Howdy! I had designs of creating a huge, growing list of books I’ve read, but that quickly became unmanageable. So I broke it at the neat and totally culturally significant year mark and retired the old page. Previous years are available in the drop down menu. Also, you can find my profile on GoodReads over here. (Friend me! I’m friendly).
Standard reading rotation is one fiction, one non-fiction, and one writing how-to on the go, though I do sometimes binge. These links go back to the Amazon.ca page, but if you’re American, or looking for the Kindle editions, for the most part if you substitute the .ca in the address for .com, it will take you to the US page for that particular book.
Currently Reading:
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin — [Stephanie tries to write something about this book, but devolves into hiccuping declarations of fangirl adoration instead. Leave her be. She'll recover in about an hour.]
(Um, wow, I do want to figure out a drinking game for this. Every time someone says WHORE take a shot! Ye’d be drunk after a chapter.)
Power and Light by Roger Zelazny — The second volume in the Nesfa Press series. This is the bedside book. Too big and too precious to subject to the vagaries of backpack travel, so it will be a slow read.
Read So Far:
Whedonistas! edited by Lynne Thomas and Deborah Stanish — On the heels of Chicks Did Time Lords (below), comes this title, focused on all of Whedon’s work in television. Because it focuses not on one fandom but the vision of one creator, the essays (so far) have been far-ranging, and very cool.
The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How To Change It by Charles Duhigg — I bought this as a life-hack book, but boy, it’s fucking cool. It’s so weird and neat how people organize their lives, consciously or otherwise, and how people and groups often function in the same ways. Was a library read; have now ordered a copy.
Virga: Cities of the Air by Karl Schroeder — This is a double book, and since I’ve read the first, I’m diving into the second, Queen of Candesce. Loved the first one, and loved the sequel. Got very riled up when the heroine appeared to make a bad choice, but ended up not. Got very emotional at the ending. Epic stuff.
Chicks Dig Time Lords edited by Lynne Thomas and Tara O’Shea — [Insert squeeage here.] [Seriously, just squeeage.] Also, I need to read more feminist stuff.
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi — I have always loved maps. I remember cracking open my first fantasy novel and finding that map to another world and falling in love. This extended map-as-metaphor treatise is very interesting, a meta-text to the writing process.
Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right by Judith Tarr — for research, as one of the main characters in the WIP I’ll be editing is on a horse a great deal of the time.
The Book of Jhereg by Steven Brust — Compilation of the first three published books in his Taltos series. I’ve read the first, so diving into the second. You know how a series starts to get comfortable in that boring and familiar way, the sort that lets you stop reading? Yeah. This series isn’t like that. At all. I’ve ordered the next compendium, The Book of Taltos.
The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders — The subtitle is, “How the Victorians reveled in death and detection and created modern crime.” Essentially, we’ve been ‘watching’ reality TV for a very long time. But it’s interesting to see the echo effect on how the rise of journalism and murder-as-entertainment informed actual policing and crime, which then in turn influenced journalism and entertainment, and back again.
Once Upon a Time: On The Nature of Fairy Tales by Max Luthi — Research for the current WIP, this is a translation of a study of fairy tales. It’s dated in parts, very dated, but there is useful stuff to extract.
Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber — This came highly recommended. Funny thing, when I was reading it, I was stuck thinking it had been published in the 70s, because that’s the copy I had. It was well done, but I kept thinking something was just a little off and I couldn’t figure out what. Then I finally figured out it had been published in the early 50s and my brain went a-ha and my opinion of it rose dramatically. While set in the late 40s, it does not real like it was written then. At all. Very impressed. (Though, the whole women as irrational thing irked me to know end. But, the times, I know.)
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See — I loved the first book, Shanghai Girls. The sequel does not disappoint, but boy, if I thought the invasion of China by Japanese forces was a rough read, the starvation and desperation that See depicts during the Great Leap Forward is just crushing. Fabulously researched, and characters that feel and act like real people.
The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon by Theodore Sturgeon — A belated VP recommendation. Collection of short stories and novellas. Hate to admit it, but I ended up putting it down two-thirds of the way through. I really like his style, but a lot of the stories seemed to go on far longer than they had to. I did some web-snooping and it looks like most of these are not among the ones he’s best known for, so I’m not giving up on Ted, just this sample.
Among Others by Jo Walton — Lovely. It reminded me a lot of Deathless by Catherynne Valente; not in tone, but in effect it had on me as a reader. There were so many times when I was reading it where I was caught flat-footed by some incredibly sharp, life philosophy nugget and I’d have to put the book down and really think on it. Treasure it. I’ve often said, of books I come to late in life, “why didn’t I find this when it came out 20 years ago?” With this, I find myself thinking, “I wish this had been written 20 years ago, so I would have understood that I was not alone.” (And every time she mentioned a book that I’d read, I squeed.)
Alan Clark: The Diaries 1972-1999 by Alan Clark — This is his actual diary, edited of course. This was a brick of a book, a real monster, but so fascinating. So many contradictions built into one man; which is how we all are, but rarely do we get to see. Reading it felt voyeuristic at times, and the end (the only way a diary, or anyone, ends) is very moving.
Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand — This was a book listed in Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy in the section Intrusion Fantasy. It was as good as the Rhetorics of Fantasy made it sound. And likely a book I will read again, something I don’t typically do.
None much yet. Check last year’s page for recent reads.
