Reading a review of Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor (here) made me realize I don't think I've ever written up my own reactions to the book.

I first read Shards of Honor about 10 years ago, after reading The Curse of Chalion and The Paladin of Souls and hearing that the Vorkosigan Saga was also great. Out of what I'm sure is a natural ( Read more... )

All the blurbs and reviews I saw about Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom talked about its neat imaginary technology and the fascinating “Bitchun Society” resulting from it. Hardly anyone mentioned the characters. This ought to signal alert readers that even most people who liked the book didn’t care about the characters much. Or the ( Read more... )

Or maybe it is, given the book got awards and stuff.

Courtesy of this Requires Hate post - which has some other great links you should check out ("Africans shocked by uncivilized antics of European savages" and the review of AU!Hitler's novel are excellent) - someone is doing a Little Brother read-through which is making me feel so much less alone ( Read more... )

I hear that everyone loves this book. It won three awards. It's literary, deconstructs the tropes of heroism, it's an engaging adventure which says deep things, etc. etc ( Read more... )

I'm sure everyone has had this experience at some point: the entire world is raving about some book being the best thing in literature since The Canterbury Tales, and yet when you try it, you think it's more like an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. Or maybe it isn't bad, but you don't see what the big deal is either - it was a good ( Read more... )

Having found myself in possession of more free time than I'm likely to have again for a good while, I am endeavoring to reduce my pile of books to read before it gets too overwhelming. It's such a luxury to have hours stretching on in which to do this, and to have the energy and focus to want to. That's one thing about school: as much as I enjoyed ( Read more... )