Category: Recent Reads

the essential kit

TBR shelf

May 24, 2013

I’m sure it’d be faster to take a picture, but here’s the to-be-read shelf: Michael Carroll: THE ASCENSION, SUPER HUMAN Neil Gaiman: THE GRAVEYARD BOOK Sarah Rees Brennan: UNSPOKEN Cassandra Clare: CIY OF BONES, CITY OF ASHES, CITY OF GLASS CS Friedman: LEGACY OF KING Nick Harkaway: ANGELMAKER Gene Kemp: THE TURBULENT TERM OF TYKE TILER Sheridan Le Fanu: IN A GLASS DARKLY Ian Whates: CITY OF DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES Pamela C Dean: THE SECRET COUNTRY MC Beaton: DEATH OF A CAD Faith Hunter: RAVEN CURSED, DEATH’S RIVAL Lynn Fwelling:…

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the essential kit

too. many. books.

May 23, 2013

I know it’s blasphemy, but argh, there are too. many. books. in this house. Between Christmas and EasterCon, I (we, but I cop to it: *I*) had some significant Bookstores Accidents, and while this is most of the time merely inconvenient because there are never enough shelves, when I’m facing moving, all I can really wonder is why I didn’t bloody well buy digital copies of ALL THESE BOOKS. I mean, I know why. It’s far, far more satisfying to go browse and buy physical books than it is to…

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Recent Reads: TOUCH OF POWER

May 20, 2013

Maria’s one of the other Luna alumni who got picked up at the same time I did. She’s done a kind of splendid shooting star rise, reaching the NYT with first book, and going on to take the YA world by storm since then. This book might work better for that audience. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it (except a language thing Maria’s chosen to do in all her books which I understand but find jarring), but I was underwhelmed, which leaves me feeling like probably I just wasn’t a…

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Recent Reads: Astonishing X-Men (Warren Ellis run)

May 3, 2013

ASTONISHING X-MEN: GHOST BOX, EXOGENETIC, XENOGENESIS: Sometime back Warren Ellis said he was never going to write for Marvel again. After reading this trilogy of story arcs, I really wish he’d stuck with that. I gather the X-universe storylines have taken a turn for the bleak recently, but I liked GHOST BOX less than anything else of Ellis’s I’ve ever read, and less than any X-story I’ve ever read, including what I considered to be the god-awful Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely run that culminated with Cassandra Nova. The art in GHOST…

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the essential kit

gender parity

April 29, 2013

So after reading Juliet E McKenna’s quite terrific blog post about women in SF/F, I became curious as to the percentages of books I read by each gender (only because this guy is trying to balance his own gender parity in reading). Since I’ve been keeping an annual reading list since 1998, I could offer up a very thorough look at fifteen years of my reading proclivities. I haven’t got the time right now to do a 15 year retrospective (if somebody else wants to, have at!), but it was…

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