Sunny Flowers

[spryng]

I got a bit caught up in planning how to redecorate our apt the last week (I've been spending most of my mornings scouring the internet for inspiration, which I've mostly gathered here), as well as avoiding posting anything here because I have been shamefully bad at keeping up with my intended daily word count. However, I have made a small change which has brought about increased wordage these past few days, so perhaps I will be on here more. Because I have so much to natter on about, that's for sure.

Like, I have a post half written about vegetarianism, inspired by GOOD's 30-day Vegetarian Challenge. And another inspired by GOOD's post which sent me to their site and through it, about the inanity of saying a word is not a word. And one about paint colors, and fancy dinners, and friends, and weddings, and books. Oh, and why the hell I never noticed the word axe is spelled without an 'e' in American English. Okay, maybe that's all I had to say about that.

But I hadn't been writing, so I wasn't letting myself. Perhaps we shall have an influx of posts in the next week, then.

In the meantime, I decided to go with books for this round. I read 24 books last year and after tallying them all up in December, decided I should have read more. So this year I'm aiming for 40, which is more because that's a perfectly hittable goal than because that's a lot. There are just so many wonderful, delicious, alluring books out there and I'd love to get up to reading 50 or 75 a year. But not just for the sake of reading that many - I also want to appreciate them, learn from them. Not skim through them to say I'd read it (like I kind of just did for one, but it was so terrible it had it coming). I've never understood speed-reading when it comes to fiction, at least when you're reading to enjoy reading. Which is why NaNoReadMo is only four books, not five or ten or twenty or what-have-you.

Anyway. I've also been itching to write a little review about each book I've read, but my enforced silence has made those intended reviews pile up. So I'm going to try something different. Every month or so, I'll do a round-up of the books I've read and just write a one or two sentence review. That way I can keep track of what I'm reading, remember what I thought about it, and push good books on other people. Sound good? Good.

This first list will be long, since it's every book I've read so far this year.

• Leviathan by Scott Westerfield - YA Steampunk set in the beginning of WWI, with British biotech vs German mechs. I read this for NaNoReadMo as a slight step out of my usual circle and found the premise intriguing but the execution bland. Still, I've been assured that the sequel more than makes up for it.


• Rampant by Diana Peterfreund - Two words: killer unicorns. Another YA, this is the story of a teenager who is descended from a long line of unicorn hunters and must learn how to kill these murderous beasts while dealing with all that stuff teenagers deal with. It was entertaining, if a bit predictable and stereotypical at times.


• Entangled by Graham Hancock - A drug-addled, rich-kid girl in LA finds her life inexplicably twined up with the life of a girl from the Stone Age. I came here for the depiction of life in the Stone Ages and for that I was pretty satisfied, but the rest of the story seemed lacking, and it didn't help that I didn't realize this was the beginning of a series, so I was disappointed when there was no plot resolution.


• Among Others by Jo Walton - A sort of YA Welsh magical realism. I don't know how to describe this one except that it's a Bildungsroman with welsh faeries and a bookworm who touches a chord for all the kids who had more books than friends growing up. It's beautiful and short and true.


• Bloodshot by Cherie Priest - Holy shiznit, Cherie just keeps getting better. It's vampires, but it's vampires with hyper paranoia who team up with a Cuban dragqueen and keep street kids as a home alarm system. I love Cherie's style, and I especially loved this. I am so very much looking forward to Hellbent, which comes out late this year/early next.


• The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia - People all over Moscow are turning into birds and the answers lie in a hidden world beneath the city. It's been billed as a Russian Neverwhere, but the similarities are too shallow. I don't remember this one too well - it was good, but not stunning, and sometimes the backstory kept leaping up and getting in the way of the plot. Still, the visuals are nice and it features a number of characters from Russian mythology and history.


• Dark Fever by Karen Moning - A girl runs overseas when her sister is murdered to grieve and take up the investigation herself when the police can't find anything, embroiling herself in a supernatural conflict and finding out her sister had been in over her head. I read this to begin my research into what the current market had on faeries. It was entertaining, if so very predictable, and a pretty good slice of the average pie.


• Looking for Alaska by John Green - Another YA (what is it with me and YA this year?) about a geeky, awkward guy who goes to boarding school in the south and has a bit of growing up with friends. I can definitely see why this is read in schools, because it tackles several big teenage issues in a literary fashion. And I'm using "literary" here not as an insult. I really liked it - I liked how Green dealt with the climatic event and its aftermath and I liked how you never really knew what happened, but that you didn't have to, and that the characters were all fallible and typical and yet their own.


• The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss - If you haven't read Name of the Wind and you like fantasy, go. Go read it now. You'll thank me later. This is another Bildungsroman, the second in a trilogy about a man who was a legend and how he came to that and how he fell. It's funny and well-written and has everything you could want in a fantasy epic, complete with thorough world-building, strong female characters, bards, MC arrogance (I love arrogant MCs), dragons (well, not really), shifty figures, fae, witty one-liners, crazy professors, and, of course, stew.

Wow, okay, lots of typing. I think I'll stop there and do some more tomorrow. All twenty-two at once probably isn't a good idea. :)



What I'd really like is if you've read any of these books to chime in in the comments and let me know what you thought. I'd love you for this. :)

Now, where I'm at in WZAA, which is what I'm absolutely sure you're really here for, a story about gods and zombie assassins and stuff, now with bonus! madmen in cellars with axes:

36,663 / 110,000

Comments

[holycarp.livejournal.com]

I have not read any of these, but it is neat how many of them have shorts in the anthology I just finished reading. I think Peterfreund's is the only one in the same setting as the book you describe, though.

[spryng.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly, I have Zombies vs Unicorns on my to-read list. And I've also read a number more of those authors in the past year (Justine herself for one - you haven't read Liar, have you? That is one awesomely unreliable MC). Clearly, modern fantasy writers are an incestuous lot who are always hanging out together and throwing parties.
Either that, or the rise of blogs has lead to an easier way of establishing a loosely-knit online network of geeky writers.

[holycarp.livejournal.com]

Probably both.

I have not read Liar, but I will keep it in mind. I would also really like to know how JL pronounces Larbalestier. Presumably not lahr-bal-ahs-tee-ay, the way I am inclined to. But I keep wanting to mention her in non-text (speech?) and it's challenging.

I really adored most of Z vs U. When you get around to it, my favorites in particular were Westerfield's "Inoculata," Maureen Johnson's "Children of the Revolution," Dawn Johnson's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Libba Bray's "Prom Night," and finally Kathleen Duey's "The Third Virgin"--probably the best, darkest unicorn story ever.

Let me know when you get around to it. I'd love to talk about it.

[holycarp.livejournal.com]

Also writing this response has made me realize that all but one of my favorites are zombie stories. I guess I am on Team Zombie after all.