June book roundup
Jul. 5th, 2013 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardFor once I actually did sit down and read more books this month than I did last month! This is because I went on vacation for most of the month; when I'm home I read a lot more than when I'm away.
The complete list (finished books):
Blackout, Mira Grant
The Gentry: Stories of the English, Adam Nicolson
The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery, Catherine Bailey
Die Upon a Kiss, Barbara Hambly
Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Rosemary & Rue, Seanan McGuire
A Local Habitation, Seanan McGuire
An Artificial Night, Seanan McGuire
Redoubt, Mercedes Lackey
Late Eclipses, Seanan McGuire
One Salt Sea, Seanan McGuire
The FitzOsbornes at War, Michelle Cooper
Ashes of Honor, Seanan McGuire
Burdens of the Dead, Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, & Dave Freer
The Risen Empire, Scott Westerfeld
Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire
By the Sweat of Your Brow: Roman Slavery in its Socio-Economic Setting, Ulrike Roth, ed. (anthology)
Defy the Dark, Saundra Mitchell, ed. (anthology)
The Killing of Worlds, Scott Westerfeld
Midnight Blue-Light Special, Seanan McGuire
Brightly Burning, Mercedes Lackey
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
The Millennial Sword, Shannon Phillips
Fortune's Fool, Mercedes Lackey
Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones
The Magicians of Caprona, Diana Wynne Jones
Velveteen vs. The Junior Super-Patriots, Seanan McGuire
The complete list (short stories & novellas):
"Countdown", Mira Grant
"San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats", Mira Grant
"The Bane Chronicles: Vampires, Scones, & Edmund Herondale", Cassandra Clare & Sarah Rees Brennan
"He Built the Wall to Knock It Down", Scott Lynch (in Tales of the Far West, ed. Gareth-Michael Skarka)
"Laughter at the Academy: A Field Study in the Genesis of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD)", Seanan McGuire (in The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Dominationi, ed. John Joseph Adams)
"Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box", Mira Grant
"In Sea-Salt Tears", Seanan McGuire
"One Hell of a Ride", Seanan McGuire
"No Place Like Home", Seanan McGuire
"Married in Green", Seanan McGuire
"Sweet Poison Wine", Seanan McGuire
"The First Fall", Seanan McGuire
In progress (as of July 1):
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
A Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer (abridged audiobook, read by Richard Armitage)
Rebels and Traitors, Lindsey Davis
Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece, Dennis D. Hughes
Indexing, Seanan McGuire (serial ebook)
Tales of the Far West, Gareth-Michael Skarka (ed., anthology)
Staging the World: Spoils, Captives, and Representations in the Roman Triumphal Procession, Ida Ostenberg
The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, (ed., anthology)
Did Not Finish:
A Taint in the Blood, S.M. Stirling
HI MY NAME IS KATRINA AND I READ A LOT.
Statements of the obvious and numbers aside, this was an interesting month for a couple of reasons! As you can tell, two things are evident: (a) I read almost nothing for school (the Roth anthology is pretty much it, and that was more general knowledge, not specifically for my dissertation) until the end of the month (when I got back to Leicester), where I start having in-progress dissertation related books, and (b) I read Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant's entire back catalogue. Ahem. When I get really into an author, I don't screw around.
What isn't evident from this list, although it's in my own personal notes, is that I read a lot of ebooks this month, mostly because I didn't want to wait for the hard copies to arrive so I just bought them as ebooks and read them on my computer. (What, I've been reading fanfic on my computer for twelve years now, it's actually not that much of a leap to read profic on my computer too. Although it actually kind of is.) So probably ten of the books and all of the short stories on that list were ebooks. (At this point, I'll probably go ahead and get an eReader when I get back to the States.)
This is the first time I've broken up short stories/novellas and complete books -- although Defy the Dark is a short story anthology, I counted it on the complete book list rather than listing every story individually, since I read all of them. In the cases where I went ahead and bought the full anthology rather than individual stories (when the individual stories weren't available on their own), I went ahead and counted the individual stories under the finished short stories/novellas list and the anthologies under the in-progress books list.
Now, Indexing and The Bane Chronicles are both serial ebooks, but Indexing is counted under the in-progress list and I've done the Bane Chronicles stories individually, mostly because of the way they're being released by Amazon -- Indexing updates every two weeks and The Bane Chronicles stories come out individually.
...oh, blast, I just realized that there are over half a dozen short stories not on this list because I forgot to put them on my master-list. Ahem. They're on that list now. I don't read short stories often (until this past month, apparently), so I tend to forget about them. I don't have anything against short stories -- actually, you know what, that's not quite true. A lot of short stories frustrate me -- and I noticed this in Defy the Dark, where I read a lot of short stories by a bunch of different authors in pretty short order -- because there isn't really any conclusion. It's all build-up or mood pieces, and I get to the end and I'm like, well, that was a fun first chapter, where's the rest of the novel? Not all short stories are like this. But a lot of them are. What gets frustrating is that some novels are like this too, and I finish and I'm like, sorry, what the hell were you doing with those seven hundred pages? I'M LOOKING AT YOU, SCOTT WESTERFELD. (The Killing of Worlds was nearly a DNF, because I stopped at one point and read something else instead -- looking at my notes, it was Brightly Burning (which is, uh, my favorite Valdemar novel, SHH LEAVE ME ALONE, the main character dies young, of course it is, ignore the thing where he's lifebonded to his Companion) and Code Name Verity -- because I put it down and almost couldn't be bothered to pick it up again, since I remembered how much I hated the end of Goliath and that I didn't trust Scott Westerfeld as a writer because of that. Somebody else has read that trilogy and understands my frustration, right?)
As an aside, and because someone's probably wondering, the book that triggered my urban fantasy rant was The Millennial Sword, which did one or two things that were really interesting, a lot of things that were really frustrating, and left me at the end going, "Hang on, wait, this book actually doesn't do any of the things that I like as a reader except for having a female protagonist," which...actually isn't enough.
Probably the best book I read this month is a toss-up between Mira Grant's Blackout and Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity, which are so different that it's almost impossible to compare them. There was crying involved for both of them. The Secret Rooms and The Gentry were both really solid and interesting non-fiction books, but I read Secret Rooms straight through, so I rec that slightly over The Gentry.
As usual, there are a couple of rereads this month: Calling on Dragons (although that's a finish-up from leaving it unfinished in January, it is a reread), The Fellowship of the Ring (I haven't reread the trilogy in at least ten years), Sunshine, Brightly Burning, Fortune's Fool, Witch Week, and The Magicians of Caprona. I actually started FotR on the plane from Heathrow to Sea-Tac and finished on the train back from St. Pancras to Leicester; it was my shove-it-in-my-purse book in Ellensburg rather than being the book I just sat down and read straight through.
A few of the in-progress books are left over from previous months. Calling on Dragons was finally knocked off the list, I kept thinking I was emotionally secure enough to reread the last thirty pages of The Hobbit but never got around to taking it off the shelf/out of the pile, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece didn't go back to Ellensburg with me, the Heyer and the Davis are just sitting around.
Normally I love S.M. Stirling, but I'd been avoiding A Taint in the Blood because I've had it up to here with vampires. My dad had it, though, so I picked it up, read about the first thirty pages, and put it down again because I don't, actually, need to read a book that starts with the main female character being kidnapped, raped, and tortured. (When I told my dad this, he looked at me in surprise and said, "But stuff happens after that!" Yeah, but I don't want to read through this crap to get there.)
No purchased books on this list because I didn't keep track of them this month.
So in total numbers, that's 29 finished books and about 12 short stories/novellas. (I say "about" because I know I read some of Seanan McGuire's other shorts online, but I can't remember if I read them in June or July or what they were.) That's almost a book a day! That probably is a book a day, since I lost some hours in transit.
okay so I really like books okay shh I bet you do too. (Actually, sadly I'm looking at this enormous list and going, "YOU FAILURE," but that's because I took five books on Rome home with me and only read one of them. *shrug* But whatever, I had a really relaxing month reading books that I really enjoyed.)
Since I'm going into dissertation research mode, next month I'll try and include articles as well as books and short stories.
The complete list (finished books):
Blackout, Mira Grant
The Gentry: Stories of the English, Adam Nicolson
The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery, Catherine Bailey
Die Upon a Kiss, Barbara Hambly
Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Rosemary & Rue, Seanan McGuire
A Local Habitation, Seanan McGuire
An Artificial Night, Seanan McGuire
Redoubt, Mercedes Lackey
Late Eclipses, Seanan McGuire
One Salt Sea, Seanan McGuire
The FitzOsbornes at War, Michelle Cooper
Ashes of Honor, Seanan McGuire
Burdens of the Dead, Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, & Dave Freer
The Risen Empire, Scott Westerfeld
Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire
By the Sweat of Your Brow: Roman Slavery in its Socio-Economic Setting, Ulrike Roth, ed. (anthology)
Defy the Dark, Saundra Mitchell, ed. (anthology)
The Killing of Worlds, Scott Westerfeld
Midnight Blue-Light Special, Seanan McGuire
Brightly Burning, Mercedes Lackey
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
The Millennial Sword, Shannon Phillips
Fortune's Fool, Mercedes Lackey
Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones
The Magicians of Caprona, Diana Wynne Jones
Velveteen vs. The Junior Super-Patriots, Seanan McGuire
The complete list (short stories & novellas):
"Countdown", Mira Grant
"San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats", Mira Grant
"The Bane Chronicles: Vampires, Scones, & Edmund Herondale", Cassandra Clare & Sarah Rees Brennan
"He Built the Wall to Knock It Down", Scott Lynch (in Tales of the Far West, ed. Gareth-Michael Skarka)
"Laughter at the Academy: A Field Study in the Genesis of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD)", Seanan McGuire (in The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Dominationi, ed. John Joseph Adams)
"Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box", Mira Grant
"In Sea-Salt Tears", Seanan McGuire
"One Hell of a Ride", Seanan McGuire
"No Place Like Home", Seanan McGuire
"Married in Green", Seanan McGuire
"Sweet Poison Wine", Seanan McGuire
"The First Fall", Seanan McGuire
In progress (as of July 1):
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
A Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer (abridged audiobook, read by Richard Armitage)
Rebels and Traitors, Lindsey Davis
Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece, Dennis D. Hughes
Indexing, Seanan McGuire (serial ebook)
Tales of the Far West, Gareth-Michael Skarka (ed., anthology)
Staging the World: Spoils, Captives, and Representations in the Roman Triumphal Procession, Ida Ostenberg
The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, (ed., anthology)
Did Not Finish:
A Taint in the Blood, S.M. Stirling
HI MY NAME IS KATRINA AND I READ A LOT.
Statements of the obvious and numbers aside, this was an interesting month for a couple of reasons! As you can tell, two things are evident: (a) I read almost nothing for school (the Roth anthology is pretty much it, and that was more general knowledge, not specifically for my dissertation) until the end of the month (when I got back to Leicester), where I start having in-progress dissertation related books, and (b) I read Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant's entire back catalogue. Ahem. When I get really into an author, I don't screw around.
What isn't evident from this list, although it's in my own personal notes, is that I read a lot of ebooks this month, mostly because I didn't want to wait for the hard copies to arrive so I just bought them as ebooks and read them on my computer. (What, I've been reading fanfic on my computer for twelve years now, it's actually not that much of a leap to read profic on my computer too. Although it actually kind of is.) So probably ten of the books and all of the short stories on that list were ebooks. (At this point, I'll probably go ahead and get an eReader when I get back to the States.)
This is the first time I've broken up short stories/novellas and complete books -- although Defy the Dark is a short story anthology, I counted it on the complete book list rather than listing every story individually, since I read all of them. In the cases where I went ahead and bought the full anthology rather than individual stories (when the individual stories weren't available on their own), I went ahead and counted the individual stories under the finished short stories/novellas list and the anthologies under the in-progress books list.
Now, Indexing and The Bane Chronicles are both serial ebooks, but Indexing is counted under the in-progress list and I've done the Bane Chronicles stories individually, mostly because of the way they're being released by Amazon -- Indexing updates every two weeks and The Bane Chronicles stories come out individually.
...oh, blast, I just realized that there are over half a dozen short stories not on this list because I forgot to put them on my master-list. Ahem. They're on that list now. I don't read short stories often (until this past month, apparently), so I tend to forget about them. I don't have anything against short stories -- actually, you know what, that's not quite true. A lot of short stories frustrate me -- and I noticed this in Defy the Dark, where I read a lot of short stories by a bunch of different authors in pretty short order -- because there isn't really any conclusion. It's all build-up or mood pieces, and I get to the end and I'm like, well, that was a fun first chapter, where's the rest of the novel? Not all short stories are like this. But a lot of them are. What gets frustrating is that some novels are like this too, and I finish and I'm like, sorry, what the hell were you doing with those seven hundred pages? I'M LOOKING AT YOU, SCOTT WESTERFELD. (The Killing of Worlds was nearly a DNF, because I stopped at one point and read something else instead -- looking at my notes, it was Brightly Burning (which is, uh, my favorite Valdemar novel, SHH LEAVE ME ALONE, the main character dies young, of course it is, ignore the thing where he's lifebonded to his Companion) and Code Name Verity -- because I put it down and almost couldn't be bothered to pick it up again, since I remembered how much I hated the end of Goliath and that I didn't trust Scott Westerfeld as a writer because of that. Somebody else has read that trilogy and understands my frustration, right?)
As an aside, and because someone's probably wondering, the book that triggered my urban fantasy rant was The Millennial Sword, which did one or two things that were really interesting, a lot of things that were really frustrating, and left me at the end going, "Hang on, wait, this book actually doesn't do any of the things that I like as a reader except for having a female protagonist," which...actually isn't enough.
Probably the best book I read this month is a toss-up between Mira Grant's Blackout and Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity, which are so different that it's almost impossible to compare them. There was crying involved for both of them. The Secret Rooms and The Gentry were both really solid and interesting non-fiction books, but I read Secret Rooms straight through, so I rec that slightly over The Gentry.
As usual, there are a couple of rereads this month: Calling on Dragons (although that's a finish-up from leaving it unfinished in January, it is a reread), The Fellowship of the Ring (I haven't reread the trilogy in at least ten years), Sunshine, Brightly Burning, Fortune's Fool, Witch Week, and The Magicians of Caprona. I actually started FotR on the plane from Heathrow to Sea-Tac and finished on the train back from St. Pancras to Leicester; it was my shove-it-in-my-purse book in Ellensburg rather than being the book I just sat down and read straight through.
A few of the in-progress books are left over from previous months. Calling on Dragons was finally knocked off the list, I kept thinking I was emotionally secure enough to reread the last thirty pages of The Hobbit but never got around to taking it off the shelf/out of the pile, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece didn't go back to Ellensburg with me, the Heyer and the Davis are just sitting around.
Normally I love S.M. Stirling, but I'd been avoiding A Taint in the Blood because I've had it up to here with vampires. My dad had it, though, so I picked it up, read about the first thirty pages, and put it down again because I don't, actually, need to read a book that starts with the main female character being kidnapped, raped, and tortured. (When I told my dad this, he looked at me in surprise and said, "But stuff happens after that!" Yeah, but I don't want to read through this crap to get there.)
No purchased books on this list because I didn't keep track of them this month.
So in total numbers, that's 29 finished books and about 12 short stories/novellas. (I say "about" because I know I read some of Seanan McGuire's other shorts online, but I can't remember if I read them in June or July or what they were.) That's almost a book a day! That probably is a book a day, since I lost some hours in transit.
okay so I really like books okay shh I bet you do too. (Actually, sadly I'm looking at this enormous list and going, "YOU FAILURE," but that's because I took five books on Rome home with me and only read one of them. *shrug* But whatever, I had a really relaxing month reading books that I really enjoyed.)
Since I'm going into dissertation research mode, next month I'll try and include articles as well as books and short stories.