Else what's a heaven for?

I assume there's something about the publishing calendar that caused me to read lots of new science fiction and fantasy books toward the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Some were amazing, but there was a lot that I couldn't finish.

Ready Player One isn't very newish, but I read it late last year and liked it so much, it was the only book I re-read last year. My ladylove complained that the female character was an NPC - I'd argue she's a Hermione and there's almost no character development for anyone in the book - but who doesn't love the poor kid who uses arcane knowledge to win in a dystopian world story? Non-nerds, maybe, since the book is all about 80s trivia.

I started 3 different books bc Neil Gaiman wrote (part of) them. The Sleeper and the Spindle was published as a standalone story in a heavily illustrated edition and is quite good if you like fairy tale retellings with a twist.

I'm not sure why I picked up Trigger Warning, considering I have no trouble finding disturbing books on my own and it's not like Neil Gaiman is known for heartwarming tales with fluffy bunnies and unicorns. I also don't get what the book is: I know I've read some of those stories before. At a certain point I came to my senses and put it down.

I read all but one of the stories in Rags & Bone, which also includes The Sleeper and the Spindle, but even as a completist, there was no way I would read a creepy retelling of "The Monkey's Paw". I didn't love any of the other stories enough to think the book worthwhile.

Naomi Novik's Uprooted is creepy and contains all the fairy tale elements, but is an amazing book selection from TRQ. It pays to be old friends with a MITSFS cardholder, let me tell you. It starts with the sacrificial maiden, who is far from perfect and very plucky, and gets epic. Highly recommended.

The Sword of Summer is the start of another Rick Riordan tetralogy, this one about Norse gods. More observant readers of his other books will find it interesting the hero's name is Magnus Chase. I started reading it right after reading Michael Chabon's essay about his relationship with Norse mythology, so I should've loved it. Instead, it irritated me, despite being set in Boston, and I have no desire to read any more from this series, even though I inhaled the Greek tetralogy and read all the Roman ones. Maybe someday I'll read the Egyptian one.

I was so excited to get my hands on Jim Butcher's Aeronaut's Windlass, but it was basically steampunk Honor Harrington - it even has cats!!!! - so I read the last 50 pages and decided I didn't care what happened to the characters in between. I don't understand what happened to all the depth his writing gained over the first dozen Harry Dresden, but I need to stop trying to read his books.

I loved Michael Chabon's Sherlock Holmes essay, so I got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Mycroft Holmes at the right time too. And still couldn't like it. Apparently the basketball player has taken up all sorts of hobbies since his NBA career ended and I'm totally cool with polymathic dilettantism. OTOH, it's not a very good book. It tries to give back story as to why this Holmes brother is such a loner, but it just doesn't feel true to what we know about Mycroft and instead feels like Marty Stuism.

I didn't read The Flux for four months after buying it, partly bc I read the free sample from Amazon and got turned off. I get that theferret was trying to do an action opening that quickly told us what the tensions were, but the more I think about it, the less I think it was appropriate to the characters or the rest of the book. The rest of the book is very good though and if you liked Flex at all, you'll probably like The Flux. I liked how he used the "obsession=magic" to create cinemancers although I really want to find that post someone wrote that explained all the references, bc while I noticed the mentions of Svtug Pyho, I missed the Sverfgnegre ones until the second reading.

I was all set to pay $15 for an early copy of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, bc not only is it the new Lois McMaster Bujold book, but it's about my favorite character, Cordelia. Then the early sample of the book on Baen's website read like fanfic and I decided to wait until the print copy came out, hoping it would get better. It did, a little. It's nothing like Cordelia's Honor or even A Civil Affair. In her mind, I think LMB thought she was writing a more mature book, that she could write a book that would be interesting without space battles, that allowed her to explore Cordelia's Betan side. She's written books like that - I really enjoyed Cryoburn and Lord Vorpatril's Alliance - but this book was boring. Once you know the big secret of the book, you've gotten half the pleasure of the book; the rest is just a telling of how that plays out in the post-Cryoburn world. Lots of things happen that remind me of the aimlessness of a lot of contemporary romance novels, although the last third of the book had a lot of great lines that made me LOL and/or scribble them down for my quotes page.

Sadly, the only book I'm anticipating at this point is the next Rivers of London book, which I don't expect to like and isn't out until August 2 :(

I don't remember when Laurie King's The Game got on my list. I'd heard intriguing things about her Sherlock Holmes-retires-to-Sussex-to-raise-bees series and The Game takes the detective to India, where he participates in the Great Game and rescues Kim. Yaay mashups! Except the series/book is terrible, a total Mary Sue, wherein ( spoiler for prior books in the series ) She's just the pluckiest girl-detective evuh, with men falling at her feet and dropping clues. ugh. Apparently the following book in the series involves Gilbert & Sullivan. ugh. Just ugh. I can't believe she sold any books, let alone more than one, and I wish she'd given her characters different names.

After I finished, I realized I could just read Kipling's Kim, which doesn't have the great detective, but is generally considered one of the classic adventure tales. It lived up to its reputation, although it was about a third too long and I got antsy toward the end. I bet the Edwardian young boys ate that stuff up though and I can't wait to read some of his shorter stories to my son and nephew. I feel funny about how interested I became in (visiting) India after reading it though: I sort of wanted to mention this to my Indian former colleagues, but didn't.

Stick recommended Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow, which is Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper. Faye gets the tone right and there's a lot to enjoy, despite the non-Doyleish touches, e.g. important female character, extensive use of the Irregulars, Faye's choice of villain and denouement.

Jon mentioned that they'd figure out who Jack the Ripper was. I went and read all the news stories and they really haven't. Some dude saw From Hell, bought a shawl of doubtful provenance, found someone to do some mitochondrial DNA tests (which didn't eliminate the guy he accused), and is now promoting his book in the Daily Mail, which proves exactly nothing. augh. I then read the entire list of suspects on Wikipedia and y'know what? We really have no fucking clue who did it. Only two of the guys seem to have had opportunity: e.g. Walter Sickert, the artist who occasionally gets accused of being part of the royalist conspiracy, was in freakin' France the night of more than one of the murders, but is still considered a "suspect". WTF?

I didn't realize Skin Game (aka the new Jim Butcher) was out, so I was surprised when it arrived at the library. I read the first few chapters, got intimidated by its size -- and read the last chapter or two. And decided I didn't need to read the intervening 400 pages. It's not much of a spoiler to say Harry has problems that look pretty awful, adversaries who want to kill him, and yet he somehow finds the compromises necessary to save his skin, although his friends are endangered. I had it on my bedside for 3 weeks and happily returned it without reading any more. We've seen this story before, it's just powers&monster inflation.

Meanwhile, I picked up the audio version of Storm Front, read by Spike from Buffy, for cheap on Audible. I'd been so sad that I couldn't get them for the longest time -- and then it turns out there's nothing particularly interesting about James Marsters' performance. It's a good reason, but it's no different to me than reading the book on paper, which I already did.

It took me forever to hunt down Ghoul Goblin, one of the original Harry Dresden graphic novels and it was totally worth it. Harry goes out of town to help a cursed family in a story that I found hard to guess.

I wish I could get into the Codex Alera books or had faith in the new Cinder Spires series.

To be continued...

I first came across Susanna Kearsley because one of her books was an Amazon Daily Deal. I meant to get some of her books out from the library, but then I got Rose Garden for my birthday. It's a pretty good romance novel about a woman who visits Cornwall to grieve and starts unpredictably travelling back to the 18th century. There's just enough to the book to lift it above the genre. Kearsley is no Susan Elizabeth Phillips, let alone Alice Hoffman, but if I ever plow through the pile of random fiction I've bought in Amazon Daily Deals, I plan to read more of her books.

I've wanted to read something by Joe Hill for a while, partly bc his work is so well-reviewed. I don't know why I'm so tickled by reading something by Stephen King's son, considering I've only read 2 Stephen King books (Firestarter and On Writing). But Heart-Shaped Box sounded too... horror-ful. The description I read of Horns, in trying to avoid spoilers, made it sound like a supernatural romp, which it most certainly is not. Yes, it's about a guy who wakes up one morning to find that he has horns on his head and that people who see them will tell him the truth about anything, even if he doesn't want them to. It's also about faith and beauty and the ugliness inside everyone. There's a section of the book that's the thoughts of a psychopath. Hill pulls the whole thing together, with little details all tying into one lovely bow. I gulped it down in 3 days and recommended it highly next time I was asked for a book recommendation.

I thought Steve McHugh's first book, Crimes Against Magic, had a stupid protagonist, but then I bought the second book, Born of Hatred, so maybe I'm not so bright either. I spent the last 50 pages stopping every few pages to whine at lawnrrd about how awful it was. It's just so annoying that McHugh created such an interesting premise and doesn't think through what a reasonable person would do. There's a third book in the series...

I haven't kept up with my list of books that are coming out that I'm looking forward to, largely bc I've gotten bored of the writers I used to read so religiously. Alice Hoffman doesn't write very quickly so when her last book was a dud, I didn't pay attention for a while. Then during my breakup with Julian, I watched Practical Magic with Jon, which was high-larious, so I looked her up and discovered she'd written a short book and is about to release a longer book set in Coney Island. (yaay!) The short book, Survival Lessons, is about life lessons she learned in chemo for breast cancer. There's nothing really new in there - I assume that dying, like falling in love, is one of those experiences where you realize that all the trite things that are written about the experience are true - but she writes so beautifully, I highlighted a fair bit. I hope Barnes & Noble had a pile of this book near the checkout counter.

I went to the bookstore at midnight to pick up HP & the Goblet of Fire; I asked my dad to get me HP & the Order of the Phoenix next time he went to CostCo; I had HP & the Half-Blood Prince waiting for me at the library when I saw someone reading it on the subway and decided it was too long, I wouldn't read it. I wrote off J. K. Rowling as an author whose celebrity had made her uneditable (I'm looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton), read the last two pages of the series, and never really thought about her books again.

...until we were out top-roping and Jon told me the story of The Cuckoo's Calling's unveiling. Short version: after her first post-Potter book was panned, Rowling published a book under a pseudonym, but someone leaked it and she's pissed, but now this book that only had a few hundred copies sold is selling out. Apparently there were suspicions before the leak that this was not a first novel.

I can see why Rowling tried that route. It's a pretty good book, with good workmanship, although I'm not sure I'd say it can't be a first novel. It's a mystery that doesn't quite follow all the noir tropes, set in London. Knowing that Rowling wrote it, it's hard not to compare the victim, a world-famous supermodel, to her first series and wonder if she's always been interested in the effects of celebrity. If you like mysteries and/or fashion, I'd recommend it as a light read.

Reading it made me realize that Rowling has spent 10,000 hours writing and The Cuckoo's Calling shows that craft. Alas, she didn't have as good a story to tell in Casual Vacancy. I stuck with it for 50 pages, even though it's rambling, with too many characters, many of whom are unlikeable and poorly (she probably thought it was mysteriously) introduced, fighting over stupid stuff I don't care about. Small town England is probably interesting in the right hands, but churning out grammatical sentences doesn't make it so.

Before we went to Gettysburg, one of my smartest cow orkers recommended Shelby Foote's Stars in the Their Courses. I barely finished The Killer Angels in time, so I never got to it, but when I was prepping for our trip to Fredericksburg/Chancellorsville, I thought Foote's The Longest Journey might be a good overview of the campaigns in the area. It wasn't. Foote jumps from venue to venue, telling you what this general was doing in Mississippi and that one was doing in Virginia and... The prose is beautiful but I couldn't form a good picture in my head of what was going on. Not sure if this is because it is one ninth of a looooong set or bc I just don't have enough background knowledge on the Civil War. I suppose I'm still up for a book about the area, although maybe someday Jon and I should just go on a little Civil War tour. Also, I think I grokked Fredericksburg enough - which is a shame bc it's the one half marathon that month that's on my radar that isn't sold out or a flight away - but I still don't have a great sense of Chancellorsville, let alone the Wilderness or Spotsylvania battles.

In contrast, James McPherson's War on the Waters was the perfect book for me. Jon enjoyed his Battle Cry of Freedom and mid-nineteenth century naval warfare is just close enough to Age of Sail that my readings in that area helped. I liked how every chapter was about some major engagement or campaign, with a bit of the interim history, and I liked that the book was only as long as it needed to be. After reading the book, I understood the importance of North Carolina's coast in the Civil War.

There were things I didn't like. McPherson introduces far too many names, which is confusing when you're listening and trying to figure out if you need to remember the name or just what happened in an anecdote. This is particularly hard bc McPherson frequently quotes personal letters to relate what happened. He also spends a lot of time discussing the legal issues of the Civil War: e.g. how Abraham Lincoln danced around the question of the South's belligerent status, the legality of the blockade, and how Union diplomats blocked the sale of warships to the South. Despite Julian's best efforts, I still don't grok the distinctions between letters of marque, privateers, etc.

I don't remember McPherson's explanation of why he focused on accounts from the North for his source materials; it was legit, but it meant there were details missing and the story felt skewed. He frequently quotes Union naval officials, but rarely Confederate naval officials, even though he frequently claims the South was more innovative. I'd've liked more explanation of that innovation, since he describes the Dahlgren guns everyone was using (Dolgren's first front-line command was attacking Charleston) and spends a chapter on ironclads without describing the South's contribution on that front.

I also still don't understand why New Orleans fell so easily, other than Farragut was da bomb jiggedy. McPherson explains in the introduction that at the start of the war, the North had (almost) all the ships, but a substantial portion of the sailors went with the South, so they ended up recruiting from the merchant marine. Under the circumstances, I would've expected the South to staff everything they had that floats with experienced, overqualified officers who would kick the butt of any jumped-up merchant captain. Instead, if memory serves, New Orleans, the biggest port in the CSA, was defended by a flotilla of civilians. What?? Maybe i've read too much Patrick O'Brian, but I'd think a bunch of Jack Aubreys in some small sloops could capture a bunch of large prizes and start turning the tides.

I wish I could remember at this point which individual reminded me of Sonja Hemphill, but there were multiple incidents that reminded me of the Honor Harrington books. Does anyone know if David Weber has actually stated that he drew inspiration from that war? Obviously I noticed the French Revolution bits (Rob S. Pierre made that hard to miss) and I know David Drake's Cinnabar books are an Aubrey-Maturin pastiche. I've always assumed the early Posleen books were a re-fighting of the Civil War (complete with cannibalistic, mechanized villains; "aw shucks" heroic defenders; a heroic win at Fredericksburg; and alien carpetbaggers). With LMB's life on the Mississippi series, you'd think the Baen authors write nothing but Southern history.

I could feel bad that I didn't read a single book while I was gone - while Jon read books about Thermopylae and the Civil War - or I could note that I finished two challenging audiobooks while I was there and maybe my brain is fatigued. I read less crep these days - mostly bc I don't have the patience - but my serious reading isn't that much higher :(

Part of it is I've given up on most of the authors whose new releases I used to put in my calendar - David Weber, LKH, among others. I liked the end of Changes so much, I'm sorry I read Ghost Story. It took me 3 tries to read most of Monster Hunter Alpha and I couldn't really tell you why I didn't pick up the second Grim Noir book. The Soulless series got silly. The descriptions of Alice Hoffman's and Susan Elizabeth Phillips' most recent books left me cold. I'm waiting for Riordan to finish the Roman halfling series before I pick up Son of Neptune.

I will say, I'm looking forward to Captain Vorpatril's Alliance - I just have to wait 16 days to save $9 and buy the book instead of the eARC. *hides the marshmallow* The Kildar is going to Asia in January and the first quarter of the book is up. Steve White has finally written a sequel to his time travel + Greek gods book, Blood of the Heroes.

I got rejected from a job in 2.5 days, which I think deserves an extra big shiny, and was polite to an idiot recruiter, whose job was rightly not interested in me either, which I think deserves a small shiny. I would buy a month of Audible, except I only have 9 hours of running left this month.

I'm really curious about The Black Count, which sounds like stranger than fiction awesomeness. However, I also have a knee high pile of fascinating books my once and present partners have lent me. I better get reading.

Edit: And then I forgot the real reason I had to post this right now, which is that American Gods and The Gift of Fear are going cheap in the Amazon Kindle store in this month's deal. Heart-Shaped Box is too, which I've always been curious about bc of the hype, except it's horror and I don't read horror. ah well. I like the idea of today's Kindle Daily Deal - 13 articles by TED authors - except that I'm not curious about any of the topics. I'm impressed with how TED has become a brand name for intellectualism and I should go back to watching TED tv while my boyfriend dresses for work.

I'm having a slightly tough morning bc (a) I didn't get home from dinner with the siblings until 11; (b) I woke up at 5 and didn't go back to bed bc I wanted to run before it got too hot, but then didn't run; (c) I have no coffee bc my coffee pot is scarily dirty and I haven't accumulated enough dishes to run the dishwasher; (d) my split pea soup didn't do well in the freezer; and (e) I just went through a third of the accumulated mail from while I was gone and I'm going to be on the phone with Verizon, my main bank, the insurance company, the COBRA administrators, and a few doctors in the next few days. ugh.

Good things: I made myself a really nice cup of the tea my uncle bought me in HK after we ate in the restaurant. I had a salad topped with duck, foie gras, and sausage, chased by a tea-infused macaroon. Just thinking about that meal makes me hate life less. I have a fridge full of food, including ingredients for two different Madhur Jaffrey recipes that are relatively healthy and full of spices. Also, I'm very excited to get dressed up this evening and have drinks and maybe use my brain. I might get to wear one of my new dresses. Further, I weighed myself this morning and I was under 112lbs; I don't think I've weighed that little since hs. It takes a little of the sting out of yesterday's disastrous weights session. Bad: I'm lifting what was my warmup weight 3 months ago. Worse: I can't take advantage of my abnormally low weight to rack up achievements on Fitocracy. Uh...

But that's not the point of this post. Today I'm going to cheer myself up by talking about all the stuff I watched while I was gone. My mother was confused when I said I was looking forward to the 16hr flight: yes, Cathay Pacific has come up with innovative ways to torture passengers, but they also provide a fully loaded tv so. I'm glad I caught The Muppets on the way over: it was cute and I'd've been sad if I missed it, but it wasn't worth a movie ticket. I was particularly happy to see Amy Adams in another adorable singing role.

More importantly, they had the first 8 episodes of Once Upon A Time, which is basically the tv version of the Fables comics, with Jennifer Morrison (aka the hottie from the first 3 seasons of House). I caught part of one episode once on tv and thought it was stupid, which was disappointing. The show started slow, but I kept watching and now I'm kicking myself I didn't get the box set while I was in China, bc it's not on Netflix and grr, I want to see what happens next.

The women on the trip brought an iPad stocked with prior seasons of How I Met Your Mother and we watched 8 episodes in two days while waiting for the rest of the team to come down from the high camps of Ama Dablam. I still don't get the frame tale: how do they not know their mother's name?? It's basically Friends for this generation, right? But I would totally look up the Wiki article when the show concludes to find out what happened/who their mother is.

However, I was most looking forward to watching Game of Shadows while on the plane: it was playing both ways! and I missed both gay ninja Sherlock Holmes movies while they were in theaters. Then I watched the first 20 mins and had to turn it off before I vomited. It's basically "Robert Downey Jr wants to play an action hero rather than a mecha", isn't it. And horrifyingly awful, even if one ignores that Sherlock Holmes would never act like that.

Instead, inspired by my visit to HK's equivalent to the Walk of Fame, I watched Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. I'd say you know it's going to be an excellent movie when there's a good fight scene in the first 10mins, but see above. There were some slow moments and there was an 11 o'clock Heel-Face-Turn that made absolutely no sense, but still way better than the Holmes reboot.

My aunt and uncle lent me the first two seasons of Downton Abbey and I picked up a copy of Kings, bc the NYPL lost its copy. I find it interesting that both my aunt and her houseguest from America said, "Oh yeah, I saw that, I wanted to watch more/I wondered what happened to that show" about the latter, but it was cancelled in its first season. oh well.

I read more books in the past 7 weeks than in the prior 14, but that's a whole 'nuther (series of) post(s).

[Poll #1793669]

The only thing I can say without somehow spoiling Twilight's Dawn is that if you enjoyed the prior Black Jewels books, you should definitely read this one too. I would recommend having read the original trilogy and probably Dreams Made Flesh (the last short story collection) and Tangled Webs (the "spooky house" book) before this one; the three books about Dena Nehele in many ways constitute their own, mildly-related trilogy. Twilight's Dawn is a collection of four novellas with the first two taking place between DMF and TW and the second two taking place well after. ( which is probably a spoiler, although maybe not if I don't mention they're a spoiler oops )

My biggest criticism of the book is how long does it take someone from the long-lived races to mature anyhow? ( [elided] ) seems to be a child for many decades. According to a FAQ on the author's site, the long-lived races live 4500-5000 years, but I wouldn't think that would mean a 40-50x longer childhood. Also, zomg, could you imagine spending centuries in school? By the time you left, you should know, like, everything, especially in a world that has the normal complement of countries but no science or applied mathematics. Also, if ( [elided] ) spends that much time as a kid, you'd think someone who was 75% long-lived race would make have zir Birthright Ceremony at a much later age than 15?

Also, this might be a spoiler too, but whatever happened to Wilhelmina Benedict, Jaenelle's sister? She emigrated in the final book and then we never hear of her again.

In the end, I can confidently recommend the Black Jewels stories to friends who don't mind (or prefer) a touch of kink in their fantasy. It's still the best representation of power exchange I've seen in any book. ( Dagnabbit, my concluding sentence is mildly spoileriffic too (for Cryoburn and the Dresden Files as well as Twilight's Dawn) )

PS - The Amazon summary is spoileriffic too, so it's not just that I suck at keeping secrets.