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Category: Book reviews (Page 1 of 3)

Piers Anthony – The Xanth Series

December 24, 2024 / / 1 Comment

Boy, this is starting to become a habit. Yet again, I’m reviewing a book I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) finish.

In this case, it’s a book from a series I read many moons ago when I was a young’un. I remember enjoying them well enough at the time, though I did find certain aspects of them mildly annoying. To be fair, I wasn’t the most discerning of readers. I would happily read almost anything, and frequently did.

This is clearly no longer the case. I got about a third of the way into A Spell for Chameleon and that’s as far into the Xanth series as I’m willing to go. It’s a shame. Piers Anthony was quite influential in encouraging young writers back in the day, and in helping navigate and mitigate dodgy publishing practices. He ran (and still runs) a website called Hi, Piers! (although it seems to be barely functional at the moment) that used to serve as a hub, nay a nexus, for aspiring writers to get good, reliable industry information and advice. But the issues with A Spell for Chameleon are numerous, horrifying, and, if I remember correctly, continue (and worsen) as you go through the series.

Now, let me preface this next bit by telling you that I am very well aware of the difference between an author’s world view or opinions and those of a character in a book written by that author. It is entirely possible for a writer to write characters who subscribe to ideas the writer finds abhorrent. This is not what is happening here. The world view and opinions that are problematic in this series (and in much of Anthony’s other writing) are woven into the fabric of the story in such a way as to leave no doubt that they are those of the author. And they are pretty bad.

I don’t feel the need to go into too much detail, but the accusations of pedophilia and misogyny (in his work) that have followed Anthony for much of his career are very much warranted. Female characters are nothing more than objects of desire or disgust. Girls as young as 14 (several times, just in this book) are described as sexually appealing and desirable. Rape victims are potentially “asking for it”. The main character – a 24 year old man with the intelligence and emotional maturity of a 12 year old – sets off on a quest to allow him to stay in Xanth and therefore stay with his sweetheart of the past 8(?) years but promptly forgets all about her as soon as he sees literally any other girl. The whole thing is gross.

I remember being put off by these aspects of the book when I read it initially, probably at about the age of 9 or 10. Reading it now, though, I found myself unable to continue. I mean, shit.. the opening scene of the story involves the protagonist attempting to create a mindless sex-slave, which his father characterizes as perfectly normal and understandable, except girls are all unreasonable about that sort of thing. WT-actual-F?

Looking beyond those hard-no issues, the story itself is poorly written. Anthony was never in any danger of winning any literary awards. The characters are all two-dimensional puppets with no emotional affect at all, moved about by the whims of the plot the author wants to follow, and the puns are… plentiful.

Anyway, my advice would be to give these books a miss. I just checked my list to see if the Apprentice Adept, Mode, Battle Circle, or Incarnations series are on there and they are not. Probably for the best. I don’t remember the mode series very well, but the Apprentice Adept series shared many of the same problems this one suffers from. Incarnations I remember fondly and as being less problematic. That one might be worth a read.

Next on the list is Falconer by John Cheever. I hope I like it.

Out of the Silent Planet (The Space Trilogy book 1) – C.S. Lewis

November 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Let me start this review off with a caveat. Well, two caveats. The first is that Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad set a very high bar for this book to hurdle. The second is that I’ve never much liked C.S. Lewis. I read some of the Narnia series as a kid, and I didn’t really care for it. This book was no exception. Dull, dull, dull.

I think my problem with Lewis is the same problem I have with Madeline L’Engle and Christian Rock ‘n’ Roll. They’re all so focused on the Jesus-y bits they forget to do the rest of it well. Any story with an agenda is unlikely to be a very good story, and this story is effectively agenda from cover to cover. I disliked it enough that I decided not to read the other two books in the series even though that was my original plan. Mostly because a little birdie (on Reddit) has reliably informed me that the first book is the least preachy of the bunch and that one was far too preachy for my liking.

Aside from that aspect of things, there were a couple of story things that really rubbed me the wrong way, one major and one minor. I’ll try to avoid spoilers.

The major issue occurs in a scene in which a major character, someone who has been a friend to the protagonist, Ransom, dies. Ransom shows not a moments emotion over this. In fact, later the same day he finds himself wondering that he ever thought of the Hrossa as people at all and even begins to think fondly about the two men who drugged him, kidnapped him, and planned to sacrifice him to the aliens – merely because they are shaped like him. Absurd.

The minor thing is the deus ex machina way in which the story ends. Perhaps it’s the nature of religion-infused fiction but the characters all seem robbed of agency, and the only character whose thoughts and actions matter is the “higher power”. I find it unsatisfying.

At any rate, I’ll not bother with the other two books as I’m confident I won’t enjoy them. I believe the Narnia series is higher up on the list though, and I suppose I’ll have to give them another shot when I get to them. Perhaps I’ll like them better than this one.

Next book(s) on the list is the entire Xanth series. I’ve read them before (though probably not *all* of them*) but not for a very long time. There are apparently 47 of them, so I may or may not read all of them. If I do read all of them I’ll likely write a short review of each one as I go, otherwise it’ll bee weeks before my next review.

Ta for now.

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (a review)

November 20, 2024 / / 1 Comment

I was looking forward to this book tremendously as soon as I looked it up. It’s got an unusual (possibly unique) story structure, it’s loosely centered around the world of punk rock and the music industry, and it’s relatively (by comparison to some of the books on my reading list) new. I suspect it was partly my anticipation for this book that made The Death of the Heart such a disappointment.

Spoiler alert: I absolutely loved this book.

There are two things I mostly want to mention about it – the story structure, and the 12th (chapter or story, depending on who you ask) “Great Rock and Roll Pauses by Alison Blake”. I suspect both of these things are what other reviews also tend to focus on, but I’ve made an effort not to read any one else’s reviews before writing my own, so who knows.

The structure of this story is, as I mentioned, is unusual. To the point that some people apparently don’t consider it to be a novel at all. It’s a collection of standalone-able stories with no continuous main character. Instead the main character of each story has some connection, whether profound or profoundly casual, with a main character in a previous story. A few of the characters appear in multiple stories, some only in one. What interested me about this structure is that, off the bat it sounded similar to the structure of the first draft of a novel I just finished writing. In mine, there are three loosely connected stories where the throughline is a shared set of events.

It turns out the shape of this story is nothing like mine. Oh, and in my opinion Egan’s story actually does have a main character. Time.

Over the course of the book, a couple of characters (I think it’s a couple, it may have only been the one) refer to Time as a Goon. The book is called A Visit From the Goon Squad. The one consistent theme that appears throughout the book in various guises is that of the effects of time, in particular as relates to memory. I would argue that there is a main character after all.

Interestingly enough, I was recently involved in a workplace chat that found its way to the topic of memory – specifically childhood memories. I made the point that all memory is constructed (as is all experience of the world) and that while we have to act as though our memories are accurate in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shouldn’t necessarily trust that they are accurate. Someone else pointed out that people who stay in their hometown and hang out with the same people from high school tend to reinforce (a version of) their remembered experience through reminiscing whereas those of us who moved away (in this case to China) don’t – and when we do go back (for reunions and the like) our memories of high school can vary greatly from those of the people who stayed.

And yes, I work with some pretty unusual people.

Egan treats memory in much the same way. Characters remember different elements of their shared experience, remember the same things differently, and in some cases don’t remember anything much at all. Time really is a goon.

The stories in this book vary quite widely in style, suiting themselves to the point of view character, but none quite so much as the 12th story. It’s written not in prose, but in presentation slides (no, actually presentation slides, like in a business meeting), and it’s brilliantly done. I don’t really know how to describe it any better than that. You should just read it. It’s amazing and I stand in awe of Egan’s talent in pulling this off. It seems like it should be too gimmicky to fly, but it not only flies, it soars.

It’s called Great Rock and Roll Pauses and, just as the songs mentioned in it are defined in large part by their pauses, so too is this story defined by the gaps caused by the way in which it’s presented (pardon the pun). It also ties back into the fragmented nature of memory depicted elsewhere, and to the idea that we build full stories about the past based on the bits and pieces we hold on to. In this story we are given only the smallest pieces of information, and yet it is a full and satisfying story. The whole book is enjoyable, but this story by itself is worth the price of admission. It even makes up for having read (some of) The Death of the Heart.

Go and read it.

The next book(s) in my reading challenge are C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, which I will hopefully be able to finish this week. From what I recall of Lewis, his prose is a fairly easy read.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – a review

November 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Having just finished Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, I really wish I hadn’t bothered.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a terrible book, it just that, much like Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart, it isn’t a particularly good one either. And I had such high hopes for it, as well. Everything I’ve ever read about this book has been overwhelmingly positive. Also, I found Sun Tzu’s Art of War to be incredibly thought provoking and valuable and logically, and a book whose title is a play on that books title should be chock-full of wisdom. Right?

Well, there are some good ideas in The War of Art, but they are, all of them, other people’s ideas collected and presented by Mr. Pressfield. There are no original ideas, no world changing revelations, no fresh ways of seeing the world that are staggering in both their power and simplicity. Hmm, maybe I was expecting too much. Most of the ideas are useful, after a fashion. I will list them here to save you the time and trouble of reading the thing (which isn’t much, as it’s effectively a long blog post worth of text).

  • everything that pushes you away from doing a creative thing is called “resistance”
  • the more resistance you feel, the more important the thing is to do
  • focus on the work, not the result
  • show up every day and do the work
  • angels are real
  • all of the creative things exist already (in potentia) and we don’t actually create them but rather discover them
  • Do or do not, there is no try

And that’s the book in a nutshell.

I mean, maybe the thing that bothered me the most about it was the way he spent the final third of the book raw-dogging a sort of watered-down new age mysticism. Maybe it was the relative lack of substance in the other things he was saying. Overall it’s a fairly well-written and at times amusing rehash of standard writing advice, I suppose. I just resented the loss of the time I spent reading it. I was hoping to learn something new.

Next up for writing books to review is Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. The subtitle says it’s the last book on novel writing I’ll ever need. Hope so.

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (an almost review)

October 4, 2024 / / 3 Comments

You know, for the past week or two I’ve been walking around thinking I’d fallen at the first hurdle with this reading project. In a way I have – in that it’s taken me three weeks or so and I still haven’t finished the first book on the list – but the truth is, I don’t intend to finish it. So there.

I take this as a sign of growth, actually.

I really struggled with this book. I couldn’t force myself to be interested in any of the characters. None of them seem to actually do anything, and it felt very much like work to make myself pick the thing up and read it. Every time I did pick it up, half of my mind was occupied with thinking of things I’d rather be reading.

So I stopped.

I read about a third of the book before I put it down permanently. I’m sure I was probably only a few pages away from something interesting – some fascinating little character quirk or wrinkle of conversation – but I just couldn’t bear the thought of forcing myself past any more boring to get there.

And that’s a real step forward for me.

I used to be of the mind that if I started reading a book, no matter how much I disliked it, I would finish the damned thing. In fact, this is only the second novel in my life that I’ve started and not finished. The first was the fourth book in Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series which was so poorly written that I have to suspect it was published as a practical joke (on readers) or that Ms. Auel had some sort of ‘leverage’ on someone high up over at Random House.

The Death of the Heart is not nearly as bad as that. Bowen’s prose is competent if not terribly interesting and the book isn’t bad per se, it’s just that it isn’t very good, and I have a whole list of very good books ahead of me. So many of them, in fact, that it really accentuates my lack of interest in this one.

And life’s too short to spend it reading books you don’t like.

If you are interested in unsympathetic characters that talk in vague circles about uninteresting things and where nothing much happens, this book is very much for you. As for me, I’m moving on to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad which I’ve already started, and which I’m very excited to continue.

My Dirty Little Reading Habit (book reviews incoming)

August 16, 2024 / / 1 Comment

A while back I had begun working on a series of non-fiction books I called the Book Club Companion series. The idea was to read and review current popular fiction, and then write some pop-literary analysis with an eye towards helping folks who might want to discuss said books with others, but who don’t have the literary background to feel comfortable doing so.

The secondary goal, of course, was to give me an excuse to read more, and in particular read outside of my normal wheelhouse (Science Fiction and Epic Fantasy mostly).

That project has been mothballed indefinitely, mostly because Amazon doesn’t seem to understand what literary analysis is. They allowed me to publish and to offer the books for sale, but then disabled them in all of the stores and made it impossible to actually buy it. They say “our customers generally find this type of book to be unsatisfying”. Oh, well. I only wasted a couple of weeks in writing the first book, designing the cover templates and covers, editing, formatting, and publishing. We’ll just add this to the pile of reasons why Amazon makes me hope Hell is a real place.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with a clever plan to fill the gap. I’m just going to read a shitload of books and then review them here.

But what books to read?

Well, to get the ball rolling, I Googled up a few of those “Top 100 Novels of All Time”-style lists and consolidated a handful of them into one ginormous list. I included a couple of lists from Goodreads that looked interesting, as well as the Reader’s Digest Best Books of All Time list, a list of newer books, and a Sci-Fi and Fantasy themed one from NPR. Then I made a combined ranking to generate a list from best to least-best. Now that I have the master list, I can read them in least-best to best order.

Make sense?

Here’s the list:

  1. The Death of the Heart – Bowen, Elizabeth
  2. A Visit From the Goon Squad – Egan, Jennifer
  3. The Space Trilogy – Lewis, C.S.
  4. The Xanth Series – Anthony, Piers
  5. Falconer – Cheever, John
  6. The Kite Runner – Hosseini, Khaled
  7. An American Tragedy – Dreiser, Theodore
  8. Perdido Street Station – Mieville, China
  9. A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement – Powell, Anthony
  10. Doomsday Book – Willis, Connie
  11. Americanah – Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
  12. Under the Net – Murdoch, Iris
  13. Lucifer’s Hammer – Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry
  14. Loving – Green, Henry
  15. The Mars Trilogy – Robinson, Kim Stanley
  16. The Caves of Steel – Asimov, Isaac
  17. Wuthering Heights – Bronte, Emily
  18. The Assistant – Malamud, Bernard
  19. The Sportswriter – Ford, Richard
  20. A Fire Upon the Deep – Vinge, Vernor
  21. Sunshine – McKinley, Robin
  22. Dog Soldiers – Stone, Robert
  23. The Color Purple – Walker, Alice
  24. The Illustrated Man – Bradbury, Ray
  25. The Recognitions – Gaddis, William
  26. A Death in the Family – Agee, James
  27. Little Women – Alcott, Louisa May
  28. The Elric Saga – Moorcock, Michael
  29. The Outlander Series – Gabaldan, Diana
  30. The Berlin Stories – Isherwood, Christopher
  31. A Handful fo Dust – Waugh, Evelyn
  32. The Thrawn triogy – Zahn, Timothy
  33. The Sheltering Sky – Bowles, Paul
  34. The Year of Magical Thinking – Didion, Joan
  35. The Book of the New Sun – Wolfe, Gene
  36. The Codex Alera series – Butcher, Jim
  37. Call It Sleep – Roth, Henry
  38. Hamlet – Shakespeare, William
  39. The World According to Garp – Irving, John
  40. At Swim-Two-Birds – O’Brien, Flann
  41. Anathem – Stephenson, Neal
  42. Herzog – Bellow, Saul
  43. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Murakami, Haruki
  44. The Crystal Cave – Stewart, Mary
  45. The Culture Series – Banks, Iian M.
  46. The Adventures of Augie March – Bellow, Saul
  47. The Sot-Weed Factor – Barth, John
  48. Between the World and Me – Coates, Ta-Nehisi
  49. The Eyre Affair – Fforde, Jasper
  50. The Malazan Book of the Fallen series – Erikson, Steven
  51. The Man Who Loved Children – Stead, Christina
  52. The Stranger – Camus, Albert
  53. Wicked – Maguire, Gregory
  54. Housekeeping – Robinson, Marilynne
  55. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Bradbury, Ray
  56. The Day of the Locust – West, Nathaniel
  57. Deliverance – Dickey, James
  58. The Dispossessed – LeGuin, Ursula K.
  59. Money – Amis, Martin
  60. The Kushiel’s Legacy series – Carey, Jacqueline
  61. The Right Stuff – Wolfe, Tom
  62. Rendezvous With Rama – Clarke, Arthur C.
  63. Appointment in Samarra – O’Hara, John
  64. Tropic of Cancer – Miller, Henry
  65. The Diamond Age – Stephenson, Neal
  66. Old Man’s War – Scalzi, John
  67. The Confessions of Nat Turner – Styron, William
  68. The Moviegoer – Percy, Walker
  69. The Legend of Drizzt Series – Salvatore, R.A.
  70. Pale Fire – Nabokov, Vladimir
  71. A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Verne, Jules
  72. The Heart of the Matter – Greene, Graham
  73. The Way of Kings – Sanderson, Brandon
  74. The Golden Notebook – Lessing, Doris
  75. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Niffenegger, Audrey
  76. The Farseer Trilogy – Hobb, Robin
  77. The Conan The Barbarian Series – Howard, R.E.
  78. Rabbit, Run – Updike, John
  79. The Shannara Trilogy – Brooks, Terry
  80. Ubik – Dick, Philip K.
  81. The Golden Compass – Pullman, Philip
  82. Lucky Jim – Amis, Kingsley
  83. The Night Watchmen – Erdrich, Louise
  84. The Riftwar Saga – Feist, Raymond E.
  85. Play It As It Lays – Didion, Joan
  86. The Giver – Lowry, Lois
  87. I Am Legend – Matheson, Richard
  88. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Clarke, Susanna
  89. A House for Mr Biswas – Naipaul, V.S.
  90. The Sword of Truth – Goodkind, Terry
  91. The Painted Bird – Kosinski, Jerry
  92. The Joy Luck Club – Tan, Amy
  93. Under the Volcano – Lowry, Malcolm
  94. The Mote in God’s Eye – Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry
  95. Going Postal – Pratchett, Terry
  96. Gravity’s Rainbow – Pynchon, Thomas
  97. The Vorkosigan Saga – Bujold, Lois McMaster
  98. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Diaz, Junot
  99. White Teeth – Smith, Zadie
  100. Rubyfruit Jungle – Brown, Rita Mae
  101. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever – Donaldson, Stephen R.
  102. Red Harvest – Hammett, Dashiell
  103. Small Gods – Pratchett, Terry
  104. The Book Thief – Zusak, Markus
  105. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Chabon, Michael
  106. The Forever War – Haldeman, Joe
  107. Wide Sargasso Sea – Rhys, Jean
  108. The Last Unicorn – Beagle, Peter S.
  109. The Age of Innocence – Warton, Edith
  110. World War Z – Brooks, Max
  111. Homegoing – Gyasi, Yaa
  112. The Crying of Lot 49 – Pynchon, Thomas
  113. The Power and the Glory – Greene, Graham
  114. Cryptonomicon – Stephenson, Neal
  115. Stardust – Gaimen, Neil
  116. American Pastoral – Roth, Philip
  117. The Hyperion Cantos – Simmons, Dan
  118. The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Wilder, Thornton
  119. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Cather, Willa
  120. And Then There Were None – Christie, Agatha
  121. Contact – Sagan, Carl
  122. Childhood’s End – Clarke, Arthur C.
  123. Out of Africa – Dinesen, Isak
  124. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Spark, Muriel
  125. Neverwhere – Gaimen, Neil
  126. Of Human Bondage – Maugham, W. Somerset
  127. The Once and Future King – White, T.H.
  128. The Silmarillion – Tolkien, J.R.R.
  129. Revolutionary Road – Yates, Richard
  130. The Left Hand of Darkness – LeGuin, Ursula K.
  131. East of Eden – Steinbeck, John
  132. Infinite Jest – Wallace, David Foster
  133. White Noise – DeLillo, Don
  134. Ringworld – Niven, Larry
  135. Middlesex – Eugenides, Jeffrey
  136. The Mistborn Series – Sanderson, Brandon
  137. Brideshead Revisited – Waugh, Evelyn
  138. The Mists of Avalon – Bradley, Marion Zimmer
  139. Naked Lunch – Burroughs, William S.
  140. The Belgariad – Eddings, David
  141. Love Medicine – Erdrich, Louise
  142. The Road – McCarth, Cormac
  143. Blood Meridian – McCarthy, Cormac
  144. Go Tell It on the Mountain – Baldwin, James
  145. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – McCullers, Carson
  146. The Chronicles of Amber – Zelazny, Roger
  147. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold – le Carre, John
  148. The War of the Worlds – Wells, H.G.
  149. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – Fowles, John
  150. Flowers for Algernon – Keys, Daniel
  151. Interpreter of Maladies – Lahiri, Jhumpa
  152. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Thompson, Hunter S.
  153. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Verne, Jules
  154. To the Lighthouse – Woolf, Virginia
  155. Light in August – Faulkner, William
  156. The Time Machine – Wells, H.G.
  157. Ragtime – Doctorow, E.L.
  158. A Canticle for Leibowitz – Miller, Walter M.
  159. Cutting For Stone – Verghese, Abraham
  160. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Heinlein, Robert
  161. Native Son – Wright, Richard
  162. The Blind Assassin – Atwood, Margaret
  163. Dragonflight – McCaffrey, Anne
  164. Charlotte’s Web – White, E.B.
  165. Watership Down – Adams, Richard
  166. All the King’s Men – Warren, Robert Penn
  167. The Sound and the Fury – Faulkner, William
  168. Starship Troopers – Heinlein, Robert
  169. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
  170. The Sandman Series – Gaimen, Neil
  171. I, Claudius – Graves, Robert
  172. A Passage to India – Forster, E.M.
  173. Cat’s Cradle – Vonnegut, Kurt
  174. The Martian Chronicles – Bradbury, Ray
  175. Possession – Byatt, A.S.
  176. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass – Carroll, Lewis
  177. The Fault in Our Stars – Green, John
  178. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Hurston, Zora Neale
  179. The Stand – King, Stephen
  180. Selected Stories – Munro, Alice
  181. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Clarke, Arthur C.
  182. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – Rowling, J.K.
  183. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Eggers, Dave
  184. The Dark Tower Series – King, Stephen
  185. Mrs. Dalloway – Woolf, Virginia
  186. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Dick, Philip K.
  187. The Corrections – Franzen, Jonathan
  188. Angela’s Ashes – McCourt, Frank
  189. Frankenstein – Shelley, Mary
  190. The Kingkiller Chronicles – Rothfuss, Patrick
  191. Great Expectations – Dickens, Charles
  192. Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein, Robert
  193. I, Robot – Asimov, Isaac
  194. In Cold Blood – Capote, Truman
  195. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Kesey, Ken
  196. The Wheel of Time Series – Jordan, Robert & Sanderson, Brandon
  197. The Princess Bride – Goldman, William
  198. Gone With the Wind – Mitchell, Margaret
  199. Pride and Prejudice – Austen, Jane
  200. American Gods – Gaimen, Neil
  201. Atonement – McEwan, Ian
  202. The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck, John
  203. A Wrinkle in Time – L’Engle, Madeleine
  204. The Foundation Trilogy – Asimov, Isaac
  205. Lord of the Flies – Golding, William
  206. Things Fall Apart – Achebe, Chinua
  207. Brave New World – Huxley, Aldous
  208. The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway, Ernest
  209. The Shining – King, Stephen
  210. A Song of Ice and Fire – Martin, George R.R.
  211. Portnoy’s Complaint – Roth, Philip
  212. Valley of the Dolls – Susann, Jacqueline
  213. Ender’s Game – Card, Orson Scott
  214. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Adams, Douglas
  215. Anna Karenina – Tolstoy, Leo
  216. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Lewis, C.S.
  217. The Big Sleep/The Long Goodbye – Chandler, Raymond
  218. Midnight’s Children – Rushdie, Salman
  219. Never Let Me Go – Ishiguro, Kazuo
  220. The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald, F. Scott
  221. Snow Crash – Stephenson, Neal
  222. On the Road – Kerouac, Jack
  223. Neuromancer – Gibson, William
  224. The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, J.D.
  225. Lolita – Nabokov, Vladimir
  226. Invisible Man – Ellison, Ralph
  227. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. – Blume, Judy
  228. A Clockwork Orange – Burgess, Anthony
  229. Catch-22 – Heller, Joseph
  230. Beloved – Morrison, Toni
  231. The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood, Margaret
  232. Farenheit 451 – Bradbury, Ray
  233. Animal Farm – Orwell, George
  234. Dune – Herbert, Frank
  235. To Kill A Mockingbird – Lee, Harper
  236. Slaughterhouse Five – Vonnegut, Kurt
  237. 1984 – Orwell, George
  238. The Lord of the Rings – Tolkien, J.R.R.

I’m looking forward to reading quite a few of these – some for the first time, more than a few for the second or third. In many cases I’ve read other books by an author on this list, but not the specific book listed. There are a few of these books I am very much *not* looking forward to reading. I remember loving A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as a child (I was probably 5 or 6 years old at the time). I tried reading it again a few years ago and found it unreadable. I’ll do my best to give it another shot. I have never liked The Giver. I taught it once to an ESL class of teenagers. They seemed to like it. Every page was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Again, I’ll see what I can do.

There are a few books on the list that I haven’t read, and that I suspect I will not enjoy. I will do my best to finish all of the books on this list, but I’m not going to punish myself by forcing myself to read a book I actively hate. I may bail on one or two of the books on the list. Maybe even three.

As always, you are cordially invited to read alongside me as I make my way through the list. I will be going through in the order listed above, so you’ll be able to figure out what I’m working on at any given time. Hopefully, there will be some lively discussion in the comments of each review. And speaking of comments, let me know what you think of my list in the comments below.

Happy reading!

Human 76 – The Ballad of Ash & Hum

October 1, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Alison DeLuca has written what I’m going to call a “non-traditional romance” (that means the romantic partners are gay*) and I hope she’ll forgive me, but when I figured out what was going on I have to admit I rolled my eyes a bit.  You see, on my Facebook I have as friends a great number of other writers. Among those writers, the great majority (of the regular posters, anyway) seem to write romance, and of the romance writers it seems to be split about half and half between very muscular Scotsmen and very muscular gay men (with a small fraction of very muscular, gay Scotsmen). It seems like gay romance is the flavor of the month (or year, I suppose) and I tend to resist that sort of thing as a knee-jerk reaction.

This, though, is a well written romance story about a couple of interesting people. The plot is well paced and suspenseful, and there is nothing formulaic about it. I should have known this from the beginning:

Hum thinks about infinity a lot. Dirt and stone surround Pandora Alliance that lies underground. No one knows what lies above their buried city. Thanks to his enhanced neural wiring, Hum can call up an exact picture of the entire facility, rotate, flip the image, and figure the fastest way to get from one port to another, including airshafts and what Ash calls ‘smuggler tunnels’ – passages known only in Alliance legends.
These mental images come to Hum as music, a strange symphony of bytes and constant input. No one quite understands the constant tune in his head, although Ash comes closest to hearing the crackles and whines of Pandora’s song. The melody uses zeroes and ones instead of notes, wires and hardware for instruments.
Ash stands and twists his back. When he doesn’t move for long he becomes restless. His enhancements are all physical: strengthened bones, perfect eyesight, the balance and poise of a dancer. HUMAN 272 is tatted under his long hair, but only Hum gets to see it.
They are bred to perform perfectly together. Ash is all hard muscle and sinew, ready to spring to action when Hum makes the call. One theorizes, the other acts.

It did get me thinking about why I see so many writers going the route of the gay romance. From a writer’s standpoint I asked myself, “What would I get out of making my characters gay?” Well, first off, I would get to drop the bullshit gender roles that seem to go with that particular territory and focus on writing about a couple of interesting, three-dimensional people. That’s always nice… and that’s when I realized. I’ve more or less already done that. To Ride the Wind Dancing is basically a romance story between a guy and a spaceship. Similar idea from a gender roles standpoint.

At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Ash, Hum, and Bhari are all well defined and compelling characters. They speak with their own voices, which is harder to do than you might think, and they have interesting things to say. Also, the bad guy is a right dick.

That’s also a good thing.

The book is available at Lulu.com in paperback and e-book formats. It is also available at Barnes and Noble as paperback and for the Nook, and at  Amazon (paperback) and Amazon (kindle). All proceeds go to Water is Life.

Human 76 – Sheshwahtay

September 30, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Sheshwahtay is a story that has stayed with me since I read it. KJ Collard has wrought something worthwhile here.

The story has a pseudo-native feel to it, not simply because of the names Two Horns and Red Foot, but from the pacing and the focus and the feel of the story’s fabric. This is a fully imagined society populated by fully realized people. Redheaded people. I really do wonder if I missed a story meeting somewhere along the line.

As I sat on my front porch, I could not help but beam at the tableau surrounding my young cousins. Two Horns had been born eleven years ago with both middle fingers gracefully extended. His recklessly carefree attitude was with him from the day he was born. But where Two Horns was antagonistic and playful, Red Foot was creative and loving. Their personalities could not be further apart on the spectrum, but their twin-like looks made it undeniable they were related. I loved my young cousins It did my heart good to see them act like children. The reports coming from our sister community in The Valley painted a very bleak picture of the world that they would inherit.
“One day, Two Horns will learn better than to tease you. Now, come here, Red Foot,” I coaxed, unable to control the urge to hug her.
Red Foot’s face broke into smile. “I love you, Ahma!”

Third Rosemary, A.K.A. Ahma, is a sympathetic character with a wonderful and unique voice. I found myself really sympathizing with her feelings of loss and regret, and rejoicing with her when.. well, let’s leave that at that. I’ll not give away the ending here, save to say that I’m glad it wasn’t written by the Wombat, and it was nice to see that particular old friend again.

If you haven’t yet gotten the book, it is available at Lulu.com in paperback and e-book formats. It is also available at Barnes and Noble as paperback and for the Nook, and at  Amazon (paperback) and Amazon (kindle). All proceeds go to Water is Life, and it is a very good book, so you should buy it.

Human 76 – The Oasis

September 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Rebecca Fyfe’s tale is very short in comparison to the others in the collection, but it packs an awful lot of story into its brief span of pages. Also, the protagonist is a mutant. Finally, someone wrote a mutant main character (and this one can fly) who isn’t an experiment!

The squirrel leapt from the tree and swooped down to land softly by my feet, folding its bat-like wings against its side. My gran had once given me a book about animals that showed a picture of a flying squirrel. Those squirrels from before the Blast didn’t have wings like this one and they didn’t actually fly; they just sort of glided on flaps of skin that stretched between their forelegs and hind quarters. The Blast had changed a lot of things. I’d never seen a squirrel without proper wings that allowed them to fly, to take off from the ground and soar through the air as easily as any bird.
I wish I had that kind of freedom. My wings were more like the ones those former squirrels had possessed. It meant I could only fly if I took off from somewhere high enough and if I could catch the air currents long enough to get some real lift. Of course, it also made it easier to hide my mutation and blend in when I came across others.

I’m struck by how many of the stories have young people who were raised by a grandparent or similar. I wonder what it is that makes that setup such a feature of our post-apocalyptic thinking. It’s a fairly commonplace situation here in China, actually. Maybe that makes China a post-apocalyptic society.

Here’s a weird thing. This story has the characters from Michael Wombat’s “Sand” meeting our mutated protagonist, but I can’t figure out which of the stories came first. That is, I don’t know if Wombat wrote “Sand” and Rebecca Fyfe included his characters, or if Rebecca wrote this story first, and Wombat wrote a prequel story. This is a good thing, as it means the integration between stories is solid.

If you haven’t read the book, it is available at Lulu.com in paperback and e-book formats. It is also available at Barnes and Noble as paperback and for the Nook, and at  Amazon (paperback) and Amazon (kindle). All proceeds go to Water is Life, so you should buy it.  Also, it is a very good book so you should buy it. Have you bought it yet?

Human 76 – Sand

September 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Another Michael Wombat story here, and the opening of this one combines both of his greatest literary loves: really weird piratical vessels, and (made up) words that make polite company wince.

Under an impossibly azure sky, the cutter Jack’s Bitch sailed at a steady ten knots, her single mast fore-and-aft rigged, her two headsails swollen by a foehn wind, thrusting her way across the fast sand that layered the scorched desert of the Wastelands. The only sounds were the hiss-tick of the wide wheels, fitted to enable the vessel to sail oceans of sand as well as those of water, and the occasional shout from the crew.
The desert wind was hot and dry. It curled my hair beneath the sweat-stained old baseball cap that sat uncomfortably over my antlers; it tugged at the white square of cloth that covered the back of my neck; it made my nerves jump and my skin itch. Its constancy nagged like an unsatisfied lover. It could not possibly get what it wanted, this wind, but it incessantly worked at my skin, trying to make me … different; trying to erode that which makes me Ghabrie. It whistled through the rigging, modulated, singing without melody. It reminded me that no matter how many friends I might have, or how many people love me, in the end I will die alone. Some things we must do alone. Dying is one of them. The desert wind whispered that truth in my ear even as it grazed my cheek.
To starboard the beautiful Shadow Mountain shimmered into the blue, forming a barrier to more temperate country beyond. Wisps of cloud on the high ridges betrayed the strong katabatic winds that raged high above the vessel. As Jack’s Bitch drew abreast of a rocky promontory that provided refuge for a swarm of wolf spiders, the captain beside me bellowed orders. Crew scrambled to lower the sails. The cutter glided to a stop. Silence, save for the song of the wind and the creaking and ticking of the wooden hull under a burning sun. I adjusted my irises as I gazed out across the sunbright ripples of sand.
“Bloody hell, Jack,” I growled. “There’s nothing here. I swear if you’re double crossing me your entrails will soon be your extrails.” I had heard that threat once in an old movie that Alphaeus had shown us, back in the shipping yard, and had been waiting a long time for an opportunity to use it.

This is one of the very few stories to use Ghabrie as a viewpoint character, and I believe the only one at all to use first person while doing so. I have to be honest, I found that closeness a bit off-putting and would have preferred to keep a certain amount of mystery to Ghabrie’s inner voice. Everything else about this story was wonderful, mind you, so feel free to ignore my misgivings about voice choice.

Items of note in this story: Ghabrie saves some kids (Huzzah),  and we see the reappearance of the skystone from the end of my story (Aha!) that Wombat asked me to put in. Also, explosions, radioactivity, and the breaking down of doors and such with mighty kicks. This is an action-packed kind of story.

The book is available at Lulu.com in paperback and e-book formats. It is also available at Barnes and Noble as paperback and for the Nook, and at  Amazon (paperback) and Amazon (kindle). All proceeds go to Water is Life, so you should buy it.  Also, it is a very good book so you should buy it.

The Summer Indie Book Awards are now finished, by the way, and we came in 2nd (WooHoo). I guess that means I still can’t refer to myself as an “Award Winning Author”, but I might start using “Award Nominated Author” and see if it catches on.

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