Book reports I haven't written.

[leahbobet]

Tonight, between finishing one set of revisions, critiquing towards someone else's set of revisions, and Ideomancer work, I will not get to play with Saturnalia.

But, y'know. I have been reading. I haven't been book reporting, but I've been reading.


#1 -- Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories
#2 -- Ekaterina Sedia, Locomotive to Crimea (in draft)
#3 -- Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories
#4 -- Chris Coen, Kith and Kin (in draft)
#5 -- Nicholas Christopher, The Bestiary
#6 -- K.J. Parker, Shadow
#7 -- Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, The Fall of the Kings
#8 -- John M. Ford, The Last Hot Time
Not-#9 -- Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl
#9 -- Peter S. Beagle, The Innkeeper's Song
#10 -- Claudia Dey, Stunt
#11 -- Sean Stewart, Clouds End
#12 -- Patricia C. Wrede, Searching for Dragons
#13 -- Patricia C. Wrede, Calling on Dragons
#14 -- Madeleine L'Engle, Troubling a Star
#15 -- Scott O'Dell, Sing Down the Moon
#16 -- Patricia C. Wrede, Talking to Dragons
REREAD -- Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing With Dragons
#17 -- Sean Stewart, The Night Watch
REREAD -- Madeleine L'Engle, Dragons in the Waters
#18 -- Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
#19 -- Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
#20 -- John M. Ford, The Dragon Waiting
#21 -- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
#22 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers in Arms
#23 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance
#24 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr
#25 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
REREAD -- Michael Stackpole, Once a Hero
#26 -- Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
#27 -- Carrie Vaughn, Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
#28 -- D.J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age
#29 -- Carrie Vaughn, Kitty Raises Hell
#30 -- Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
#31 -- Mike Carey, Thicker Than Water
#32 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free
#33 -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity
#34 -- Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge, eds., Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends
#35 -- Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Not-#36 -- Samantha Henderson, Heaven's Bones
#36 -- Connie Willis, Remake
#37 -- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
#38 -- Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

#39 -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
#40 -- Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
#41 -- Lisa Mantchev, Eyes Like Stars
#42 -- China Mieville, The City & the City (in progress)


I'm cutting these four most recent ones out for a reason. This is not to comment in any way on the stuff that comes before it, but these four books were and are freaking awesome. And I felt like I wanted to recognize that, since it's been a while since I've had a really good streak of books; books that were written for me, my kind of reader, that hit me in all the good places and made me think and chase down bits of thematics and feel smart when I caught them in my little butterfly net.

So. Recommended, in full, all four.

Comments

[coppervale.livejournal.com]

Completely agree.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...ooh, you read like me, do you? :)

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

See? I am the only person in the world who didn't like The City & The City. Am relieved I didn't inadvertently put you off it during our talk in the dealers' room at Readercon. :D

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I can see why it's getting the mixed reviews from Mieville fans, though. It's very much without the style elements that I think a lot of people really liked about Perdido Street Station and such.

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I haven't actually read anything else of his. I hear nothing but good about PSS, though. Then again, that's pretty much what I heard about The City Etc. so maybe he's just not My Writer. *shrug*

[monkeyman.livejournal.com]

Pattern Recognition just leaves me stunned, every single time, at its artistry. I'm not as fond of Spook Country, though a lot of people seem to consider it as good or better.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I was surprised at the panel at Readercon half on it (the one I started reading it for!) how apparently Gibson fans weren't too big on it? For me, that's the only thing of his so far that speaks to a kind of alienation I can relate to, rather than the dudes in black trenchcoats thing.

[monkeyman.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends -- I certainly would consider myself to have been a Gibson fan long before PR came to be, but I do feel like it transcended the existing boundaries of his work and spoke to a far more universal longing.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Well, it is an apparently and a generalization (in general, we hate generalizations!) -- I'm pretty much taking a couple panelists' words for it. But yes, I'd agree: it was...well, more.