours, and had a good time with it, which is all I ask. The plot kept me reading, I liked meeting the various secondary characters, like I usually do, and catching up with a few familiar ones from earlier books. The pacing was a bit odd towards the end -- I guess we're no longer doing Alex and Milo putting themselves in danger to foil the bad guys -- this was more like a courtroom drama than a thriller, in terms of climax. (In general, Alex and Milo are starting to feel their age -- talking about retirement and stuff...) And the final bit spoilers with Ovid felt like rather a stretch. But whatever. Also, looks like there's one book in the series we've accidentally skipped: Motive. Should keep an eye out for that.
50. C.B.Lee, Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2) -- I don't know if this sequel is actually better written, or if I just read it more forgivingly because Bells was my favorite character in the first one and this is told from his POV, but none of the things that interfered with my enjoyment of the first one -- ridiculous worldbuilding, cardboard villains, Tubmlrishly earnest attempts at all the representation ever -- really bothered me here, though it is by now means a perfect book. Spoilers from here!
For one thing, it makes the rather odd choice to start before the book it's a sequel to and sort of skimmingly recap the events of Nor Your Sidekick, which I think didn't add anything to the story at all. I mean, I enjoyed seeing a look at the superhero training and testing that Bells goes through, but that could've been handled just fine in flashback, I think, the way we get to see him and Emma meet in kindergarten. (Speaking of which, I was steeling myself for that scene to be unspeakably twee, but it was actually pretty cute, although I do think Emma having helped Bells pick out his name is really unnecessary.)
I was also stealing myself for a love triangle or some other misunderstandings stuff involving Bells and Emma, and, hmm. There was still more of it than I would have wanted, but it was subverted/averted enough that overall I'm pretty positive on how it all worked out. That arc hits a lot of the beats of the YA de rigeur love triangle nonsense, but I thought it did enough things differently with it that by the end I basically didn't mind: Bells and Christina having zero chemistry together and quickly and mutually concluding that they're better off just being friends was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't a fan of the fake dating so much, but neither was Bells, clearly, so it was a pretty short-lived plot point. I also kept wondering if overly-perfect Carlos would turn out to be some kind of spy or whatever, but apparently no, he's just a guy with no plot relevance whatsoever, which is fine. And I hadn't expected Emma's asexuality reveal, though in retrospect, that was the one major LGBTQ+ category which wasn't yet represented among the protagonists, so I probably should've been. I'm pretty curious to see what happens with the Emma and Bells relationship from here, because while I've read books with asexual characters before, not many of them involved actual relationships, and I assume that's where we're headed. Meanwhile, I was also pleased to see that Bells is cheerfully bisexual, that Brandon's crush on his is not going away, and that Emma, in attempting to figure out her sexuality, has gone on dates with girls as well as guys. Oh, and also, on the relationships note, I was worried about yet more de rigeur YA relationship drama when Jess and Abby had their fight, but it was resolved quickly and maturely, so that was also nice to see.
While I had really liked Bells in the first book, one of the things I was kind of "not sure if want" about was the fact that the trans character was the body-shifter. I decided I ultimately didn't have a problem with that (same as I don't have a problem with it in the Craft books that Kai is able to remake her body by magic), but I liked the additional insight that's provided here -- that Bells powers manifested when he started going through puberty (and drifting even further from his image of what he should look like, and the way his being trans is not made seamless just because he has superpowers. Oh, and sspeaking of representation, I see we now have a couple of secondary characters who use "they" as their pronouns, which we were missing from the roster.
There were things in this book other than teenage relationship stuff, although if I'm being honest, those aren't the things I'm reading this series for. It was good to see Bells' family, and Emma's. I was also intrigued to see that Claudia (Jess's sister) seems to be doing something a little more interesting than being Captain Orion's unthinking minion. The side-plot with the resistance, which turned out to be illicit movie watcher was somewhat amusing, as was the actual Resistance they found. The whole thing where Bells goes off on his own and Emma et al rescue him, Bells abilities to turn into not just different people but inanimate objects, and the whole silly plot with the killer robots was about as solid as the plot of the previous book, which is to say -- not at all. But like I said, that's not what I'm reading them for. Even my very generous suspension of disbelief couldn't hold for some part, like what the killer robots could and couldn't do, and especially the idea that the government, which has such absolute control over the information channels that any posted "inconvenient truth" simply disappears within minutes, would keep only one copy of the superhero directory, in hard copy, in a place where a lot of teenagers go. OR that the way to dispose of it is to burn it right on the spot, with pursuit closing in (I think C.B.Lee vastly underestimated the amount of time it takes to thoroughly burn something...) OR that Bells used his compromised Barry identity to gain access to the facility when he could have shifted into absolutely anyone. But these stupid things seem to bug me less than they would in a different book. I guess I'm willing handwave a lot of dumb stuff because of the comics-book-like feel of the canon?
Also, ghis is a really minor point, but there's a lot of chat transcripts in this book. While I appreciated Bells CAPSLOCK OF JOY, and Emma noticing and asking him if he was OK when it was gone, I was pretty annoyed by how much of it there was.
Apparently there are two more books of this, the next one from Emma's POV and the last one presumably from Abby's. I am looking forward to it, because despite the ridiculous plot, I've gotten to be quite fond of these kids. Well, mostly Bells, but reading things from his POV made me more fond of the people he cares about, too.
51. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric and the Shaman (Penric #2)
52. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Fox (Penric #3) -- I really loved the first Penric and Desdemona book when I read it, and then I decided to save the next one for a rainy day, so I'd always have some new Bujold to look forward to. Well, my post-Vallista reading slump seemed like the sort of rainy day I'd been saving it for, plus LMB has been putting out new Penrics often enough that I've fallen behind farther than I intended to. So I read the next two (having decided, after some waffling, to read them in series internal chronological order, rather than pub order). And they were... fine. I like Penric, I like the world of the Five Gods, and LMB is a really excellent writer, but... it would appear that a lot of what I liked about the first Penric book had to do with Penric and Desdemona getting to know each other and learning to work together, and they're less fun for me to read about as an established team. I liked the newly introduced characters OK -- Oswyl and Inglis and some of the secondaries -- but nobody here is shaping out to be an all-time favorite, the way so many of LMB's characters are. And even the writing felt less punchy than in the first Penric novella -- a little bit underedited, not in the sense that anything is bad, but I was noticing authorial tics more than I normally expect to with LMB, which makes me think they didn't get as much pruning as they usually do in the editing process. I mean, I enjoyed them both, but I didn't find them nearly as memorable as I was hoping to, which made me sad. One thing I did like, though, was spoilers for Penric's Fox! the motivation in the murder mystery -- that it was someone looking to kill the demon and not the person carrying it. R says there's a character I'm likely to love in Mira's Last Dance, so I am looking forward to reading the rest of the novellas, but these weren't the kickstart to loving what I'm reading again that I'd been hoping they would be...
53. Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway -- I've been trying to figure out whether this one worked better or less well for me than the Toby Daye books, and I honestly don't know. I think it was farther from my kind of thing in theory, and so it not being really my thing in reality was less disappointing to me, if that makes any sense? Which is to say, I enjoyed the read-through, and I really liked one character and pretty much any bit of dialogue delivered by hear and any scene the character was in, but everything outside of that character grated or niggled in various small ways. I think maybe things I liked/things I didn't like format makes sense for this one (I read it in sync with ikel89 and alenky_cveto4ek, and there's a more organic record of my reading experience in A's LJ, but under f-lock.) ) Spoilers! (including the whodunit)
Things I liked:
- Jack! From the moment she appeared with her biohazard bow tie, I was intrigued, and every time she opened her mouth, I was happy. I'm also glad she gets a happy ending, and had totally not seen the sororicide-as-route-to-a-happy-ending coming, but it's actually perfectly fitting for the character, and so frankly pretty great. (I was happy to learn from cyanshadow that book 2 is about Jack and Jill, though I'd rather have Jack's further adventures than a prequel, I think. Definitely planning to read it anyway!)
- Kade and the way his transness was revealed. I'm not entirely confident I would've picked up on it as readily if I hadnt already known there was a trans boy character in the book, but as it is, the subtlety was really nicely done, and I liked the character himself. I feel like there's enough of a balance there where his identity does flavor his story a lot, but I also got a good sense for him outside of that, and it just felt nicely handled. The only sour note was the absolutely random and unnecessary (to the plot; I admit it is probably not unnecessary from a representation standpoint) calling out transphobia scene, but thats not about Kade himself, so I don't count it against him.
- Loriel's Webworld of heroic and magical insects, and the bittersweetness of the door for her to go back being in her house the whole time, and the world really waiting to receive her back.
Things I was mixed on:
- Nancy's asexuality. On the one hand, it's neat from a representation standpoint, especially with the line being clearly drawn that she's asexual but not aromantic. On the other hand, it felt like the clunkiest possible reveal, just dumped into the conversation. I'm even willing to accept that it may not be unrealistic at a certain point in one's journey of self-understanding. But as elegant as the Kade reveal was, this was, like, the opposite, and felt really jarring to me. But I feel like I've seen asexuality reveals done better even in books which I didn't think were necessarily stellar in other respects, like the Sidekick Squad and Natural History of Dragons sequels.
- The murder mystery. Seanan McGuire is just not very good at writing mysteries, IMO, which is why I'm puzzled that she keeps trying. I mean, I'm willing to cut Nancy et al some slack, because they're traumatized teenagers only half-living in the present world, rather than grown-ups with investigative experience like Toby Daye, so I cant jusdge them AS harshly for being oblivious. But if the animated skeleton of a murder victim points to the air next to an identical twin, even if said twin is in denial about her (vampire-obsessed) sister being the murderer, I still expect THE OTHER PERSON to be able to figure it out. Really, the reason this is on the mixed rather than "did not work" list is that I did like the motivation of the murderer -- building a "skeleton key" to get back to her world. And the horror elements of the murders, while not my own actual cup of tea, were pretty nicely done, I thought; but then, I feel like McGuire has always been pretty good at writing atmospheric horror elements (too bad that's not what I read her books for).
- I keep going back and forth on this between "mixed and "did not work", but I'll just park it here: Nancy as a protagonist. This may be intentional or not, but she felt a lot younger than 17 (compared to, say, L and her friends, who are a little younger even), and generally oblivious. Her "I don't understand all these words you are using!" made her feel rather dim, because I was definitely able to figure out what all the other characters meant by "High Logic" and "Wicked" and so on -- it's not that complicated! But after a while that stopped annoying me and I just kind of started being amused by the (probably unintentional) notion that Nancy, with her stillness, was also slow intellectually. But it's not a trait I like in my protagonists...
- Most of the portal worlds, at least the way they were shown/implied to be. The nonense worlds like Sumi's are just boring to me personally (so it's probably a good thing that we didn't see more of them). I could feel zero attraction for Nancy's world of the dead, so found her longing for it hard to understand. In fact, not a single world seemed like something I'd want to go back to or even visit once, except maybe Loriel's. I'm mostly willing to count this as a feature rather than a bug, because it's canonically pretty clear that the worlds are tailored to the people who find them, and ending up in a different world than "yours" is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. So, I'm not supposed to find any of these worlds attractive, because theyre not for ME. But at the same time, yearning to get back is the central theme of the book -- it's Nancy's (abrupt) happy ending, it's Jill's motivation for murder, it's the whole idea behind the setting itself (I did appreciate the acknowledgement that there are people who DON'T want to get back to the portal worlds, they're just at a different school; I was wondering about that, before it was mentioned) -- and so not getting the appeal interfered with the immersive reading experience. And I found the taxonomy of the worlds (Logic vs Nonsense, Wicked vs Virtue) both totally artificial/non-intuitive, and what's more COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY to anything the book was actually about, and given how many paragraphs were spent on it in a relatively short novella, that seems like a total waste. Oh, and generational portals where the girls expect their daughters to find their doors again? So fucking creepy, to my mind, and it being presented as a positive thing, apparently, was a very O.o moment for me. I did admire Eleanor's plan to wait until she was senile and then go into her Nonsense world, though -- that is simultaneously both creepy and oddly heart-warming...
Things that did not work for me for the most part:
- The writing, replete with authorial soapboxing, which I don't like in the best of times, but REALLY don't like when it makes no fucking sense in the context of the story. The "silence of women" explanation for why more girls than boys end up in portal worlds did not work for me at all, and I think soured me on much of the worldbuilding in the rest of the book, because it doesn't seem to align with how portals actually work in this book, or with how portal fantasies work on a meta level (in fact, I'm more used to the kind where a boy blunders through and then a girl -- sister or lover -- has to go save his impulsive ass). And then there's Sumi's note at the end, which does not seem like something Sumi would say, or would be motivated to say to Nancy after their brief acquaintance, or (as alenky_cveto4ek points out) something that Nany would be reasonably expected to find and read, or something that really makes sense within the context of the story -- but it sure makes for a nice sound bite, so in it goes. Authorial soapboxing aside, I just didn't find the writing to be Hugo-worthy. There is so much telling rather than showing, in Nancy falling under suspicion from the other kids (if this was meant to add tension to the story, it certainly did no such thing for me), in characters having to explain each other's motivations (which, given that the book is written in omniscient, seems unnecessary as well as clunky), and that epilogue? I found it sub-standardly written by fanfic levels, let alone profic, let alone award-winning profic. I'm not sure what to make of how weak it is -- McGuire couldn't bear to end the book on a bittersweet note and wanted to include Nancy finding her door?
A couple of quotes (all of them, you'll note, from Jack):
"Points for knowing the feminine form of 'murderer, although I'm a little insulted that you feel the need to put a lacy bow on the crime before you can believe I committed it."
To Kade: "Sometimes I suspect you learned all your hallmarks of masculinity from a Neanderthal."
"Where did you find the whipped cream?" he asked.
"You had milk, I had science. [...] It's amazing how much of culinary achievement can be summarized by that sentence."
Christopher: "You must be a lot of fun at parties."
Jack: "It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I'm the life, death, and resurrection of the place."
"It's just that usually if someone around here is going to be callous and odd, it's me." [I see your Willow Rosenberg near-quote, btw.]
Nancy: "You killed your sister."
Jack: "Murder trials are so messy, aren't they? And death isn't forever if you know what you're doing."
All that said, there is one thing for which I totally am grateful to this book: It (or maybe the sync-read associated with it) finally broke through my reading write-up block left in the wake of Vallista, when I was starting to wonder if anything would.
54. Nina Kossman, Behind the Border -- a totally unexpected addition to my year's reading, courtesy of
ambyr continuing to declutter the stuff from her childhood she's left at her parents' place. This is a series of anecdotes from a Soviet ex-pat who came to America around the same age I did (although about a decade earlier, from what I can tell), published in 1994 aimed at American children, but very neat for me to read. Despite the decade or decade-and-a-half separating me from Nina, her school experience was eerily similar to mine -- she could've easily been a contemporary, until perestroka kicked in for me: the classroom paper hanging on the wall, the competition to become one of the Young Pioneers in the first batch (which I managed, of course; I was a very good student), the Pavlik Morozov discussions, writing with blot-prone fountain pens -- that was all very familiar. And at home, farina/mannaya kasha as a dreaded staple (although I disagree that the food was not tasty; there wasn't much variety to it, but my great-grandmother made very tasty things with chicken and potatoes); gum as a rarity which you would lend out to people or trade for things (I even remember the specific red ball gum that Nina describes); floating in the Black Sea and looking "at Turkey"; being the only kid in class with a watch (although mine was not an analog one like Nina's but a digital white Casio that my father brought home from the US visit). Anyway, so, yeah, most of the stories felt very recognizable, although the "painting the Red Square red" one made me raise my eyebrows -- that one really reads more like a piece of fiction than something a real kid would do... But maybe a kid who'd read a lot of fiction would have, so it could be true, I guess... I was also very intrigued by Nina's father having a sister in England whom he got to go visit -- I really wonder how that came about... The book ends rather abruptly with Nina realizing that she does want to leave Russia and waiting for permission to leave, and I wouldve liked to see what happens past that, but I guess emigration is not what she wanted to write about. I did walk away from the book with the feeling that it was written with an agenda to show the negative side of growing up (Jewish) in Russia, which, fair enough, plenty of material there, but I would've found a more balanced book more interesting, I think. Also, the translation of "za granitsej" literally as "behind the border", starting with the title and through every instance of that phrase being used in the book, continued to bug me. It's not wrong, per se, but it's jarring -- "behind" doesn't seem like quite the right flavor for me.
It looks like Kossman has translated some of Tsvetaeva's poetry, which I might be curious to take a look at, if it ever crosses my path...
Speaking of reading, cyanshadow tipped me off that Ann Leckie's Provenance is on Kindle-sale right now for $2.99 -- in case that's of relevance to anyone else on my flist.
**
Books read in 2017:
1. Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder
2. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
3. M.C.A.Hogarth, A Rose Point Holiday
4. Rose Lerner, Listen to the Moon
5. M.C.A.Hogarth, Even the Wingless
6. T.Kingfisher, Summer in Orcus
7. Patrick Weekes, The Palace Job
8. Patrick Weekes, The Prophecy Con
9. Patrick Weekes, The Paladin Caper
10. Steven Brust, Jhereg (reread)
11. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
12. V.E.Schwab, Vicious
13. C.B.Lee, Not Your Sidekick
14. Dave Barry, Best State Ever
15. Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
16. Emily Skrutskie, The Abyss Surrounds Us
17. Becky Albertalli, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda
18. David Levithan, Boy Meets Boy
19. Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, Rebel
20. Martha Wells, All Systems Red
21. Becky Albertalli, The Upside of Unrequited
22. Jordan L. Hawk, Undertow
23. Nora Sakavic, The Foxhole Court
24. Nora Sakavic, The Raven King
25. Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit
26. Cale Dietrich, The Love Interest
27. Yoon Ha Lee, Raven Stratagem
28. Nora Sakavic, The King's Men
29. Ben Aaronovitch, The Furthest Station
30. Jordan L. Hawk, Draakenwood
31. Vic James, The Gilded Cage
32. Rachel Aaron, Nice Dragons Finish Last
33. Cassandra Clare, Forbidden Parabatai Het #2 (i.e. Lord of Shadows)
34. Steven Brust, Iorich (reread)
35. T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories
36. Dorothy Dunnett, A Game of Kings
37. Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
38. Avoliot, The Course of Honor
39. Ben Aaronovitch, Black Mould (Rivers of London GN)
40. Naomi Novik, Golden Age and Other Stories (Temeraireverse short fiction)
41. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands
42. Monstrous Affections anthology (Kelly Link and Gavin Grant ed)
43. Noelle Stevenson, Nimona
44. Steven Brust, Tiassa (reread)
45. Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
46. Steven Brust, Vallista
47. Alex Gabriel, Love for the Cold-Blooded, Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero
48. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Godmother
49. Jonathan Kellerman, Breakdown
50. C.B.Lee, Not Your Villain
51. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric and the Shaman
52. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Fox
53. Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway
54. Nina Kossman, Behind the Border
**
The first book you read in 2017:
Rose Lerner's Sweet Discorder, which I started right after finishing True Pretenses, which was my last book of 2016. (It was the book I guessed I would finish first on last year's version of this meme. Apparently I was also reading The Obelisk Gate and Grand Central Arena at the time, too, but neither of those is finished yet...)
The last book you finished in 2017:
Nina Kossman's "Behind the Border", which
ambyr gave me during our holiday meet-up.
The first book you will finish (or did finish!) in 2018:
Detective Stories, the new Rivers of London graphic novel which just came out in December. I had it on pre-order and started reading it right away, but didn't actually have a chance to get very far in (too bad, because I was planning on reading it and then handing it on to
aome along with volumes 2 and 3). And after that, probably White Teeth -- I'm 71% in and have been reading it most diligently on my commute.
How many books read in 2017?
53. Way down from last year's 76, and it's the smartphone largely to blame... but partly also that it was an odd reading year probably -- I started and did not finish a lot of books, went through a bad book hangover after Vallista...
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
Only 1 non-fiction in the lot -- the Nina Kossman kid bio thing. But also at
isis's intriguing rec, I picked up Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot and have started reading it. That thing is like 900 pages, though, so it's going to take me a while.
Male/Female authors?
I made a point to actually keep a tally this year of various things as I read, so:
Books: 34 books written by females, 16 books written by males; 2 written by authors whose gender I can't take a solid guess at, and 1 by a mixed-gender bunch (the anthology). Interestingly enough, the same number of "male" books as last year, and many fewer "female" books -- but last year's reading was heavily dominated by one female author, which explains a lot of that. Female to male "book" ratio = 67% F / 23% M.
Authors: for this one, I'm counting just individual authors I've read, so that the effect of being swamped by series is factored out somewhat. I read 28 female authors and 8 male authors (similar to last year, just a little less in each category, so the ratio is still pretty skewed towards female, with 78% F / 22% M, which is similar to last year, but a little bit more female-skewed, although part of that is that 2 books count for 4 female authors.
Also, because it's interesting, I tried to keep track of the gender of *protagonists*, too. (I'm excluding the autobiography from this because, well, that wasn't a choice.) The result (counting each book, not series) is 11 female protagonists and 27 male protagonists (or only 30% F / 70% M). Last year I was excluding books with both male and female protagonists, but actually this year there were as many of those books as books with female protagonists, for two reasons -- a couple of het romance books where both the male and female lead got POVs, and more ensemble-y books with a mixed-gender group (e.g. Six of Crows, the Weekes books, etc.) Oh, and there's a first! -- a book with a non-gendered protagonist, in the Murderbot (who prefers "it" as its pronouns). Anyway, a lot of the F-authored M-protagonist books are genre m/m and queer YA, continuing the trend from last year, but the M-protagonist dominated lists seem to just be a thing that happens every year, regardless of what it is I'm predominantly reading.
Breakdown by author:
Female:
- Sakavic* -- 3
- Lerner -- 2
- MCA Hogarth -- 2
- Vernon/T.Kingfisher -- 2
- C.B. Lee* -- 2
- Albertalli* -- 2
- Hawk -- 2
- LMB -- 2
- Clare -- 1 (+ a short story in an anthology)
- Skrutskie* -- 1
- Morrison* -- 1
- Schwab* -- 1
- Wells -- 1
- Vic James* -- 1
- Dunnett* -- 1
- Rachel Aaron* -- 1
- Mackenzi Lee* -- 1
- Novik -- 1
- SRB -- 1
- Noelle Stevenson* -- 1
- Scarbrough* -- 1
- McGuire -- 1
- Kossman* -- 1
- Mary Ann Shaffer* + Annie Barrows* -- 0.5 each
- Rachel Manija Brown + Sherwood Smith -- 0.5 each
Male:
- Brust -- 4 (3 rereads)
- Weekes* -- 3
- YHL -- 2 (+ a bunch of uncollected short stuff)
- Aaronovitch -- 2
- Dave Barry -- 1
- Kellerman -- 1
- Gaiman -- 1
- Levithan -- 1
Not specified:
- Alex Gabriel* -- 1
- Avoliot* -- 1
* = new-to-me author this year. The interesting thing here is that only one male author (Weekes) was completely new to me (I'd read something co-authored by Levithan and short stories by YHL), but quite a few of the female authors were new (half, and more if the "not specified" authors are female, like I suspect they are).
Most books read by one author this year?
Last year my reading list was heavily dominated by Jordan L. Hawk (14 titles). The year before that, it was ~ 3 books per author for a bunch of authors, and this year is more like that again. If rereads count, Brust wins with 4 titles, but if rereads DON'T count, then it's a tie between Patrick Weekes and Nora Sakavic (3 books apiece).
Favorite books read?
Ninefox Gambit (and sequel) were both books I loved a lot. Over on the non-genre side, I really loved Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, immediately started the other Albertalli book right after I'd finished, and also recommended 'Simon' to L, who liked it just as much. And In Other Lands, probably, even though it was not as uniformly great as I would have liked. Also, The Gilded Cage was not flawless, but impressed me enough that I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel, and am looking forward to reading the sequel to Six of Crows.
Best books you read in 2017?
Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye was definitely powerful, and a book I'm glad to have read, for general cultural literacy, but very much not my genre, so harder for me to judge. I also liked the beginning of 'Guernsey Literary Society' -- actually, everything except the Hollywood ending. I think Raven Stratagem is pretty good, without the problems of Ninefox Gambit's beginning. Nothing was a blow-me-away standout, the way Fifth Season was last year.
Least favorite?
Forbidden Parabatai Het #2 was pretty bad, but getting to mock it in league with ikel89 was pretty fun, and actually I think it may be better, objectively, than Lady Midnight? So least favorite book has got to be The Love Interest probably -- not much redeeming about it, besides the initial premise, and even forewarned not to expect much I ended up boggling at just how bad it got how quickly.
Most disappointing book/Book you wished you loved more than you did?
The books I disliked/where I'd liked the premise more than the execution, I was kind of warned or otherwise prepared about, so they weren't disappointments. I was mildly disappointed that Upside of Unrequited didn't live up to the wonderfulness of 'Simon', but did still really enjoy the book. I was disappointed to learn Vallista would be a gothic (a genre I don't care for), but still liked it anyway, if not nearly as much as Hawk.
Probably the 'most disappointing was thus 'Guernsey Literary Society' -- because it had started out being SO GOOD, and the ending retroactively cheapened the whole thing for me, with its serendipitous twee-ness (and I have a nagging feeling that this wasn't the original author's design, but changes made by the niece who finished editing the book when the original author was dying/after she'd passed away).
Also, I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, that the two other Rose Lerner books I read ('Sweet Disorder' and 'Listen to the Moon') didn't really work for me as romances and not super well as books either; I'd thought maybe I'd found an author who could write (non-genre) romances in a way that appealed to me, but apparently that was just True Pretenses/Ash and Lydia specifically....
Best series you discovered in 2017?
Definitely Machineries of Empire! I loved both the books I read this year, enjoyed at least one of the published shorter works ("Battle of Candle Arc"; the young Jedao story was less of a hit for me, though it was nice to see Jedao actually having fun for a change), a lot of the ficlets in
yhlee's DW, and I can't wait for Revenant Gun.
Other new series for me this year (defined as I read at least one book in a series I've not read before and I haven't ruled out reading more -- or, alternatively, have finished the whole series) would be: the Lymond Chronicles (impressive but SO OVERWHELMING), Murderbot Diaries, Six of Crows (I've started Crooked Kingdom but am not very far yet), Sidekick Squad, The Abyss Surrounds Us, Vicious (I probably will read the sequel, even if I really don't care for more Eli), and the murdersports anime (which, I'm still kind of amazed I tuck through the whole thing. The power of ikel89's charisma XD).
Favorite new author you discovered this year?
Becky Albertalli. I loved 'Simon' and liked 'Unrequited' well enough, and can't wait for the Simon sequel from Leah's POV.
It's possible Mary Ann Shaffer (the first author of 'Guernsey' belongs on this list, too, but there will be no more books from her, of course...) I do plan to keep an eye out for more from Emily Skrutskie (of The Abyss Surrounds Us) because I was very impressed by how she managed her first novel, Vic James, and also Patrick Weekes, whose zany style I find generally entertaining if far from flawless.
Also, I finally read something by Toni Morrison, and I'm glad I did, but the heaviness of the material is unlikely to make her a favorite author for me. (L's AP English class will probably be reading something else by Morrison next semester -- Song of Solomon, I think -- and I'm definitely planning on joining in.)
I had actually read a few Yoon Ha Lee's short stories before (and didn't care for them at all), so he is not new to me -- but definitely the case where I suddenly have a favorite new author out of nowhere. (This is the second year it's happened -- last year the best book I'd read also came from an author I'd pretty much written off as not my thing, N.K.Jemisin.)
Other new authors (not so many as last year...) were more mixed. C.B.Lee was earnest but very Tumblery in the first book, although either I was inured to it or she's gotten better about it in book 2. Cale Dietrich and Mackenzi Lee's books were more disappointing than not, and Nora Sakavic of the murdersports anime is clearly interested in telling different sorts of stories than I'm interested in reading. V.E. Schwab definitely has some potential, but Vicious was highly flawed and I didn't get very far into 'Darker Shade of Magic' before getting bored (though I might go back with enough peer pressure...).
Oldest book read?
The Game of Kings (1961) beats out The Bluest Eye (1970) by almost a decade. The next oldest, I think, are 'Boy Meets Boy' (2003) and 'Guernsey' (2008), and everything else is just from the last handful of years...
Newest?
Penric's Fox is from August 2017, Not Your Villain from October 5, Vallista from October 17, so I guess Vallista it is.
Longest book title?
Love for the Cold-Blooded: Or: the Part-Time Evil Minion's Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero (17 words!). And here I thought 'Guernsey' was going to be the winner, with its 8 word title! There were a couple 5-6 word titles on the list (like in previous years), but nothing else came close to those two (since I didn't read any non-fiction :P).
Shortest title?
Turned out to be Rebel (followed by a couple of 6-letter single-word titles like Nimona, Tiassa, Iorich)
How many re-reads?
Several Vlad Taltos books -- Jhereg along with ikel89 and cyanshadow, and Iorich and Tiassa in preparation for Vallista coming out.
Any in translation?
Nope, not this year... And none in Russian, either, alas. (I read part of a Witcher book in Russian, which counts for translation as well, but did not finish, so am not counting it.) I did read some fic in Russian, including some translated fics for curiosity's sake, but yeah, no, definitely not counting fic here.
How many of this year's books were from the library?
I kept a spreadsheet and everything, which I started doing in 2014.
- only 1 book from the library, which frankly shocked me -- and, moreso, it wasn't even a book I checked out, but one my mother did and I borrowed. This category has basically disappeared, when before the Kindle it dominated everything.
- 1 book from L's school, which I read alongside her (The Bluest Eye)
- 2 were presents, from
aome and
ambyr, (which, huh, usually this number is higher...)
- 2 were online freebies
- 3 were rereads of books I already owned (the Vlads)
- 4 were books I borrowed, 2 in e-copy (from
aome) and 2 in hard copy (Dave Barry from my mother and Lymond from Awesome Friend Ali)
- 16 were, ahem, sourced online. This is higher again than last year, but... I subsequently bought copies of 3 of them as presents, bought a sequel to 1, received another as a legitimate present, and most of the rest I simply wouldn't have bothered to read otherwise, so I don't feel too bad about it.
- 26 were bought by me -- a little less than last year, but actually a higher percentage. All but 2 were in ebook form, and the two that were hard copies were graphic novels (Nimona and Black Mould) -- this is an even higher percentage than the previous year
All in all, btw, that's only 8 books in hard copy, or even more dominated by ebooks -- it was 2/3 last year, and is now up to over 85%.
Book that most changed my perspective:
Most changed my perspective on the author: Ninefox Gambit, which was the first thing I read by YHL that I liked. And 'Guernsey' is probably the book that affected my world-view the most, in that before I read it, I'd known that the Channel Islands had been occupied by Germany during WWII, but had no idea what that actually was like.
Favorite character:
Let's see, some new-to-me favorites this year: Jedao and Mikodez and (the minor) Colonel Ragath from Machineries of Empire; Elliot Schafer from In Other Lands; Bells from the Sidekick Squad; Jack from Every Heart a Doorway, maybe Kail from the Weekes books and Felicity in 'Vice and Virtue'? This is a MUCH shorter list than usual, which probably explains why this year has felt sort of lackluster in reading. I mean, I continued to like Peter Grant and Penric and Vlad, and enjoyed the return of Felicite's POV in the Change books, but it's not quite the same as meeting a brand new character I love... Also, Simon doesn't quite make it as a protagonist, but his family as a unit does.
Most memorable character:
In addition to those above, Lymond, Murderbot, Nimona, Silyen and Gavar in The Gilded Cage, Serena in Vicious, and Kaz in Six of Crows.
Favorite scene:
No super-strong favorites this year, but here's a couple I liked a lot / that stuck with me:
The scene of Victor's near-death experience in Vicious. It was a book that I found more disappointing than not, but everything about that scene (except the aftermath with Angie) worked really well for me, worldbuilding and character interaction and prose.
On a very different thematic note, the scene in Rebel where Our Heroes go to see a play based on an ancient dystopian novel was hilarious.
Favorite quote:
I usually answer this question by going through all of my write-ups and excerpting the quotes I'd marked down that still ping me. So here are a few:
From Summer in Orcus, a quote which I read to both the rodents and B, meaningfully:
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Summer, whose mother loved her very very very much. || Her mother loved her so much that she was not allowed to play outside where someone might grab her, nor go away on sleepovers where there might be an accident or suspicious food. She was not allowed to go away to camp, where she might be squashed by a horse or bitten by diseased mosquitoes, and she most certainly was not allowed to go on the Ferris Wheel at the carnival because (her mother said) the people who maintain the machinery are lazy and not very educated and might get drunk and forget to put a bolt back on and the entire thing could come loose at any moment and fall down and kill everyone inside, and they should probably leave the carnival immediately before it happened. [...] Summer had never had a father, and wasn’t entirely sure what you did with one, and certainly her mother never had anything good to say about the one Summer didn’t have. But she sometimes thought that it would be nice to have a brother or a sister, not because she particularly liked other children but because it would have been nice to have somebody to share the burden of her mother’s love. If there had been two of them, maybe they could have taken turns. Surely her mother wouldn’t have the energy to keep barging in on both of them in the bathtub. || Unfortunately, there was only Summer.She didn’t want to hurt her mother. [...] During good times, her mother baked cookies and sang songs and showed her how to tie her shoes and helped her with her homework when it was hard (and sometimes when it wasn’t, which was a little bit annoying.) She just wanted her mother to love her a little bit less, like a normal person, so that she could go to camp and not have to leave the carnival early."
A couple from All Systems Red:
"Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I'd rather climb back into Hostile One's mouth."
"'SecUnit, your opinion.'
Frotunately, I had one now. Up to the point where we'd gotten the drone download, my opinion had been mostly oh, shit."
And a few more random ones:
"People say it was a hard spell, but I think that's because most people don't understand magic. It was easy the way dying's easy or birthing's easy. It's not hard, it just hurts a whole hell of a lot." (- T. Kingfisher, "Razorback")
"The value of people does not rest on their ability to hurt others. Where's the honor in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can't win any other way. As if I can't win in a better way." (Elliot in In Other Lands)
"Unhand that science!" (Ambrosius in Nimona)
"It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I'm the life, death, and resurrection of the place." (Jack in Every Heart a Doorway)
Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Well, Machineries of Empire, and Raven Stratagem in particular, inspired me to fanwork, and was the only new book to do so, so I guess that?
How many you'd actually read again?
I could see myself rereading the Machineries of Empire books, especially if Revenant Gun provides some Kujen revelations. I feel no immediate need to reread Vallista, but I tend to reread Dragaera books in general, so maybe I will... I could see rereading 'Simon vs' just because it's so adorable, and maybe 'In Other Lands' for Elliot entertaining value, too. And Gaiman's 'Norse Mythology' also seems like a thing that lends itself well to rereads. Oh, and I think I may have actually reread most of 'Course of Honor' already, keeping pace with ikel89's read :P
A book that you never want to read again:
The Bluest Eye (too depressing), and the books I didn't like much ('Minion's Guide', Forbidden Parabatai Het, Love Interest).
Book you recommended most to others in 2017?
I recommended Ninefox Gambit and In Other Lands a fair bit (and also gave several copies as presents). I also recommended Not Your Sidekick a couple of times to specific rec requests for having lots of queer and POC protagonists, and in particular a major trans (and specifically FTM trans) character.
The book series you read the most volumes of in 2017:
Last year this was dominated by Whyborne & Griffin. This year the answer is Vlad Taltos if rereads count (Vallista + 3 books I'd already read), but if rereads DON'T count, then... it's a tie between the Rogues of the Republic books by Patrick Weekes and murdersports anime, apparently XP (3 volumes each), and then two apiece for a bunch of others: Roser Lerner's Lively St Lemeston series, Machineries of Empire, Sidekick Squar, Penric, more Whyborne & Griffin, and Rivers of London (a novella and a comic book).
The genre you read the most in 2017:
Fantasy overall: 27 (back to dominating, but kind of mixed within the category)
- 10 general (secondary world) fantasy
- 6 urban fantasy
- 3 portal fantasy? (or at least with a strong portal element)
- 3 historical / paranormal m/m
- 3 AU sort of worlds, where it's a recognizable historical period, and various degrees like our world, but with some massive departures that have affected the history of the world (I'm putting Novik, Six of Crows, and Gilded Cage here)
- 1 postapocalyptic
- 18 fantasy/paranormal m/m (sometimes it was a fine line between that and other fantasy kinds, but if there was more porn than plot, I put it in this category)
Sci-fi: 7 (way down from last year, but still more than in years before, I feel like)
I'm not sure whether to put superhero type books in fantasy or sci-fi -- it kind of feels like a separate genre with separate conventions, but there were 4 of them this year (also largely queer).
Non-paranormal romance: 2 [Lerner]
Lit: 2 [Guernsey, Bluest Eye]
Mystery: 1 [Kellerman]
Dystopia? 1 (I'm not sure how else to characterize Love Interest, tbh...)
Historical: 1 [Lymond]
Humor: 1 [Dave Barry]
Non-fiction: 1 [Behind the border]
Non-fantasy YA: 6 [all of it queer (m/m) other than Upside of Unrequited, which is primarily het but the a f/f secondary couple, and all of it K's fault/credit]
Graphic novels: 2 [RoL, Nimona]
I also decided to count adult vs YA vs kidlit, applying judgement, of course:
Adult: 31
YA: 22
Kidlit: 1 [Behind the Border. I don't think Summer in Orcus is really kidlit...]
A lot more heavily dominated by YA, which is kind of what I'd been feeling qualitatively.
Your favorite "classic" you read in 2017:
I think only The Bluest Eye probably counts as a classic? Or maybe Lymond too? I did like both of them, though they're not going to top any favorites lists.
Most surprising (in a good way) book of the year?
Probably Ninefox Gambit, because I hadn't been expecting to fall for something written by Yoon Ha Lee, based on how little of an impression his short stories had made on me.
The hardest book you read in 2017 (topic or writing style):
A Game of Kings (the Lymond) because of the overwhelming eruditeness. (Emotionally hard would be a different answer, but that's a book I haven't managed to finish at all yet: The Obelisk Gate, because I have to put it down every time I get to Nessun's POV, because OUCH.)
The funniest book you read in 2017:
I read Dave Barry's book about Florida, which was pretty funny... but probably not the funniest thing I read all year. Probably In Other Lands was the funniest, but Nimona also made me laugh out loud a couple of times.
The saddest book you read in 2017:
'Guernsey', maybe. The Bluest Eye is also full of awful things (without the safe remove of genre which comes into play in dystopias), but I found 'Guernsey' more personally affecting.
The shortest book you read in 2017:
In terms of words content/thickness, Black Mould (a comic book). Or, if full-on comic books are to be excluded, Behind the Border is only 95 pages of pretty large print. If we're not counting kidlit either, then Penric's Fox at 113 pages, which is shorter than either Penric and the Shaman or All Systems Red.
The longest book that you read in 2017:
Lord of Shadows (FPH#2) was 721 pages (1 page longer than Lady Midnight). I don't think anything else even came close this year...
Best book that was outside your comfort zone/a new genre for you?
Both 'Guernsey' and The Bluest Eye are outside of my comfort zone/typical genre, and they were both really good. And Lymond was definitely outside of my comfort zone too, both in terms of genre -- I don't read historicals -- and in terms just being really hard to digest. (It's also really good, I'm just a tad scared of it.)
Most thrilling, unputdownable book of 2017?
This year's Kellerman was somehow less exciting than it normally is... Maybe Six of Crows? It did make me miss my stop twice, so lets go with that XP
Most beautifully written book in 2017?
Prose-wise, I think I really liked T.Kingfisher this year, especially several stories in the Jackalope Wives collection, and 'Guernsey Literary Society'.
Book you most anticipated in 2017?
VALLISTA!
Favorite cover of a book you read in 2017?
I don't even know what the covers of the Kindle books look like, mostly, although the phone app at least puts them up in color... I like the cover of Six of Crows, and the style of the Patrick Weekes covers, and the "paper silhouette" look of the cover of The Gilded Cage:
Book that had the greatest impact on you this year?
Ninefox Gambit, since that was probably my main fandom this year and that was the book that set it off.
Book you can't believe you waited till 2017 to finally read?
Game of Kings. I've been meaning to read Lymond for years! (Now watch it be another decade before I dare pick up book 2...)
Book that had a scene that left you reeling and dying to talk to someone about it?
The, to quote
eglantiere, creepiest use of origami scene in Raven Stratagem -- especially when the penny dropped for me as to why Khiruev's fleet was the Swanknot Swarm.
(Usually I have more scenes to choose from, but it looks like this year's books were heavier on TALKING than action...)
Looking Ahead:
One book you didn't read this year that will be your #1 priority in 2018?
I have a whole bunch of books I need to FINISH this year: like several Craft books, including Ruin of Angels, which I'm a quarter into. And then a bunch I've been meaning to start and haven't: the rest of the Ancillary books and Provenance, Sorcerer to the Crown (which I now own), Magnus Chase #2 and 3 (which, ditto), several Maggie Stiefvater books that L got for her birthday that I haven't yet read, The Night Circus (same provenance), the sequels to Cloud Roads.
New book you are most anticipating for 2018?
REVENANT GUN! (June 2018 supposedly)
And I'm not sure any other books I'm looking forward to have confirmed publication dates *sigh* They are, in order of likelihood of appearance:
- Thorn of Emberlain ??
- RoL??? Lies Sleeping?? WHEN???
- Warboy (Warchild #4)
- Peace Talks doesn't have a release date yet, so who knows when that will actually be...
- Paarfi Book, which I hope will be coming out in 2018, but which probably won't...
- Doors of Stone (Kvothe #3) if it ends up being released in 2017 (which it won't...)
- and ditto for Winds of Winter (and hopefully I will still care by the time it comes along, which seems increasingly unlikely)
*
Aaaand it looks like my fannish memes are too long to post without maxing out LJ's character limit, so that'll be a different post. I'll probably append them to the Fandom Snowflake stuff which will start tomorrow, yay!
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1066085.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
*
OK, I'm going to accept that neither watching 'Jedi' nor me finishing my book is happening today, because there's too much other stuff to do, and call it a year in terms of books and general fandom. So:
Last reading roundup of the year:
47. Alex Gabriel, Love for the Cold-Blooded, Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero -- more quality lit from ikel89 :P This reminded me simultaneously of Not Your Sidekick (for the superhero/supervillain dating premise) and of Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, in that it was a neat-sounding idea with kind of meh execution. The idea is: Patrick, youngest son of a supervillainess working on her epic return, ends up accidentally dating Nicholas, a superhero.
Things that were a lot of fun were Patrick's family (loving supervillain mom, supportive dad, three badass supervillains-in-training sisters, boisterous vegetarian dinners together) and the hinted-at superheroes and villains worldbuilding, like the way the villains have their whole network, refer to themselves as "challengers" and to the superheroes dismissively as "hoagies", and some of the supervillain secondary characters/cameos, like classy Sir Toby whom Patrick fanboys and then minions for and Doctor Destiny, an older lady whose supervillain attack is aimed at preserving independent bookstores. I also appreciated the fact that Patrick had this very consistent admiration for badass women, of which there were many in this book -- his mother and sisters, Doctor Destiny, but also super-intense superhero Nexus (~Batman) and powerhouse Ariadne, and even fictional characters, like the evil queen in the opera Nick takes him to see.
Here's the part that didn't work for me so well: Patrick and Nick's entire relationship. It's not terrible, but it's... weirdly divorced from everything else, I feel like? Like, the author took a bunch of fanficcy relationship tropes and just threw them into the story, quite possibly at random. There's the meeting via mistaken identity, where Nick mistakes Patrick for a hooker and they have sex without Patrick realizing why it's happening. There the coffeeshop interlude which is the RANDOMEST. There's a party with an interrupted make-out session. It just kind of... happens? I never felt any build or arc to their relationship, and the sex felt very... generic, not character-driven at all. To be honest, I didn't like either Patrick or Nick too much either -- Patrick's motormouth narration started out cute, but got old for me pretty fast (also, I have learned for myself that "dude" and "bro" will never work for me as terms of endearment; ugh), and Nick starts out as an Iron Man type (billionnaire genius inventor superhero) but with the OPPOSITE of Tony Stark's charm, which seems like a very odd choice. Nick is intense and awkward, Patrick is babbly and breeze, and I felt no chemistry between them at all, as characters.
And the ending felt like a cop-out, not very satisfying at all.
48. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Godmother -- I started out really enjoying this book, but it was another one of those where I ended up liking the idea better than the execution (seems to be my year for those...) I like a lot of the kinds of book this is -- modern retellings of fairy tales, and the kind where the fairy tales all mash together and interact -- and I did like all of those aspects in the set-up: Sno the rocker's daughter with a jealous model stepmother and the seven Vietman vets with odd nicknames, the modern Puss in boots take, Cinderella working at the stables (the shoe in question ends up being a horse's shoe!), the very, VERY creepy take on Hansel and Gretel with a murderous pedophile in the role of the witch -- those ideas were totally recognizable but original, and the stories were nicely set up. I was less interested in Rose, and the love interest cop's Snow Queen backstory didn't work for me particularly well, but I was fine with the setup of the framing story, too. But once the plot got underway and all the fairy-tales started running into each other, the story lost a lot of its charm for me. And the evil pedophiles plot didn't work for me particularly well once it stopped being a less-is-more creepy thing and started being about body parts in jars and being held up at gunpoint. Spoilers from here? And the evil pedophiles are just so cardboardly evil; I'm not saying I need nuance in pedophiles, but the other characters, even the villains, get some depth and backstory to them -- Snow White's evil stepmother is herself the product of abuse, a beautiful girl who suffered a lot in the foster care system and learned to use her beauty for her own ends; Hansel and Gretel's mother, who ditches them at a mall, is definitely flawed but not actively evil -- so it was disappointing to have the main villain of the story be completely devoid of any kind of positive qualities at all. And conversely, Rose the good social worker and Fred the good cop are SO good and perfect, they really weren't interesting to me as characters, so I couldn't care less about their happily-ever-after. /spoilers I did enjoy the comic relief of Felicity Fortune, the fairy godmother. And it was nice to read a story so grounded in a place I've been (Seattle). On a slightly random note, I found the temporal setting quite disorienting, until I read the afterword -- the book was written in 1994 but set in the "near future", so the technology is definitely early/mid-90s -- nobody has cell phones (though there are "car phones"), computers are big clunky things -- but the vision of lite-dystopian America -- colleges rejecting worthy applicants because of anti-immigrant quotas, stripped down social services budgets, massive layoffs, etc. etc. -- felt disconcertingly modern. There are two more books in the series, and I haven't decided yet if I'll bother with them. Maybe if I come across them at the library/if somebody wants to read along with me?
49. Jonathan Kellerman, Breakdown (Alex Delaware novel) -- It's, you know, Kellerman. More of the same, but I don't read these books for being groundbreaking great literature. I finished the whole thing in about 24 hours, and had a good time with it, which is all I ask. The plot kept me reading, I liked meeting the various secondary characters, like I usually do, and catching up with a few familiar ones from earlier books. The pacing was a bit odd towards the end -- I guess we're no longer doing Alex and Milo putting themselves in danger to foil the bad guys -- this was more like a courtroom drama than a thriller, in terms of climax. (In general, Alex and Milo are starting to feel their age -- talking about retirement and stuff...) And the final bit spoilers with Ovid felt like rather a stretch. But whatever. Also, looks like there's one book in the series we've accidentally skipped: Motive. Should keep an eye out for that.
50. C.B.Lee, Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2) -- I don't know if this sequel is actually better written, or if I just read it more forgivingly because Bells was my favorite character in the first one and this is told from his POV, but none of the things that interfered with my enjoyment of the first one -- ridiculous worldbuilding, cardboard villains, Tubmlrishly earnest attempts at all the representation ever -- really bothered me here, though it is by now means a perfect book. Spoilers from here!
For one thing, it makes the rather odd choice to start before the book it's a sequel to and sort of skimmingly recap the events of Nor Your Sidekick, which I think didn't add anything to the story at all. I mean, I enjoyed seeing a look at the superhero training and testing that Bells goes through, but that could've been handled just fine in flashback, I think, the way we get to see him and Emma meet in kindergarten. (Speaking of which, I was steeling myself for that scene to be unspeakably twee, but it was actually pretty cute, although I do think Emma having helped Bells pick out his name is really unnecessary.)
I was also stealing myself for a love triangle or some other misunderstandings stuff involving Bells and Emma, and, hmm. There was still more of it than I would have wanted, but it was subverted/averted enough that overall I'm pretty positive on how it all worked out. That arc hits a lot of the beats of the YA de rigeur love triangle nonsense, but I thought it did enough things differently with it that by the end I basically didn't mind: Bells and Christina having zero chemistry together and quickly and mutually concluding that they're better off just being friends was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't a fan of the fake dating so much, but neither was Bells, clearly, so it was a pretty short-lived plot point. I also kept wondering if overly-perfect Carlos would turn out to be some kind of spy or whatever, but apparently no, he's just a guy with no plot relevance whatsoever, which is fine. And I hadn't expected Emma's asexuality reveal, though in retrospect, that was the one major LGBTQ+ category which wasn't yet represented among the protagonists, so I probably should've been. I'm pretty curious to see what happens with the Emma and Bells relationship from here, because while I've read books with asexual characters before, not many of them involved actual relationships, and I assume that's where we're headed. Meanwhile, I was also pleased to see that Bells is cheerfully bisexual, that Brandon's crush on his is not going away, and that Emma, in attempting to figure out her sexuality, has gone on dates with girls as well as guys. Oh, and also, on the relationships note, I was worried about yet more de rigeur YA relationship drama when Jess and Abby had their fight, but it was resolved quickly and maturely, so that was also nice to see.
While I had really liked Bells in the first book, one of the things I was kind of "not sure if want" about was the fact that the trans character was the body-shifter. I decided I ultimately didn't have a problem with that (same as I don't have a problem with it in the Craft books that Kai is able to remake her body by magic), but I liked the additional insight that's provided here -- that Bells powers manifested when he started going through puberty (and drifting even further from his image of what he should look like, and the way his being trans is not made seamless just because he has superpowers. Oh, and sspeaking of representation, I see we now have a couple of secondary characters who use "they" as their pronouns, which we were missing from the roster.
There were things in this book other than teenage relationship stuff, although if I'm being honest, those aren't the things I'm reading this series for. It was good to see Bells' family, and Emma's. I was also intrigued to see that Claudia (Jess's sister) seems to be doing something a little more interesting than being Captain Orion's unthinking minion. The side-plot with the resistance, which turned out to be illicit movie watcher was somewhat amusing, as was the actual Resistance they found. The whole thing where Bells goes off on his own and Emma et al rescue him, Bells abilities to turn into not just different people but inanimate objects, and the whole silly plot with the killer robots was about as solid as the plot of the previous book, which is to say -- not at all. But like I said, that's not what I'm reading them for. Even my very generous suspension of disbelief couldn't hold for some part, like what the killer robots could and couldn't do, and especially the idea that the government, which has such absolute control over the information channels that any posted "inconvenient truth" simply disappears within minutes, would keep only one copy of the superhero directory, in hard copy, in a place where a lot of teenagers go. OR that the way to dispose of it is to burn it right on the spot, with pursuit closing in (I think C.B.Lee vastly underestimated the amount of time it takes to thoroughly burn something...) OR that Bells used his compromised Barry identity to gain access to the facility when he could have shifted into absolutely anyone. But these stupid things seem to bug me less than they would in a different book. I guess I'm willing handwave a lot of dumb stuff because of the comics-book-like feel of the canon?
Also, ghis is a really minor point, but there's a lot of chat transcripts in this book. While I appreciated Bells CAPSLOCK OF JOY, and Emma noticing and asking him if he was OK when it was gone, I was pretty annoyed by how much of it there was.
Apparently there are two more books of this, the next one from Emma's POV and the last one presumably from Abby's. I am looking forward to it, because despite the ridiculous plot, I've gotten to be quite fond of these kids. Well, mostly Bells, but reading things from his POV made me more fond of the people he cares about, too.
51. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric and the Shaman (Penric #2)
52. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Fox (Penric #3) -- I really loved the first Penric and Desdemona book when I read it, and then I decided to save the next one for a rainy day, so I'd always have some new Bujold to look forward to. Well, my post-Vallista reading slump seemed like the sort of rainy day I'd been saving it for, plus LMB has been putting out new Penrics often enough that I've fallen behind farther than I intended to. So I read the next two (having decided, after some waffling, to read them in series internal chronological order, rather than pub order). And they were... fine. I like Penric, I like the world of the Five Gods, and LMB is a really excellent writer, but... it would appear that a lot of what I liked about the first Penric book had to do with Penric and Desdemona getting to know each other and learning to work together, and they're less fun for me to read about as an established team. I liked the newly introduced characters OK -- Oswyl and Inglis and some of the secondaries -- but nobody here is shaping out to be an all-time favorite, the way so many of LMB's characters are. And even the writing felt less punchy than in the first Penric novella -- a little bit underedited, not in the sense that anything is bad, but I was noticing authorial tics more than I normally expect to with LMB, which makes me think they didn't get as much pruning as they usually do in the editing process. I mean, I enjoyed them both, but I didn't find them nearly as memorable as I was hoping to, which made me sad. One thing I did like, though, was spoilers for Penric's Fox! the motivation in the murder mystery -- that it was someone looking to kill the demon and not the person carrying it. R says there's a character I'm likely to love in Mira's Last Dance, so I am looking forward to reading the rest of the novellas, but these weren't the kickstart to loving what I'm reading again that I'd been hoping they would be...
53. Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway -- I've been trying to figure out whether this one worked better or less well for me than the Toby Daye books, and I honestly don't know. I think it was farther from my kind of thing in theory, and so it not being really my thing in reality was less disappointing to me, if that makes any sense? Which is to say, I enjoyed the read-through, and I really liked one character and pretty much any bit of dialogue delivered by hear and any scene the character was in, but everything outside of that character grated or niggled in various small ways. I think maybe things I liked/things I didn't like format makes sense for this one (I read it in sync with ikel89 and alenky_cveto4ek, and there's a more organic record of my reading experience in A's LJ, but under f-lock.) ) Spoilers! (including the whodunit)
Things I liked:
- Jack! From the moment she appeared with her biohazard bow tie, I was intrigued, and every time she opened her mouth, I was happy. I'm also glad she gets a happy ending, and had totally not seen the sororicide-as-route-to-a-happy-ending coming, but it's actually perfectly fitting for the character, and so frankly pretty great. (I was happy to learn from cyanshadow that book 2 is about Jack and Jill, though I'd rather have Jack's further adventures than a prequel, I think. Definitely planning to read it anyway!)
- Kade and the way his transness was revealed. I'm not entirely confident I would've picked up on it as readily if I hadnt already known there was a trans boy character in the book, but as it is, the subtlety was really nicely done, and I liked the character himself. I feel like there's enough of a balance there where his identity does flavor his story a lot, but I also got a good sense for him outside of that, and it just felt nicely handled. The only sour note was the absolutely random and unnecessary (to the plot; I admit it is probably not unnecessary from a representation standpoint) calling out transphobia scene, but thats not about Kade himself, so I don't count it against him.
- Loriel's Webworld of heroic and magical insects, and the bittersweetness of the door for her to go back being in her house the whole time, and the world really waiting to receive her back.
Things I was mixed on:
- Nancy's asexuality. On the one hand, it's neat from a representation standpoint, especially with the line being clearly drawn that she's asexual but not aromantic. On the other hand, it felt like the clunkiest possible reveal, just dumped into the conversation. I'm even willing to accept that it may not be unrealistic at a certain point in one's journey of self-understanding. But as elegant as the Kade reveal was, this was, like, the opposite, and felt really jarring to me. But I feel like I've seen asexuality reveals done better even in books which I didn't think were necessarily stellar in other respects, like the Sidekick Squad and Natural History of Dragons sequels.
- The murder mystery. Seanan McGuire is just not very good at writing mysteries, IMO, which is why I'm puzzled that she keeps trying. I mean, I'm willing to cut Nancy et al some slack, because they're traumatized teenagers only half-living in the present world, rather than grown-ups with investigative experience like Toby Daye, so I cant jusdge them AS harshly for being oblivious. But if the animated skeleton of a murder victim points to the air next to an identical twin, even if said twin is in denial about her (vampire-obsessed) sister being the murderer, I still expect THE OTHER PERSON to be able to figure it out. Really, the reason this is on the mixed rather than "did not work" list is that I did like the motivation of the murderer -- building a "skeleton key" to get back to her world. And the horror elements of the murders, while not my own actual cup of tea, were pretty nicely done, I thought; but then, I feel like McGuire has always been pretty good at writing atmospheric horror elements (too bad that's not what I read her books for).
- I keep going back and forth on this between "mixed and "did not work", but I'll just park it here: Nancy as a protagonist. This may be intentional or not, but she felt a lot younger than 17 (compared to, say, L and her friends, who are a little younger even), and generally oblivious. Her "I don't understand all these words you are using!" made her feel rather dim, because I was definitely able to figure out what all the other characters meant by "High Logic" and "Wicked" and so on -- it's not that complicated! But after a while that stopped annoying me and I just kind of started being amused by the (probably unintentional) notion that Nancy, with her stillness, was also slow intellectually. But it's not a trait I like in my protagonists...
- Most of the portal worlds, at least the way they were shown/implied to be. The nonense worlds like Sumi's are just boring to me personally (so it's probably a good thing that we didn't see more of them). I could feel zero attraction for Nancy's world of the dead, so found her longing for it hard to understand. In fact, not a single world seemed like something I'd want to go back to or even visit once, except maybe Loriel's. I'm mostly willing to count this as a feature rather than a bug, because it's canonically pretty clear that the worlds are tailored to the people who find them, and ending up in a different world than "yours" is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. So, I'm not supposed to find any of these worlds attractive, because theyre not for ME. But at the same time, yearning to get back is the central theme of the book -- it's Nancy's (abrupt) happy ending, it's Jill's motivation for murder, it's the whole idea behind the setting itself (I did appreciate the acknowledgement that there are people who DON'T want to get back to the portal worlds, they're just at a different school; I was wondering about that, before it was mentioned) -- and so not getting the appeal interfered with the immersive reading experience. And I found the taxonomy of the worlds (Logic vs Nonsense, Wicked vs Virtue) both totally artificial/non-intuitive, and what's more COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY to anything the book was actually about, and given how many paragraphs were spent on it in a relatively short novella, that seems like a total waste. Oh, and generational portals where the girls expect their daughters to find their doors again? So fucking creepy, to my mind, and it being presented as a positive thing, apparently, was a very O.o moment for me. I did admire Eleanor's plan to wait until she was senile and then go into her Nonsense world, though -- that is simultaneously both creepy and oddly heart-warming...
Things that did not work for me for the most part:
- The writing, replete with authorial soapboxing, which I don't like in the best of times, but REALLY don't like when it makes no fucking sense in the context of the story. The "silence of women" explanation for why more girls than boys end up in portal worlds did not work for me at all, and I think soured me on much of the worldbuilding in the rest of the book, because it doesn't seem to align with how portals actually work in this book, or with how portal fantasies work on a meta level (in fact, I'm more used to the kind where a boy blunders through and then a girl -- sister or lover -- has to go save his impulsive ass). And then there's Sumi's note at the end, which does not seem like something Sumi would say, or would be motivated to say to Nancy after their brief acquaintance, or (as alenky_cveto4ek points out) something that Nany would be reasonably expected to find and read, or something that really makes sense within the context of the story -- but it sure makes for a nice sound bite, so in it goes. Authorial soapboxing aside, I just didn't find the writing to be Hugo-worthy. There is so much telling rather than showing, in Nancy falling under suspicion from the other kids (if this was meant to add tension to the story, it certainly did no such thing for me), in characters having to explain each other's motivations (which, given that the book is written in omniscient, seems unnecessary as well as clunky), and that epilogue? I found it sub-standardly written by fanfic levels, let alone profic, let alone award-winning profic. I'm not sure what to make of how weak it is -- McGuire couldn't bear to end the book on a bittersweet note and wanted to include Nancy finding her door?
A couple of quotes (all of them, you'll note, from Jack):
"Points for knowing the feminine form of 'murderer, although I'm a little insulted that you feel the need to put a lacy bow on the crime before you can believe I committed it."
To Kade: "Sometimes I suspect you learned all your hallmarks of masculinity from a Neanderthal."
"Where did you find the whipped cream?" he asked.
"You had milk, I had science. [...] It's amazing how much of culinary achievement can be summarized by that sentence."
Christopher: "You must be a lot of fun at parties."
Jack: "It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I'm the life, death, and resurrection of the place."
"It's just that usually if someone around here is going to be callous and odd, it's me." [I see your Willow Rosenberg near-quote, btw.]
Nancy: "You killed your sister."
Jack: "Murder trials are so messy, aren't they? And death isn't forever if you know what you're doing."
All that said, there is one thing for which I totally am grateful to this book: It (or maybe the sync-read associated with it) finally broke through my reading write-up block left in the wake of Vallista, when I was starting to wonder if anything would.
54. Nina Kossman, Behind the Border -- a totally unexpected addition to my year's reading, courtesy of
ambyr continuing to declutter the stuff from her childhood she's left at her parents' place. This is a series of anecdotes from a Soviet ex-pat who came to America around the same age I did (although about a decade earlier, from what I can tell), published in 1994 aimed at American children, but very neat for me to read. Despite the decade or decade-and-a-half separating me from Nina, her school experience was eerily similar to mine -- she could've easily been a contemporary, until perestroka kicked in for me: the classroom paper hanging on the wall, the competition to become one of the Young Pioneers in the first batch (which I managed, of course; I was a very good student), the Pavlik Morozov discussions, writing with blot-prone fountain pens -- that was all very familiar. And at home, farina/mannaya kasha as a dreaded staple (although I disagree that the food was not tasty; there wasn't much variety to it, but my great-grandmother made very tasty things with chicken and potatoes); gum as a rarity which you would lend out to people or trade for things (I even remember the specific red ball gum that Nina describes); floating in the Black Sea and looking "at Turkey"; being the only kid in class with a watch (although mine was not an analog one like Nina's but a digital white Casio that my father brought home from the US visit). Anyway, so, yeah, most of the stories felt very recognizable, although the "painting the Red Square red" one made me raise my eyebrows -- that one really reads more like a piece of fiction than something a real kid would do... But maybe a kid who'd read a lot of fiction would have, so it could be true, I guess... I was also very intrigued by Nina's father having a sister in England whom he got to go visit -- I really wonder how that came about... The book ends rather abruptly with Nina realizing that she does want to leave Russia and waiting for permission to leave, and I wouldve liked to see what happens past that, but I guess emigration is not what she wanted to write about. I did walk away from the book with the feeling that it was written with an agenda to show the negative side of growing up (Jewish) in Russia, which, fair enough, plenty of material there, but I would've found a more balanced book more interesting, I think. Also, the translation of "za granitsej" literally as "behind the border", starting with the title and through every instance of that phrase being used in the book, continued to bug me. It's not wrong, per se, but it's jarring -- "behind" doesn't seem like quite the right flavor for me.
It looks like Kossman has translated some of Tsvetaeva's poetry, which I might be curious to take a look at, if it ever crosses my path...
Speaking of reading, cyanshadow tipped me off that Ann Leckie's Provenance is on Kindle-sale right now for $2.99 -- in case that's of relevance to anyone else on my flist.
**
Books read in 2017:
1. Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder
2. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
3. M.C.A.Hogarth, A Rose Point Holiday
4. Rose Lerner, Listen to the Moon
5. M.C.A.Hogarth, Even the Wingless
6. T.Kingfisher, Summer in Orcus
7. Patrick Weekes, The Palace Job
8. Patrick Weekes, The Prophecy Con
9. Patrick Weekes, The Paladin Caper
10. Steven Brust, Jhereg (reread)
11. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
12. V.E.Schwab, Vicious
13. C.B.Lee, Not Your Sidekick
14. Dave Barry, Best State Ever
15. Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
16. Emily Skrutskie, The Abyss Surrounds Us
17. Becky Albertalli, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda
18. David Levithan, Boy Meets Boy
19. Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, Rebel
20. Martha Wells, All Systems Red
21. Becky Albertalli, The Upside of Unrequited
22. Jordan L. Hawk, Undertow
23. Nora Sakavic, The Foxhole Court
24. Nora Sakavic, The Raven King
25. Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit
26. Cale Dietrich, The Love Interest
27. Yoon Ha Lee, Raven Stratagem
28. Nora Sakavic, The King's Men
29. Ben Aaronovitch, The Furthest Station
30. Jordan L. Hawk, Draakenwood
31. Vic James, The Gilded Cage
32. Rachel Aaron, Nice Dragons Finish Last
33. Cassandra Clare, Forbidden Parabatai Het #2 (i.e. Lord of Shadows)
34. Steven Brust, Iorich (reread)
35. T. Kingfisher, Jackalope Wives and Other Stories
36. Dorothy Dunnett, A Game of Kings
37. Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
38. Avoliot, The Course of Honor
39. Ben Aaronovitch, Black Mould (Rivers of London GN)
40. Naomi Novik, Golden Age and Other Stories (Temeraireverse short fiction)
41. Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands
42. Monstrous Affections anthology (Kelly Link and Gavin Grant ed)
43. Noelle Stevenson, Nimona
44. Steven Brust, Tiassa (reread)
45. Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
46. Steven Brust, Vallista
47. Alex Gabriel, Love for the Cold-Blooded, Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero
48. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Godmother
49. Jonathan Kellerman, Breakdown
50. C.B.Lee, Not Your Villain
51. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric and the Shaman
52. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Fox
53. Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway
54. Nina Kossman, Behind the Border
**
The first book you read in 2017:
Rose Lerner's Sweet Discorder, which I started right after finishing True Pretenses, which was my last book of 2016. (It was the book I guessed I would finish first on last year's version of this meme. Apparently I was also reading The Obelisk Gate and Grand Central Arena at the time, too, but neither of those is finished yet...)
The last book you finished in 2017:
Nina Kossman's "Behind the Border", which
ambyr gave me during our holiday meet-up.
The first book you will finish (or did finish!) in 2018:
Detective Stories, the new Rivers of London graphic novel which just came out in December. I had it on pre-order and started reading it right away, but didn't actually have a chance to get very far in (too bad, because I was planning on reading it and then handing it on to
aome along with volumes 2 and 3). And after that, probably White Teeth -- I'm 71% in and have been reading it most diligently on my commute.
How many books read in 2017?
53. Way down from last year's 76, and it's the smartphone largely to blame... but partly also that it was an odd reading year probably -- I started and did not finish a lot of books, went through a bad book hangover after Vallista...
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
Only 1 non-fiction in the lot -- the Nina Kossman kid bio thing. But also at
isis's intriguing rec, I picked up Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot and have started reading it. That thing is like 900 pages, though, so it's going to take me a while.
Male/Female authors?
I made a point to actually keep a tally this year of various things as I read, so:
Books: 34 books written by females, 16 books written by males; 2 written by authors whose gender I can't take a solid guess at, and 1 by a mixed-gender bunch (the anthology). Interestingly enough, the same number of "male" books as last year, and many fewer "female" books -- but last year's reading was heavily dominated by one female author, which explains a lot of that. Female to male "book" ratio = 67% F / 23% M.
Authors: for this one, I'm counting just individual authors I've read, so that the effect of being swamped by series is factored out somewhat. I read 28 female authors and 8 male authors (similar to last year, just a little less in each category, so the ratio is still pretty skewed towards female, with 78% F / 22% M, which is similar to last year, but a little bit more female-skewed, although part of that is that 2 books count for 4 female authors.
Also, because it's interesting, I tried to keep track of the gender of *protagonists*, too. (I'm excluding the autobiography from this because, well, that wasn't a choice.) The result (counting each book, not series) is 11 female protagonists and 27 male protagonists (or only 30% F / 70% M). Last year I was excluding books with both male and female protagonists, but actually this year there were as many of those books as books with female protagonists, for two reasons -- a couple of het romance books where both the male and female lead got POVs, and more ensemble-y books with a mixed-gender group (e.g. Six of Crows, the Weekes books, etc.) Oh, and there's a first! -- a book with a non-gendered protagonist, in the Murderbot (who prefers "it" as its pronouns). Anyway, a lot of the F-authored M-protagonist books are genre m/m and queer YA, continuing the trend from last year, but the M-protagonist dominated lists seem to just be a thing that happens every year, regardless of what it is I'm predominantly reading.
Breakdown by author:
Female:
- Sakavic* -- 3
- Lerner -- 2
- MCA Hogarth -- 2
- Vernon/T.Kingfisher -- 2
- C.B. Lee* -- 2
- Albertalli* -- 2
- Hawk -- 2
- LMB -- 2
- Clare -- 1 (+ a short story in an anthology)
- Skrutskie* -- 1
- Morrison* -- 1
- Schwab* -- 1
- Wells -- 1
- Vic James* -- 1
- Dunnett* -- 1
- Rachel Aaron* -- 1
- Mackenzi Lee* -- 1
- Novik -- 1
- SRB -- 1
- Noelle Stevenson* -- 1
- Scarbrough* -- 1
- McGuire -- 1
- Kossman* -- 1
- Mary Ann Shaffer* + Annie Barrows* -- 0.5 each
- Rachel Manija Brown + Sherwood Smith -- 0.5 each
Male:
- Brust -- 4 (3 rereads)
- Weekes* -- 3
- YHL -- 2 (+ a bunch of uncollected short stuff)
- Aaronovitch -- 2
- Dave Barry -- 1
- Kellerman -- 1
- Gaiman -- 1
- Levithan -- 1
Not specified:
- Alex Gabriel* -- 1
- Avoliot* -- 1
* = new-to-me author this year. The interesting thing here is that only one male author (Weekes) was completely new to me (I'd read something co-authored by Levithan and short stories by YHL), but quite a few of the female authors were new (half, and more if the "not specified" authors are female, like I suspect they are).
Most books read by one author this year?
Last year my reading list was heavily dominated by Jordan L. Hawk (14 titles). The year before that, it was ~ 3 books per author for a bunch of authors, and this year is more like that again. If rereads count, Brust wins with 4 titles, but if rereads DON'T count, then it's a tie between Patrick Weekes and Nora Sakavic (3 books apiece).
Favorite books read?
Ninefox Gambit (and sequel) were both books I loved a lot. Over on the non-genre side, I really loved Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, immediately started the other Albertalli book right after I'd finished, and also recommended 'Simon' to L, who liked it just as much. And In Other Lands, probably, even though it was not as uniformly great as I would have liked. Also, The Gilded Cage was not flawless, but impressed me enough that I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel, and am looking forward to reading the sequel to Six of Crows.
Best books you read in 2017?
Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye was definitely powerful, and a book I'm glad to have read, for general cultural literacy, but very much not my genre, so harder for me to judge. I also liked the beginning of 'Guernsey Literary Society' -- actually, everything except the Hollywood ending. I think Raven Stratagem is pretty good, without the problems of Ninefox Gambit's beginning. Nothing was a blow-me-away standout, the way Fifth Season was last year.
Least favorite?
Forbidden Parabatai Het #2 was pretty bad, but getting to mock it in league with ikel89 was pretty fun, and actually I think it may be better, objectively, than Lady Midnight? So least favorite book has got to be The Love Interest probably -- not much redeeming about it, besides the initial premise, and even forewarned not to expect much I ended up boggling at just how bad it got how quickly.
Most disappointing book/Book you wished you loved more than you did?
The books I disliked/where I'd liked the premise more than the execution, I was kind of warned or otherwise prepared about, so they weren't disappointments. I was mildly disappointed that Upside of Unrequited didn't live up to the wonderfulness of 'Simon', but did still really enjoy the book. I was disappointed to learn Vallista would be a gothic (a genre I don't care for), but still liked it anyway, if not nearly as much as Hawk.
Probably the 'most disappointing was thus 'Guernsey Literary Society' -- because it had started out being SO GOOD, and the ending retroactively cheapened the whole thing for me, with its serendipitous twee-ness (and I have a nagging feeling that this wasn't the original author's design, but changes made by the niece who finished editing the book when the original author was dying/after she'd passed away).
Also, I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, that the two other Rose Lerner books I read ('Sweet Disorder' and 'Listen to the Moon') didn't really work for me as romances and not super well as books either; I'd thought maybe I'd found an author who could write (non-genre) romances in a way that appealed to me, but apparently that was just True Pretenses/Ash and Lydia specifically....
Best series you discovered in 2017?
Definitely Machineries of Empire! I loved both the books I read this year, enjoyed at least one of the published shorter works ("Battle of Candle Arc"; the young Jedao story was less of a hit for me, though it was nice to see Jedao actually having fun for a change), a lot of the ficlets in
yhlee's DW, and I can't wait for Revenant Gun.
Other new series for me this year (defined as I read at least one book in a series I've not read before and I haven't ruled out reading more -- or, alternatively, have finished the whole series) would be: the Lymond Chronicles (impressive but SO OVERWHELMING), Murderbot Diaries, Six of Crows (I've started Crooked Kingdom but am not very far yet), Sidekick Squad, The Abyss Surrounds Us, Vicious (I probably will read the sequel, even if I really don't care for more Eli), and the murdersports anime (which, I'm still kind of amazed I tuck through the whole thing. The power of ikel89's charisma XD).
Favorite new author you discovered this year?
Becky Albertalli. I loved 'Simon' and liked 'Unrequited' well enough, and can't wait for the Simon sequel from Leah's POV.
It's possible Mary Ann Shaffer (the first author of 'Guernsey' belongs on this list, too, but there will be no more books from her, of course...) I do plan to keep an eye out for more from Emily Skrutskie (of The Abyss Surrounds Us) because I was very impressed by how she managed her first novel, Vic James, and also Patrick Weekes, whose zany style I find generally entertaining if far from flawless.
Also, I finally read something by Toni Morrison, and I'm glad I did, but the heaviness of the material is unlikely to make her a favorite author for me. (L's AP English class will probably be reading something else by Morrison next semester -- Song of Solomon, I think -- and I'm definitely planning on joining in.)
I had actually read a few Yoon Ha Lee's short stories before (and didn't care for them at all), so he is not new to me -- but definitely the case where I suddenly have a favorite new author out of nowhere. (This is the second year it's happened -- last year the best book I'd read also came from an author I'd pretty much written off as not my thing, N.K.Jemisin.)
Other new authors (not so many as last year...) were more mixed. C.B.Lee was earnest but very Tumblery in the first book, although either I was inured to it or she's gotten better about it in book 2. Cale Dietrich and Mackenzi Lee's books were more disappointing than not, and Nora Sakavic of the murdersports anime is clearly interested in telling different sorts of stories than I'm interested in reading. V.E. Schwab definitely has some potential, but Vicious was highly flawed and I didn't get very far into 'Darker Shade of Magic' before getting bored (though I might go back with enough peer pressure...).
Oldest book read?
The Game of Kings (1961) beats out The Bluest Eye (1970) by almost a decade. The next oldest, I think, are 'Boy Meets Boy' (2003) and 'Guernsey' (2008), and everything else is just from the last handful of years...
Newest?
Penric's Fox is from August 2017, Not Your Villain from October 5, Vallista from October 17, so I guess Vallista it is.
Longest book title?
Love for the Cold-Blooded: Or: the Part-Time Evil Minion's Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero (17 words!). And here I thought 'Guernsey' was going to be the winner, with its 8 word title! There were a couple 5-6 word titles on the list (like in previous years), but nothing else came close to those two (since I didn't read any non-fiction :P).
Shortest title?
Turned out to be Rebel (followed by a couple of 6-letter single-word titles like Nimona, Tiassa, Iorich)
How many re-reads?
Several Vlad Taltos books -- Jhereg along with ikel89 and cyanshadow, and Iorich and Tiassa in preparation for Vallista coming out.
Any in translation?
Nope, not this year... And none in Russian, either, alas. (I read part of a Witcher book in Russian, which counts for translation as well, but did not finish, so am not counting it.) I did read some fic in Russian, including some translated fics for curiosity's sake, but yeah, no, definitely not counting fic here.
How many of this year's books were from the library?
I kept a spreadsheet and everything, which I started doing in 2014.
- only 1 book from the library, which frankly shocked me -- and, moreso, it wasn't even a book I checked out, but one my mother did and I borrowed. This category has basically disappeared, when before the Kindle it dominated everything.
- 1 book from L's school, which I read alongside her (The Bluest Eye)
- 2 were presents, from
aome and
ambyr, (which, huh, usually this number is higher...)
- 2 were online freebies
- 3 were rereads of books I already owned (the Vlads)
- 4 were books I borrowed, 2 in e-copy (from
aome) and 2 in hard copy (Dave Barry from my mother and Lymond from Awesome Friend Ali)
- 16 were, ahem, sourced online. This is higher again than last year, but... I subsequently bought copies of 3 of them as presents, bought a sequel to 1, received another as a legitimate present, and most of the rest I simply wouldn't have bothered to read otherwise, so I don't feel too bad about it.
- 26 were bought by me -- a little less than last year, but actually a higher percentage. All but 2 were in ebook form, and the two that were hard copies were graphic novels (Nimona and Black Mould) -- this is an even higher percentage than the previous year
All in all, btw, that's only 8 books in hard copy, or even more dominated by ebooks -- it was 2/3 last year, and is now up to over 85%.
Book that most changed my perspective:
Most changed my perspective on the author: Ninefox Gambit, which was the first thing I read by YHL that I liked. And 'Guernsey' is probably the book that affected my world-view the most, in that before I read it, I'd known that the Channel Islands had been occupied by Germany during WWII, but had no idea what that actually was like.
Favorite character:
Let's see, some new-to-me favorites this year: Jedao and Mikodez and (the minor) Colonel Ragath from Machineries of Empire; Elliot Schafer from In Other Lands; Bells from the Sidekick Squad; Jack from Every Heart a Doorway, maybe Kail from the Weekes books and Felicity in 'Vice and Virtue'? This is a MUCH shorter list than usual, which probably explains why this year has felt sort of lackluster in reading. I mean, I continued to like Peter Grant and Penric and Vlad, and enjoyed the return of Felicite's POV in the Change books, but it's not quite the same as meeting a brand new character I love... Also, Simon doesn't quite make it as a protagonist, but his family as a unit does.
Most memorable character:
In addition to those above, Lymond, Murderbot, Nimona, Silyen and Gavar in The Gilded Cage, Serena in Vicious, and Kaz in Six of Crows.
Favorite scene:
No super-strong favorites this year, but here's a couple I liked a lot / that stuck with me:
The scene of Victor's near-death experience in Vicious. It was a book that I found more disappointing than not, but everything about that scene (except the aftermath with Angie) worked really well for me, worldbuilding and character interaction and prose.
On a very different thematic note, the scene in Rebel where Our Heroes go to see a play based on an ancient dystopian novel was hilarious.
Favorite quote:
I usually answer this question by going through all of my write-ups and excerpting the quotes I'd marked down that still ping me. So here are a few:
From Summer in Orcus, a quote which I read to both the rodents and B, meaningfully:
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Summer, whose mother loved her very very very much. || Her mother loved her so much that she was not allowed to play outside where someone might grab her, nor go away on sleepovers where there might be an accident or suspicious food. She was not allowed to go away to camp, where she might be squashed by a horse or bitten by diseased mosquitoes, and she most certainly was not allowed to go on the Ferris Wheel at the carnival because (her mother said) the people who maintain the machinery are lazy and not very educated and might get drunk and forget to put a bolt back on and the entire thing could come loose at any moment and fall down and kill everyone inside, and they should probably leave the carnival immediately before it happened. [...] Summer had never had a father, and wasn’t entirely sure what you did with one, and certainly her mother never had anything good to say about the one Summer didn’t have. But she sometimes thought that it would be nice to have a brother or a sister, not because she particularly liked other children but because it would have been nice to have somebody to share the burden of her mother’s love. If there had been two of them, maybe they could have taken turns. Surely her mother wouldn’t have the energy to keep barging in on both of them in the bathtub. || Unfortunately, there was only Summer.She didn’t want to hurt her mother. [...] During good times, her mother baked cookies and sang songs and showed her how to tie her shoes and helped her with her homework when it was hard (and sometimes when it wasn’t, which was a little bit annoying.) She just wanted her mother to love her a little bit less, like a normal person, so that she could go to camp and not have to leave the carnival early."
A couple from All Systems Red:
"Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I'd rather climb back into Hostile One's mouth."
"'SecUnit, your opinion.'
Frotunately, I had one now. Up to the point where we'd gotten the drone download, my opinion had been mostly oh, shit."
And a few more random ones:
"People say it was a hard spell, but I think that's because most people don't understand magic. It was easy the way dying's easy or birthing's easy. It's not hard, it just hurts a whole hell of a lot." (- T. Kingfisher, "Razorback")
"The value of people does not rest on their ability to hurt others. Where's the honor in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can't win any other way. As if I can't win in a better way." (Elliot in In Other Lands)
"Unhand that science!" (Ambrosius in Nimona)
"It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I'm the life, death, and resurrection of the place." (Jack in Every Heart a Doorway)
Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Well, Machineries of Empire, and Raven Stratagem in particular, inspired me to fanwork, and was the only new book to do so, so I guess that?
How many you'd actually read again?
I could see myself rereading the Machineries of Empire books, especially if Revenant Gun provides some Kujen revelations. I feel no immediate need to reread Vallista, but I tend to reread Dragaera books in general, so maybe I will... I could see rereading 'Simon vs' just because it's so adorable, and maybe 'In Other Lands' for Elliot entertaining value, too. And Gaiman's 'Norse Mythology' also seems like a thing that lends itself well to rereads. Oh, and I think I may have actually reread most of 'Course of Honor' already, keeping pace with ikel89's read :P
A book that you never want to read again:
The Bluest Eye (too depressing), and the books I didn't like much ('Minion's Guide', Forbidden Parabatai Het, Love Interest).
Book you recommended most to others in 2017?
I recommended Ninefox Gambit and In Other Lands a fair bit (and also gave several copies as presents). I also recommended Not Your Sidekick a couple of times to specific rec requests for having lots of queer and POC protagonists, and in particular a major trans (and specifically FTM trans) character.
The book series you read the most volumes of in 2017:
Last year this was dominated by Whyborne & Griffin. This year the answer is Vlad Taltos if rereads count (Vallista + 3 books I'd already read), but if rereads DON'T count, then... it's a tie between the Rogues of the Republic books by Patrick Weekes and murdersports anime, apparently XP (3 volumes each), and then two apiece for a bunch of others: Roser Lerner's Lively St Lemeston series, Machineries of Empire, Sidekick Squar, Penric, more Whyborne & Griffin, and Rivers of London (a novella and a comic book).
The genre you read the most in 2017:
Fantasy overall: 27 (back to dominating, but kind of mixed within the category)
- 10 general (secondary world) fantasy
- 6 urban fantasy
- 3 portal fantasy? (or at least with a strong portal element)
- 3 historical / paranormal m/m
- 3 AU sort of worlds, where it's a recognizable historical period, and various degrees like our world, but with some massive departures that have affected the history of the world (I'm putting Novik, Six of Crows, and Gilded Cage here)
- 1 postapocalyptic
- 18 fantasy/paranormal m/m (sometimes it was a fine line between that and other fantasy kinds, but if there was more porn than plot, I put it in this category)
Sci-fi: 7 (way down from last year, but still more than in years before, I feel like)
I'm not sure whether to put superhero type books in fantasy or sci-fi -- it kind of feels like a separate genre with separate conventions, but there were 4 of them this year (also largely queer).
Non-paranormal romance: 2 [Lerner]
Lit: 2 [Guernsey, Bluest Eye]
Mystery: 1 [Kellerman]
Dystopia? 1 (I'm not sure how else to characterize Love Interest, tbh...)
Historical: 1 [Lymond]
Humor: 1 [Dave Barry]
Non-fiction: 1 [Behind the border]
Non-fantasy YA: 6 [all of it queer (m/m) other than Upside of Unrequited, which is primarily het but the a f/f secondary couple, and all of it K's fault/credit]
Graphic novels: 2 [RoL, Nimona]
I also decided to count adult vs YA vs kidlit, applying judgement, of course:
Adult: 31
YA: 22
Kidlit: 1 [Behind the Border. I don't think Summer in Orcus is really kidlit...]
A lot more heavily dominated by YA, which is kind of what I'd been feeling qualitatively.
Your favorite "classic" you read in 2017:
I think only The Bluest Eye probably counts as a classic? Or maybe Lymond too? I did like both of them, though they're not going to top any favorites lists.
Most surprising (in a good way) book of the year?
Probably Ninefox Gambit, because I hadn't been expecting to fall for something written by Yoon Ha Lee, based on how little of an impression his short stories had made on me.
The hardest book you read in 2017 (topic or writing style):
A Game of Kings (the Lymond) because of the overwhelming eruditeness. (Emotionally hard would be a different answer, but that's a book I haven't managed to finish at all yet: The Obelisk Gate, because I have to put it down every time I get to Nessun's POV, because OUCH.)
The funniest book you read in 2017:
I read Dave Barry's book about Florida, which was pretty funny... but probably not the funniest thing I read all year. Probably In Other Lands was the funniest, but Nimona also made me laugh out loud a couple of times.
The saddest book you read in 2017:
'Guernsey', maybe. The Bluest Eye is also full of awful things (without the safe remove of genre which comes into play in dystopias), but I found 'Guernsey' more personally affecting.
The shortest book you read in 2017:
In terms of words content/thickness, Black Mould (a comic book). Or, if full-on comic books are to be excluded, Behind the Border is only 95 pages of pretty large print. If we're not counting kidlit either, then Penric's Fox at 113 pages, which is shorter than either Penric and the Shaman or All Systems Red.
The longest book that you read in 2017:
Lord of Shadows (FPH#2) was 721 pages (1 page longer than Lady Midnight). I don't think anything else even came close this year...
Best book that was outside your comfort zone/a new genre for you?
Both 'Guernsey' and The Bluest Eye are outside of my comfort zone/typical genre, and they were both really good. And Lymond was definitely outside of my comfort zone too, both in terms of genre -- I don't read historicals -- and in terms just being really hard to digest. (It's also really good, I'm just a tad scared of it.)
Most thrilling, unputdownable book of 2017?
This year's Kellerman was somehow less exciting than it normally is... Maybe Six of Crows? It did make me miss my stop twice, so lets go with that XP
Most beautifully written book in 2017?
Prose-wise, I think I really liked T.Kingfisher this year, especially several stories in the Jackalope Wives collection, and 'Guernsey Literary Society'.
Book you most anticipated in 2017?
VALLISTA!
Favorite cover of a book you read in 2017?
I don't even know what the covers of the Kindle books look like, mostly, although the phone app at least puts them up in color... I like the cover of Six of Crows, and the style of the Patrick Weekes covers, and the "paper silhouette" look of the cover of The Gilded Cage:
Book that had the greatest impact on you this year?
Ninefox Gambit, since that was probably my main fandom this year and that was the book that set it off.
Book you can't believe you waited till 2017 to finally read?
Game of Kings. I've been meaning to read Lymond for years! (Now watch it be another decade before I dare pick up book 2...)
Book that had a scene that left you reeling and dying to talk to someone about it?
The, to quote
eglantiere, creepiest use of origami scene in Raven Stratagem -- especially when the penny dropped for me as to why Khiruev's fleet was the Swanknot Swarm.
(Usually I have more scenes to choose from, but it looks like this year's books were heavier on TALKING than action...)
Looking Ahead:
One book you didn't read this year that will be your #1 priority in 2018?
I have a whole bunch of books I need to FINISH this year: like several Craft books, including Ruin of Angels, which I'm a quarter into. And then a bunch I've been meaning to start and haven't: the rest of the Ancillary books and Provenance, Sorcerer to the Crown (which I now own), Magnus Chase #2 and 3 (which, ditto), several Maggie Stiefvater books that L got for her birthday that I haven't yet read, The Night Circus (same provenance), the sequels to Cloud Roads.
New book you are most anticipating for 2018?
REVENANT GUN! (June 2018 supposedly)
And I'm not sure any other books I'm looking forward to have confirmed publication dates *sigh* They are, in order of likelihood of appearance:
- Thorn of Emberlain ??
- RoL??? Lies Sleeping?? WHEN???
- Warboy (Warchild #4)
- Peace Talks doesn't have a release date yet, so who knows when that will actually be...
- Paarfi Book, which I hope will be coming out in 2018, but which probably won't...
- Doors of Stone (Kvothe #3) if it ends up being released in 2017 (which it won't...)
- and ditto for Winds of Winter (and hopefully I will still care by the time it comes along, which seems increasingly unlikely)
*
Aaaand it looks like my fannish memes are too long to post without maxing out LJ's character limit, so that'll be a different post. I'll probably append them to the Fandom Snowflake stuff which will start tomorrow, yay!
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1066085.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).