Valkyrdeath's 2018 Reading Record Part 2

Time for a new thread...

Books read:
59. Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
60. Red Dwarf: Better Than Life by Grant Naylor
61. End Days by Deborah Zoe Laufer
62. Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World edited by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro
63. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 7: 1985 by Jimmy Maher
64. Eartha by Cathy Malkasian
65. Thieves' Dozen by Donald E. Westlake
66. Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
67. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
68. Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada
69. Winter by Ali Smith
70. Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

71. The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
72. Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
73. Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham
74. Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham
75. Fables Vol. 3: Storybook Love by Bill Willingham
76. The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
77. Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake
78. I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached
79. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation by Margalit Fox
80. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
81. 2001: An Odyssey in Words edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter
82. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

83. Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo
84. The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben
85. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
86. Sheets by Brenna Thummler
87. James Acaster's Classic Scrapes by James Acaster
88. The Apex Book of World SF Volume 5 edited by Cristina Jurado

89. Ode to a Banker by Lindsey Davis
90. The Red Box by Rex Stout

91. Rhadopis of Nubia by Naguib Mahfouz
92. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
93. Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
94. Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug
95. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

96. Ms. Marvel Vol. 9: Teenage Wasteland by G. Willow Wilson
97. Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook
98. The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
99. The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks
100. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
101. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marias

59. Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
This is the second book of Marillier’s Sevenwaters trilogy and I loved it just as much as the first, if not more. It’s historical fantasy set in ancient Ireland and built around Celtic folklore. The fantasy elements are kept relatively light and only occasionally come to the fore. It moves on a generation from the first book, being narrated by Liadan, daughter of Sorcha from Daughter of the Forest. The writing gives a really good feel for the locations and atmosphere, the story made me want to just keep reading, the romance elements were well done and Liadan is a wonderful lead character. I’m now hoping to get to the next book in much less time than it took me to get to this one.

>2 valkyrdeath: This series has been on my radar since I read a short story set in that world some time back. Your review makes me want to get to it sooner.

>3 janemarieprice: I'd forgotten that she'd done a short story set in Sevenwaters too. If it sounds like something you'd be interested in then I can definitely recommend the two that I've read so far.

>2 valkyrdeath: This series seems perfect for me! I've wishlisted it.

60. Red Dwarf: Better Than Life by Grant Naylor
This is the second book based on the series, and it picks up where the first one left off. Again, it’s written by the writers of the TV show, and takes situations from the series but expands on them and spins them off in new directions. This time it diverges even more from the episodes, making the books worthwhile as their own separate alternate story. The first chunk of the book is taken up by the Better Than Life game, an addictive virtual reality game that gives people everything they wants, but kills people as they never want to leave. It later covers things from the White Hole episode and ends with a section completely original to the book. Once again, the audiobook version is read by Chris Barrie, who played Rimmer in the show and is also an impersonator, meaning he can do the voices of the rest of the cast too. He’s the perfect narrator for these books. I originally read it in print years ago but it was nice to do the audio version this time round because of that.

>5 chlorine: Hope you enjoy it if you get to it!

61. End Days by Deborah Zoe Laufer
This is a rather odd comedy play. It focuses around a family, a goth daughter, her religious fanatic mother and her depressed father. The father was the sole survivor in a company in the World Trade Centre during the 2001 attacks and hasn’t been able to motivate himself to do anything since. The mother has suddenly found religion and sees and holds conversations with Jesus. The daughter takes drugs and sees and has conversations with Stephen Hawking after being loaned a copy of A Brief History of Time by her neighbour. A neighbour who ludicrously goes everywhere, including to school, wearing an Elvis outfit. And the mother is under the impression that the Rapture is about to happen. There were some funny moments, especially in the second half where they’re sat around waiting for the Rapture (or rather where the mother is waiting for it while the others are just hanging around because she’s insisted) but overall it just wasn’t especially memorable. The characters were a little too much exaggerated stereotypes and it meant the more moving moments towards the end didn’t have the impact they might have done had I cared more about the characters. It was fun enough though, just not one that’s likely to stick with me.

>8 valkyrdeath: Intriguing premise, too bad it didn't live up. Sounds like it would make a better movie where a good cast could carry it.

>9 janemarieprice: I expect the right cast and director could elevate the material, either in a film or just on stage. It was entertaining enough but just lacked something.

62. Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World edited by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro
Originally published in Brazil in 2012, this anthology has been newly translated into English by Fabio Fernandes. I’ve been seeing things about the Solarpunk subgenre quite a lot recently, and despite my aversion to randomly sticking the word “punk” on the end of words even when there’s nothing punk about them, it sounded interesting enough. From what I’d seen about it, it’s science fiction set in a future with sustainable energy and with an optimistic feel. This book didn’t really have the feel of any specific subgenre though, and just felt like a general sci-fi anthology, and the futures never felt particularly optimistic. Sustainable energy is barely mentioned in some of the stories and it was rarely all that important to the plots. On the other hand, it is a nicely varied collection, which is always good. Completely unexpectedly for this book, perhaps my favourite story was the Lovecraftian horror of Gary Johnson by Daniel I. Dutra, where the energy source involved comes from a rather disturbing source. The other stories are a mixed bag in style and quality. They range from a sort of sci-fi noir detective story in Soylent Green is People! by Carlos Orsi to a couple of story, very different from each other, where humans are modified to be able to live on sunlight instead of food. Editor Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro’s own story closes the book, and is the longest one in it, but strangely seems the least relevant to the theme of the collection, being a sort of superhero fights ancient Mexican vampires in a spacefaring future. Least successful for me was Once Upon a Time in a World by Antonio Luiz M. C. Costa, a weird alternate history where a group comprising of historical characters such as George Orwell fight a terrorist group comprising various historical dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini.

Sadly, the main problem with the anthology is with the translation. It’s not unreadable, but it often reads slightly strangely. There’s multiple occurrences of characters saying weird phrases such as “Why, he’s alive, is not he?” or “Is not that treason, master?” which looks like someone not fully fluent in English expanding out “isn’t” into “is not” regardless of context. These translation issues throughout the book make it hard to actually tell what the quality of writing is like in the original stories. From the details given, the translator has always translated from English into Portuguese previously, so he’s now translating out of his native language instead of into it, which could be the cause of the awkwardness, but it does spoil things slightly.

Overall, this is a mixed bag of sci-fi stories that were sometimes interesting but often not feeling in keeping with the claimed genre and slightly spoiled by an awkward translation. An enjoyable enough read, but the problems keep it from being a great one.

63. The Digital Antiquarian Volume 7: 1985 by Jimmy Maher
Another volume looking at the history of narrative computer games, starting with the fall of Sinclair, the rise of Amstrad, and the first Macintosh computers. It covers some more Infocom games including an in depth look at the classic A Mind Forever Voyaging, along with Ultima 4 and a few other interesting games, culminating in an article about edutainment and the Carmen Sandiego games. Informative and well researched as always, and fun to read for a gaming geek like me.

64. Eartha by Cathy Malkasian
I enjoyed reading Malkasian’s graphic novel Temperance last year so when I stumbled across this book I had to give it a go. It’s another allegorical tale, and once again I absolutely love her art style, though I didn’t enjoy the book as a whole as much as the last one. This one is even odder. Eartha is a good natured young woman living in a place called Echo Fjord, where all the dreams from the people in the City Across the Sea come. When they stop receiving dreams, Eartha travels to the city to find out why. She finds an oppressive regime in power and a population obsessed with buying biscuits with short news headlines on them and competitively grieving over the bad news, which turns out not to even be real news. It’s all very surreal, though there were some good moments and it generally worked reasonable well as a story, though I’m not sure how well it works as allegory and don’t know what Malkasian really wanted to say.

65. Thieves’ Dozen by Donald E. Westlake
Another Dortmunder book, but this one collects all the short stories Westlake wrote about the character over the years. While not quite as good as the novels, it’s still often extremely funny and all the stories were entertaining to read. Now I feel I need to get back to rereading the novels.

66. Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
This is a strange, short science fiction novel translated from Swedish by the author herself. It focuses around a woman called Vanja living in a world where objects have to be correctly labelled and named repeatedly in order for them to retain their shape and function. This aspect is incorporated into an Orwellian dystopia. It’s a hard book to describe, but it was a really enjoyable read, right up to the ending which went completely off the rails and I found quite disappointing. It didn’t change the fact that I’d enjoyed the rest of the book though, but it’s a shame the ending couldn’t be more satisfying to round out the experience. I’m definitely interested in reading other works by Tidbeck.

Thanks for the reviews!
Amatka is on my wishlist, so thanks for the warning about the weak ending! I tend to be less disappointed in a book overall if I know not to expect a good ending than if my expectations are too high - I guess I retain my impressions from the last part of the book and if the ending is a disappointment that's what stays with me.

>16 chlorine: A bad ending can really spoil a book in some cases. It certainly impacted on Amatka but I didn't completely hate the ending and there were enough interesting ideas in the book that I was still glad to have read it. I've heard Tidbeck's short story collection Jagannath is supposed to be very good so I'm hoping to eventually get to that.

>15 valkyrdeath: >16 chlorine: This feels serendipitous! I added Amatka to my wishlist yesterday, when I saw that it was shortlisted for a French science-fiction award! Now that I know - thanks to you - that the author translated it herself into English, I'll be sure to buy the English version rather than the French. Shame about the weak ending, though...

>18 Dilara86: Oh I wasn't aware that she translated the book to English herself! Thanks for the heads up, as otherwise I would have bought the French version. Which award is it that the book was nominated for?

>19 chlorine: I got the info from >15 valkyrdeath:. valkyrdeath is our hero, here!
Amatka was nominated for the Prix Utopiales (https://www.utopiales.org/edition-2017/oeuvres-en-competition/), along with L'or du diable (Teufelsgold - I haven't been able to track down an English version of this novel) by Andreas Eschbach, Espace Lointain (no English translation as far as I know - and I couldn't even find the original lithuanian title) by Iaroslav Melnik, The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell and Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson.

>20 Dilara86: Me, a hero! There's a first time for everything! I've since seen some reviews by people who really loved the ending, so you may well feel differently about it to me.

>21 valkyrdeath: If you bring such valuable information you definitely are a hero!
Anyway I'm afraid I'm somewhat hijacking your thread, but thanks Dilara for the information about the Utopiales awards!
Andreas Eschbach is an author I'd like to discover.

>22 chlorine: Don't worry about hijacking it, it's good to have some conversation going on in my thread! It is interesting to hear about the non-English language awards too.

67. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
I’d never read Thurber before and this is one of the many classics that passed me by when I was a child, so I thought it was about time to get to it. I loved the writing style and all the wordplay, and the story like a fairy tale that’s slightly off-kilter. It was full of fun lines, and I remember particularly enjoying “He wore and indescribable hat, …and he had a dark, describable beard.” I do think I need to read some of Thurber’s stories sometime.

>22 chlorine: >23 valkyrdeath: Thank you for your patience with us ;-) I have a couple of anecdotes about Eschbach, which I'll take to Chlorine's thread.

I'm really curious about Amatka's ending, now! Would I like it, would I not? I hate mysteries...

>25 Dilara86: I'll certainly be interested in seeing what you think of it when you read it!

68. Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada
This is a novel in three parts about three successive generations of a polar bear family. Or it seems to be anyway, though there’s little consistency between the three parts even though they reference each other. The first part is the first person story of the grandmother, and in this one apparently polar bears can walk around and talk and take part in everyday life, and it’s common enough that no-one comments on it or is surprised to see her. She becomes an author when she starts to write her memoirs and the fact that she’s a polar bear seems barely relevant to anything in the story. But then we get the story of her daughter, told from the perspective of the girl who trains her. Except now polar bears can’t walk around and talk, and this bear is a circus performer, though she can now somehow communicate with the trainer telepathically during their dreams, or something. Then in the final part, the story of Knut, polar bears really are just polar bears and he’s in a zoo and can’t communicate with humans at all, except, for some reason, for Michael Jackson. Who then carries on visiting for a chat even after he’s dead. Apparently the second and third sections are based on real polar bears and Knut was a worldwide sensation of some sort at the time, though it must have passed me by since I don’t remember any polar bear mania. Presumably the corpse of a dead pop singer didn’t turn up to talk to Knut in real life, since I’m pretty sure that’s news I would have heard.

This is an odd book, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s odd in ways I just didn’t see any reason for. I mean, seriously, Michael Jackson? The end of the book was very sudden and I just don’t get the point of the book.

>27 valkyrdeath: The premise seems interesting. Too bad it didn't deliver.

Knut the (real) polar bear (a sad story).

>29 lisapeet: That is sad, but at least it sounds like they've learnt something from it that could help other animals in future. I'm still a bit baffled as to why one particular polar bear would become internationally famous though!

69. Winter by Ali Smith
The second of Ali Smith’s seasonal books, this book is about completely different characters but has thematic similarities with Autumn. Once again, it’s an extremely current book, steeped in post-Brexit referendum British society. Here we have Sophia, a retired businesswoman who lives along and has been seeing things, and her son, Art, who writes a blog about nature that has been hijacked by his former partner Charlotte, who he’s just been split up with. (Her attempts to discredit him by posting incorrect information and ludicrous claims leads to him having more followers than ever, of course.) Having told his mother that he was bringing Charlotte to visit with her for Christmas and not wanting to tell her what has happened, he hires Lux, a random woman he has just met, to pretend to be Charlotte. Added into the mix is Iris, Sophia’s sister and polar opposite, a lifelong campaigner for various issues.

That’s the basis of the plot, but describing the plot of an Ali Smith book doesn’t really give much of an impression of what the book is about. As ever, her stream of consciousness writing drifts through memories and subjects such as the Greenham Common women, the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth, mythology, internet culture, and Shakespeare. There’s an anger about the state of the country behind things, an anger she successfully put into me as a reader from the moment she included Theresa May’s obnoxious “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere” quote in the epigraph. But it’s all done with a light touch that makes it a joy to read, full of her usual wordplay and love of language. It’s loosely structured around A Christmas Carol and it’s full of references to Dickens, from the opening line “God was dead; to begin with.” to the closing “God help us, every one.” There were times near the beginning where I was a bit worried her writing wasn’t going to work for me this time, as there were quite a few things early on that didn’t seem to make sense, but I should have had more trust since they all somehow fall into place by the end.

That was a lot of disjointed rambling, and unlike Smith, I can’t quite make all my random thoughts coalesce into something greater. I find it very hard to write about her books, and the only thing they can really be compared to are other Ali Smith books, so maybe I should just scrap all the rest of it and simply say I loved it.

>31 valkyrdeath: I will get to Ali Smith one day, in the meantime I enjoyed your review.

>31 valkyrdeath: I also enjoyed your review. This makes me want to get to Smith sooner than later.

>32 baswood: >33 chlorine: Thanks! I'll certainly be interesting in what you think if you ever do get to her books.

>31 valkyrdeath: Thank you for the review. I have never gotten to Smith myself yet, but just recently I heard that Winter has just made the 1,001 Books To Read Before You Die list, which made me check out what it was about.

>35 OscarWilde87: Interesting that it made it onto that list. I feel like I might have preferred Autumn, but it's been a few months between them so I can't say for certain, but I certainly liked them both.

70. Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
This is the first book in the Vorkosigan Saga, which I’ve been undecided about whether I wanted to read for a long time but have finally just gone ahead. I’m glad I did, because I actually really enjoyed this book. It’s a character driven space opera full of adventure and political intrigue across two cultures, with plenty of humour that makes it fun to read. There’s a central romance between two mature sensible people that in some ways put me in mind of Son of the Shadows that I read last month, in that it avoided any of the things that generally annoy me in romance plots. This was Bujold’s debut novel, and I raced through the book pretty quickly. I’m looking forward to continuing with the series very shortly, since I understand her writing gets even better in later books.

Just catching up. I remember the days when I read a 100 books a year. Too many distractions (all manner of) these days to pull off much more than 50. You read far more F&SF than I do; although I used to read quite a bit more.

I read a few early Ali Smith's but have not gotten around to the newer stuff. I have Autumn here.

I noticed on your previous thread that you read a Valente. Michael just finished her latest and posted a review.

>38 avaland: I actually hadn't been reading as much science fiction in the last few years compared to in the past when it was the main thing I read. This year I decided I wanted to get back to reading a bit more of it again, though sometimes I then end up with a run of books where I feel like I've had too much of it again. I'm happiest when I've got lots of variety in my reading!

If you do get round to Autumn I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

I've enjoyed the Valente books I've read mostly, just that last one didn't quite work for me. I'll be checking out that review very shortly.

71. The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
The Big Time is a short novel which won the Hugo Award in 1958. Fritz Leiber was a pretty big name in science fiction at one time but I don’t tend to hear about him so much now except occasionally in relation to his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fantasy stories. This one is a time travel science fiction novel, though it almost feels like a play, being entirely set in one location with a small group of characters. The location is an area outside of normal time, known as the Big Time. There’s a war going on between two sides known as the Spiders and the Snakes, and it’s fought by sending soldiers back in time to change history to the advantage of their side. The soldiers are recruited from throughout history and none of them seem to know what the sides are fighting about or who is right or wrong and don’t seem to particularly care, because they’re being given extra life after they would usually have died. Nothing is ever really seen, we just get characters talking about themselves. Then it becomes a locked room mystery about identifying a saboteur. It’s full of complex ideas that are thrown together into a confusing mess and never really explored much since it’s too busy racing onto the next idea or the next sexist comment. Of which there’s a depressingly large amount. I’m used to books from this era having attitudes towards gender roles that are of their time, but not being overtly hateful towards women. In this book, the men are the soldiers, and the women stay at the facility and are called Entertainers, and their jobs are basically a combination of nurse and prostitute. They’re there to do whatever the men want them to, including being knocked around by them. The narrator of the book is one of the Entertainers and she’s constantly making misogynistic comments herself, saying at one point that someone was “arguing like a woman” and casually talking about being given a black eye by her lover as if that’s just a perfectly normal thing. I don’t like to put the sexism of characters onto the author, but then there’s just so much of it in this book from so many characters that it’s hard not to, especially as there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it to be there in story terms.

I guess I can sort of see where some of the ideas were interesting and ahead of the time back when it was published, but it just doesn’t do anything interesting with them, the story is confused and rather dull, the dialogue is rather poor for something so character focused and it’s full of obnoxious attitudes. I really can’t find much to like about this book and it certainly hasn’t encouraged me to rush out to try Leiber’s other works.

>37 valkyrdeath: I've been rereading some of the later books in the Vorkosigan series, and it remains one of my favorite science fiction series. Actually, probably one of my favorite series in general. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the later books.

>40 valkyrdeath: no no, not for me.

>24 valkyrdeath: James Thurber? I’m interested now.

>71 valkyrdeath: Interesting review. I have not read any of his books.

72. Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
I got to this short story collection a lot more quickly than anticipated after reading Amatka last month. This is an extremely odd collection of sci-fi and fantasy stories, which was immediately apparent from the opening story about a man who falls in love with an airship and a woman who falls in love with a steam engine. The stories are all well written but very surreal and I wasn’t always sure quite what to make of them. I did especially like Who is Arvid Pekon?, a darkly comic story about a telephone operator at a government agency who starts to receive some very strange calls. It grabbed my attention from the opening line of “Despite the well-known fact that it’s the worst time possible, everyone who needs to speak to a governmental agency calls on Monday morning.” Aside from that, the stories are quite wide ranging in style and theme, from one presented as an academic paper about a small mythical creature called a Pyret to disturbing stories that verge on horror. I mostly liked the book and some of the stories I really enjoyed. I’ll certainly be interested to see what else Tidbeck might release in the future.

>41 shadrach_anki: I may well advance through the series pretty quickly. I started Barrayar tonight!

>42 dchaikin: The Big Time really wasn't for me either. At least it was short. I'm interested in reading more Thurber, since my knowledge of him previously was basically limited to the fact that he'd written the story that the Walter Mitty films were based on.

>43 baswood: I'd never read any of his books before that one. I'm not encouraged, though I do have one of his fantasy books already so may give it a try at some point, since I know it's not always fair to judge a prolific author on the basis of one book.

73. Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham
74. Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham
75. Fables Vol. 3: Storybook Love by Bill Willingham
These are the first three collections of the Fables comics, set in a world where the characters from fables, folk stories and fairy tales have been driven out of their homeland by the army of an enemy known as the Adversary, and have set up a secret community within New York City. I first read these three volumes about a decade ago but didn’t have access to anymore at the time, so now I have access to all of them at the library I thought I’d give these a read again. I remembered quite enjoying them, and they were quite fun to reread now though they’re nothing too spectacular, at least at this stage. The first is a murder mystery, with Bigby, the Big Bad Wolf of fairy stories now in human form and the sheriff of Fabletown, investigating. He even gets to do the classic Agatha Christie gathering of suspects at the end. The second is a rebellion on the farm where all the creatures that can’t pass as human live in secret, the anthropomorphic animals and the like. The third is a series of various shorter stories. I might try some of the others and see how it develops. They’re quick fun reads if nothing more.

76. The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
This was an interesting novel revolving around a lesser known piece of WW2 history. Gabriel Santoro is a journalist who writes a book about his father’s friend, Sarah Guterman, a Jewish woman who escaped from Germany to Colombia with her family as a girl. On publishing the book, his father unexpectedly writes a review of the book for a newspaper viciously tearing the book to pieces. When his father becomes seriously ill, he starts to uncover the reasons why. It brings out stories involving Colombia’s use of US blacklists of suspected Nazi sympathizers, and how, like anything along the lines of blacklists, it could be abused by anyone with a grudge against someone by reporting them with spurious claims. It reveals its secrets gradually and becomes a story of how one act affects successive generations of different families. I found it interesting that the title of the book could refer to any of the main characters in different ways. It wasn’t a fast paced book, but I never felt bored with it, and the writing and translation were very good. It didn’t have any easy answers, and some things just couldn’t be known, but it had some interesting themes and has stuck with me since I read it. Vasquez seems to be an author worth reading and I might see if I can find something else by him sometime.

77. Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake
A reread of the second Dortmunder novel . This time he’s planning a bank robbery, though rather than stealing from the bank, he’s planning on stealing the bank itself, which is currently running from a mobile home while the main building is renovated. As always with these books it’s very funny and builds up to an hilarious conclusion. I love this series.

>48 valkyrdeath: I may need to add this series to my list ‘to check’. Your enthusiasm is contagious.

>47 valkyrdeath: I have read The Informers but much preferred his novel The Sound of things falling, which more closely relates events in Colombian history to the events in his novel.

>49 NanaCC: It's a really fun series of books. The enthusiasm was passed on to me from Meredith so I'm happy if I can pass it on further!

>50 baswood: That's good to know! I'll try and get around to The Sound of Things Falling at some point.

78. I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached
This is a graphic memoir of sorts about growing up in Beirut during the civil war. It’s extremely short and doesn’t have any narrative, and is rather a series of random memories. Each panel or group of panels starts with the words “I remember” and then goes on to describe something from her childhood. Occasionally it shows something of the situation, such as being shown the ruins where various buildings used to be, and her brother collecting shrapnel. Mostly it’s just random childhood memories about Kit Kat wrappers and watching TV shows. It never gives any real idea of what the actual situation was, so it just felt disjointed and I didn’t come away having any further idea of what her childhood was like or what she was living through, unlike in books such as Persepolis. And I have to compare it to that, since it felt like that was the sort book this was trying to be, down to the fact that the art style feels like a direct copy of Satrapi’s. It wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t really have anything much worthwhile for me either.

>37 valkyrdeath: I knew you'd like the Vorkosigan series! You've got a lot more of the things you enjoyed in this one to come, too. And she's very good about including romance -- there's some in a few of the later books, too -- in ways that don't irritate me. And most romance plots irritate me.

>53 bragan: Romance plots often irritate me too, especially when so often people seem to think they have to put them in just because it's expected, so I was impressed by that aspect. I'm sure there's a lot to look forward to in the series! I'm about half-way through Barrayar right now and I'm really enjoying it.

79. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code and the Uncovering of a Lost Civilisation by Margalit Fox
This was a really fascinating book about the decoding of the Linear B tablets. The tablets were discovered in 1900, but with an unknown system of writing and no idea even of what language it was in, it took over 50 years before any meaning started the be discovered. This book is split into three sections focusing on three key people involved in the process. The first part focuses on Arthur Evans and his discovery of the tablets, and subsequent holding back of the process of deciphering them by not publishing most of them in his lifetime. The second part is about Alice Kober and her various discoveries about the script, working out most of the techniques that would eventually lead to the solution of the problem. The third part is about Michael Ventris who finally worked out that the language was Greek and was able to finally start working out the meaning of the Linear B symbols. It’s a really interesting story throughout, and I loved reading about the ways logic and investigation was used to make discoveries about the language and structure of the script. An excellent book.

80. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
Can’t go wrong with a Discworld book, especially when it features the witches. This one brings in parodies of various fairy tales as Magrat, having inherited the wand of a fairy godmother, tries to ensure Emberella doesn’t have to go to the ball or marry the prince, no matter how the story is supposed to go. Of course, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg aren’t going to be left out either. I don’t think Pratchett is ever funnier than when he’s writing the dialogue between the witches. That’s certainly the case here, and with the witches heading to foreign parts he gets to have fun satirising the attitudes of British people on holidays. As always with his best works, there’s a lot more going on than just the jokes, and this book features something that really should turn up more often in fiction, and that’s a villain who is completely convinced that she’s really the good one, and that all the oppression is of course just for everyone’s own good. And it’s got the wonderful Granny Weatherwax quote: “You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage.”

So, it’s Discworld, so it’s brilliant and hilarious and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of rereading these books.

I'm always happy with the Westlake (and especially Dortmunder) love might be spread. I'm trying to get my friend Eve to read one now.

>57 mabith: Good luck with spreading the Westlake further! Hopefully Eve will like the books.

81. 2001: An Odyssey in Words edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter
This anthology is a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, who would have been 100 years old in 2017. The tribute takes a slightly strange form here though, in that rather than the stories having to be based on his work or his style, they instead have to be 2001 words long. It’s a fairly short length to tell a story in, but the majority of the authors here do a good job. Quite a few of them also take more direct inspiration from Clarke, such as Bruce Sterling’s Takes from the White Hart, and more specifically a few take inspiration from different aspects of 2001 itself, with stories like Paul McAuley’s The Monoliths of Mars, Adam Roberts’ Child and Allen Stroud’s Dancers, which features a HAL computer. There’s so many stories here that it’s hard to comment on the individual ones, but I remember particularly liking Chris Beckett’s Memories of a Table, where fragments of history are recovered from objects, Becky Chambers’ Last Contact and Ian Whates’ The Final Fable. Occasional stories felt like they should have been longer and might have been better kept for elsewhere when they wouldn’t be restrained by the word limit. I liked the idea of Matthew De Abaitua’s The Escape Hatch but it felt like it could have been longer, and likewise, Phillip Mann’s I Saw Three Ships was one of the more enjoyable stories until it didn’t feel like it had enough time to actually explain what was going on at the end of it. There were only one or two that I didn’t like, one being the rules for a weird dice game in Yoon Ha Lee’s Entropy War which I didn’t get the point of, but otherwise they were mostly decent to good and all very readable. The book then ends with three mostly disposable non-fiction pieces, with Andrew M. Butler’s analysis of the 2001 book and film being little more than recounting the plot, Neil Gaiman’s article on judging the Arthur C. Clarke awards being very brief. China Mieville’s looks at the science fiction genre and its expansion into the mainstream and had adapts Clarke’s famous third law into “any sufficiently advanced science fiction is indistinguishable from literature.” Overall an enjoyable read throughout.

>59 valkyrdeath: Ooh, that sounds pretty cool. I have both a fondness for very short stories and an appreciation for Clarke, so that might have to go onto the wishlist

>60 bragan: I like very short stories too when they're done well, but not all authors are good at them, so asking everyone to write to that length isn't always the best idea. It worked out pretty well in this case though. It's got me wanting to read more of Clarke's work too. I've always enjoyed what I've read by him previously.

82. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Since the chronology is all over the place, this book picks up immediately after the conclusion of Shards of Honor, even though she wrote six other books in the Vorkosigan Saga between them. This one won the Hugo Award in 1992. It continues with Aral Vorkosigan starting his position as regent for the new five year old emperor and Cordelia pregnant with their first child. Eventually they have to deal with an attempted coup. The writing and plotting here feels a lot more developed than in the first book, and the world and culture of Barrayar is fleshed out much more and the clashes with Cordelia’s Betan culture become central to the plot. I’m glad I started this series and will probably be progressing through it gradually over the next few months.

83. Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo
Apparently the first novel by an author from Madagascar to be translated into English, Beyond the Rice Fields tells the story of a woman called Fara and her slave (initially at least) Tsito, starting from childhood and alternating perspective from one to the other. It’s a piece of historical fiction, but it’s set in a culture that I know very little about, making it a fascinating read, though one that took a while to start to get an understanding of. It can be quite a disturbing book at times, with witch hunting rituals involving people being forced to drink poison as a trial and Christians being executed. It was sometimes hard to keep track of the other characters, due to many of them having very similar names, but this is presumably to do with Madagascan culture and more my problem than any fault of the book. I found it really interesting to read about a period of Madagascan history, and the book was well written. I’m glad I read it and will be interested to see what else the author might write.

84. The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben
This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I thought this was going to be a popular science book about research into animals, but instead it’s mostly a lot of anecdotes about stuff the author has observed and things he believes. He does mention scientific studies occasionally but not in much detail. He claims that scientists will tell you that animals don’t have any emotions, which I’m not sure is really true these days. His premise seems to be not just that animals have emotions but seems to be that every animal has the same emotions as a human. He talks about a particular individual rabbit being evil in one of the more bizarre moments. I have no problems with the idea that animals have emotions and feelings, and I’m not sure who would say otherwise these days, but I don’t really get the point of the book generally and a lot of it just feels like him reading far too deeply into random observations. It does make me want to read a more scientific book on the subject now though.

>64 valkyrdeath: The idea of an evil rabbit would at long last explain the behaviour of the rabbit of Aaaaargh in Monty Python's Holy Grail! ;)

>65 chlorine: Monty Python was definitely the first thing that came to my mind when he mentioned evil rabbits!

85. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
An interesting book about a rather strange conflict, Homage to Catalonia is about Orwell’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War, written very shortly afterwards. I hadn’t read much about this before so it was interesting to see the mix of nationalities involved in the fighting and the complex political rivalries involved in everything. Orwell’s writing is excellent and very clear and it felt like a good starting point for learning a bit about this period in history.

86. Sheets by Brenna Thummler
This is a graphic novel about a school girl who effectively runs the family laundry company and a ghost who heads to the human world and crosses her path, while an unpleasant businessman tries to take over. This had really nice artwork, and a decent enough story though not a brilliant one. It was a pretty good quick read but nothing too amazing.

>68 valkyrdeath: This sounds like a fun little afternoon diversion. I'll have to borrow it from my local library (put a hold on it, so I'll get it once they finish processing it).

Catching up and finding a lot of fun stuff here - Orwell on Spain, Linear B decoding, Weatherwax philosophy and evil rabbits. On Orwell, it is WWII your thinking of reading more on, or Spain specifically? Your review left me thinking about how little I know of that civil war and all the complexities involved.

>69 shadrach_anki: It's certainly a book that's easy to finish in one short sitting. I did really like the artwork in it.

>70 dchaikin: I've read and watched plenty about WW2 but know very little about the Spanish Civil War so it would be interesting to learn more about that. Orwell did mention that the other books around at the time he was writing were very inaccurate and that he wanted to set the record straight. I admired his inclusion of this within the text: "I have tried to write objectively about the Barcelona fighting, though, obviously, no one can be completely objective on a question of this kind. One is practically obliged to take sides, and it must be clear enough which side I am on. Again, I must inevitably have made mistakes of fact, not only here but in other parts of this narrative. It is very difficult to write accurately about the Spanish war, because of the lack of non-propagandist documents. I warn everyone against my bias, and I warn everyone against my mistakes. Still, I have done my best to be honest." I'm not sure which more modern texts are the best sources for this conflict.

Elegant disclaimer. I’ve never looked up a book on that civil war. I’m curious what you’ll find.

>72 dchaikin: I'll try and post if I do come across anything that seems worthwhile!

87. James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes by James Acaster
James Acaster is probably my favourite amongst the current stand-up comedians and I really needed a fun read, so this seemed perfect. It’s a sort of memoir, except it’s focusing entirely on times when he’s got into various awkward situations, both minor and major. There are some extremely funny chapters in this. The events themselves aren’t always especially hilarious but Acaster has a way of telling them that makes them so, and it’s one of those books where I think the audiobook is superior to the printed book due to being able to hear him delivery the material himself. An extremely fun read as expected from Acaster.

88. The Apex Book of World SF Volume 5 edited by Cristina Jurado
I’m always happy to see another of these Apex World SF volumes. This one is full of stories by authors from all over the world, and while it’s not as difficult to find international science fiction now as it was when the first volume was published, it’s still great to find so many varied and high quality stories in one place. One of my favourites from the book is the opening story, A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, set in a future world with a main character who forges expensive cuts of meat using bioprinting. I also really liked the closing story, Ugo by Giovanni De Feo, about a relationship between a woman and a man who apparently has memories of future events. It has an ending that leaves various interpretations of what happened possible, but it’s an ambiguity that worked well for me. And talking of ambiguity, Verdana Singh’s Ambiguity Machines: An Examination makes another appearance here, the only story I’d read previously after enjoying her collection last year. The rest of the stories are varied, ranging from science fiction to fantasy, and while I enjoyed some more than others, overall it was a really good read, and I’m already looking forward to any future volumes Apex release.

>75 valkyrdeath: That looks interesting... Were those stories all written in English, or translated (or a bit of both)?

>76 Dilara86: They're a mixture of both translation and stories written in English, I think roughly half in translation.

Thanks! That's definitely more appealing to me than just English...

89. Ode to a Banker by Lindsey Davis
Another book in the Falco series and it’s another fun mystery in ancient Rome. This one is based around banking, as the title would suggest, but also the scroll publishing industry, and Davis gets to poke fun at the similarities between the ancient and modern worlds while still filling it with lots of historical details, entertaining characters and a good murder mystery plot. These books are always really enjoyable.

I love Davis' disclaimer in Ode to a Banker about publishers, authors, and banks.

>79 valkyrdeath: I’ve never read anything in this series. I’ve added it to my wishlist.

>80 mabith: Couldn't have people thinking she was referring to her own publishers or anyone she knows after all!

>81 NanaCC: It's a really fun series, I hope you like it if you get to it!

90. The Red Box by Rex Stout
My first time reading a Nero Wolfe mystery and I really enjoyed it. Fun characters all round and an interesting mystery. I liked both Nero Wolfe and also Archie Goodwin as the narrator. I’m glad I enjoyed it since it means I’ve got plenty more books in the series to get to!

91. Rhadopis of Nubia by Naguib Mahfouz
Another of Mahfouz’s short historical novels set in ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh falls in love instantl with Rhadopis when he meets her after a falcon flies off with one of her sandals and drops it in his lap. The romance leads to him neglecting all his duties, all while a rebellion is being stirred up by his insistence on claimant back land that had been given away. The romance part did little for me, but I enjoyed the book in general because of the political background leading to the eventual uprising that gives the book more relevance outside its historical context. A quick read that I enjoyed well enough, though not a favourite.

92. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
A graphic memoir about the author and her family and their life in Vietnam before moving to the US. It was very well done and the artwork complemented the writing. An interesting read.

93. Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
The first of the Amelia Peabody series of historical mysteries, and it was really fun. The mystery itself wasn’t much of a surprise, but it didn’t matter because the writing was entertaining and the characters were really fun. I look forward to carrying on with the next book.

94. Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home by Nora Krug
A graphic non-fiction book where the author writes about her feelings over growing up as a German and dealing with her countries wartime past. She investigates her family history to see if they had any involvement with the Nazi party. The book is very well set out with a combination of drawings, photos, and pictures of documents while all the text seems to be handwritten. It was a very interesting and worthwhile read.

95. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
My first read by Nnedi Okorafor was Binti earlier this year, and despite it having somehow won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, it was terrible, so I wasn’t especially looking forward to reading this when it came up for a book club. To my relief, it was a far superior book without anything quite as ridiculous happening to spoil it. I didn’t love it though, and it felt inconsistent a lot of the time. The central character has magical powers that are powerful enough to deal with an entire town full of people at once, but then later they’re sneaking around avoiding small groups of people because her powers wouldn’t be enough to take on that many. There’s also vague attempts at implying there’s some post-apocalyptic aspects to the world and very occasional references to modern technology that is quite scarce, but otherwise the book overall feels like a general fantasy world and is mostly about magic, and there’s no indication at all as to what might have happened. It feels like it had a few too many ideas that just weren’t quite fully formed. The main characters were also supposed to be a group of friends but they pretty much just argued and insulted each other constantly and it became incredibly annoying. So I didn’t hate the book, but I also still don’t quite see the appeal or why her books receive quite so much acclaim.

And now I'm finally caught up. My reading really slowed down for a couple of months and I still managed to fall behind on reviews and even further behind on reading other people's threads, but hopefully now things are settling down a bit and I'm pulling myself together I'll be able to start catching up again before the year is actually over. Now to see how long it takes me to fall behind again.

96. Ms. Marvel Vol. 9: Teenage Wasteland by G. Willow Wilson
Not much to say about these by this point, it’s another Ms. Marvel book. Still a fun read, though Kamala is missing through the first half of the book and the other characters are trying to stand in for her while they try to get her to come back. Not the best volume but enjoyable all the same.

97. Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook
The first in a long running series of fantasy mystery stories starring hard-boiled detective Garrett P.I. It had some amusing bits and the first person narration generally worked well, and I liked how the fantasy was integrated into the trappings of detective fiction. There were also some Nero Wolfe references with one of the characters. It definitely could have used better women characters though, rather than just two major roles, an unpleasant manipulator and another who is all over the detective the instant she meets him, both of whom are treated as just inconveniences throughout the story. It felt more dated in that respect than the actual age of the book. Still, it was a mostly fun quick read which was just what I needed. I didn’t completely love it, but I certainly wouldn’t mind giving another one or two a go to see whether it develops more as it goes along.

98. The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
Another book in the Vorkosigan saga, the second to be written and the first to feature Miles as the main character. Again I enjoyed it, though going back to this also does show how far her writing had developed by the time she wrote Barrayar a little later. Miles fails in his attempts to join the military due to his disability caused by the events in the other books and instead ends up bluffs people into thinking he’s a mercenary leader and takes over another mercenary fleet. I did miss the books focussing around Cordelia but it was good and I was glad that a particularly horrible character is got rid of in this book, so I’m still looking forward to continuing.

99. The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks
A fun comical book about a girl trying to get by as a superhero while still having to deal with real life issues such as finding a job that actually pays. Apparently it started as a webcomic before being collected into a book. Another in my series of fun quick reads.

100. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
All Systems Red is the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series of four novellas. I’d initially not paid much attention to it since the name Murderbot didn’t sound like something that would interest me, assuming it was about some sort of assassin robot, but I saw something that made me want to check it out, and I’m glad I did. It’s a good science fiction story that’s elevated by the first person narration from the perspective of a security cyborg that refers to itself as Murderbot. They’ve broken their connection to the governor module that keeps it a slave to humans and can act independently, but is wary of letting anyone know that fact due to what could happen. They make an entertaining and amusingly misanthropic narrator, but with enough hints that they might not be as human hating as they initially make out to allow for character development even over the course of such a short book. The other characters aren’t so well defined, but it’s very much Murderbot’s book. The plot itself is decent, involving a mysterious series of accidents that could well be sabotage and an investigation into the events. It seems this won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novella and I have no objections over that this time. I’ve already got a hold on the next volume from the library.

101. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marias
"No one ever expects that they might some day find themselves with a dead woman in their arms, a woman whose face they will never see again, but whose name they will remember." That’s the opening line to the book, which gets you straight into the book. Sadly, the narrator then just rambles on for ages and basically does nothing for a quarter of the book. It’s quickly becomes repetitive and dull, individual paragraphs drag on for pages, even single sentences go on for a page or two at times, and those massive paragraphs rarely have anything new to say after the first line or two. About half-way through the book I started skimming the paragraphs and only started reading properly again for the last quarter or so when things actually started happening. This book felt like a novella at longest padded out to a frustrating degree.

And with that I end my 2018 reading.

Started my 2019 thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/301621