The Big Meow (Diane Duane): Third novel about with the feline wizards responsible for Grand Central's worldgates. This time, they're on a consulting trip to mid-20th C Los Angeles. I was fairly "meh" about this one; the question of "defeated entropy incarnate twice, what next?" is answered with "lovecraftian horrors, of course. And time travel. ( Read more... )

Air (Geoff Ryman): Absolutely worth reading. Do you know why this got a Tiptree? Because it's a story about a woman in a fake -stan. There's a number of interlocking plot threads that dovetail and swoop around each other to say more than the sum of their individual stories. Do you know why you've never heard about this story? Because there's really ( Read more... )

Mirror Dance, Memory (Lois McMaster Bujold): Ah yes, the classic signs of a bad day: you are in complete sympathy with Howl, in a "let's go to Macy's and buy several hundred dollars of makeup and professional clothes I don't need" way. (I didn't go to Macy's. I may have browsed the website, though. Ironing gets really old ( Read more... )

I had brilliant plans for a special two-month deal, but then I noticed it was swiftly heading for a three-month book log. So here's September.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University (Kevin Roose): The subtitle says it all: a Brown University student transfers to Liberty University, bastion of evangelical ( Read more... )

I think there's an unintentional theme this month. You figure it out.

The Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera): Reread. Picked it up the first time after seeing the movie. What's picked up a little in the movie is the intersection of the daily and the supernatural. What isn't picked up is how much of the book is influenced by the narration by Kahu's uncle ( Read more... )

Climbing Mount Improbable (Richard Dawkins): Dawkins on natural selection as the power behind life and evolution. A number of interesting case studies showing the gradual accumulation of "irreducible" complexity. Unfortunately, the book didn't really gel for me, or engage my intellect at the level which The Selfish Gene did. Some that may be the ( Read more... )

Instead of reading books I read the paper and did logic puzzles. I am hopeless at Sudoku, so my reading list lost a lot of ground to the numbers 1-9.

Garlic and Sapphires (Ruth Reichl): LA Times restaurant reviewer switches coasts to become the NY Times restaurant reviewer. ( If books could be foods, this might be a meringue. )

Locked Rooms (Laurie R. King): In all my griping about plausibility and suspension of disbelief, it's easy to forget is how fun the Holmes/Russell books are. Deep? Reflective? Heck no. On the other hand, ( Erratic spoilers. )

Journals can be episodic in weird ways - blogs do top-posting, so it's very possible to read events in reverse order of what the author (sort of) intended.

This observation brought to you by the comment, "brief notes on audiobooks, while we're on the topic..." which is in the rare position to work from either top or bottom ( Read more... )

The worst part about these long entries is spellchecking them. Apparently I am incapable of implementing the "i before e" rule with any sort of consistency. And in my defense, I finished four of these after finals. I still need to get out more. To save people's friends pages, I'm cutting for length. No spoilers under the cut unless noted.

Edited ( Read more... )