Rob
Short first entry in the Earthsea series. Haven't read any others. Reads like a YA novel, though LeGuin talks about a lack of specific audience in the Afterword; it reads a lot like mythology, a very different feeling from most other fantasy. The story is pretty standard, and it helps to remember that a lot of what seems derivative is itself derived from LeGuin and other then-contemporary works.
I wanted to like this one more than I did. I had never heard of the author until a friend recommended him; I then found his name popping up a lot as I read this collection. Saunders is a current literary darling, specializing in short stories, and has been generally very well-received.
Tenth of December is a collection of ten short stories. Length varies dramatically, from a couple of pages to much longer. Saunders has been praised for his style; initially I took it to be a conceit of one of his characters, but it's pretty consistent across the board. I liked it more when I thought it was character specific. As the pages went on it began to grow stale.
Saunders' wit is supposedly his trademark. The three people who eventually recommended him to me all found him funny; I rarely did. I compare him to David Sedaris. Many people think David Sedaris is hilarious; I have a hard time getting past the dysfunction, so instead of making me laugh, Sedaris bums me out. I think something similar might be at work here. I frequently found Saunders depressing, and there wasn't an adequate payoff to make the experience feel worth it. Not that I didn't like any of them; a few were very good. By and large, though, I didn't enjoy most of my time with Saunders.
Favorite stories from this collection: Escape From Spiderhead, Tenth of December
Least favorites: Puppy, The Semplica Girl Diaries
Waited pretty eagerly for this one, but liked it less than I hoped. Solid and carries, generally, the welcome hallmarks of a Tropper book – and it's nice to see him writing about someone who isn't a writer – but much depressing to read than previous outings.
The follow-up to The Half-Made World, set in the same reality but not about the same characters, though a few do return in bit parts.
Enjoyed it a lot at the beginning, less so for a stretch in the middle, and quite a lot again after that. The best things about it are the world and the characters, both of which feel alive. Most obviously, the principal conceit of the book is that it purports to be the memoir of Harry Ransom, inventor, visionary, and salesman and sometimes-genius, and is therefore presented in first-person. Moreover, it is written in segments, mailed to fictional newsman Elmer Merrial Carson, who does not entirely credit Ransom's writings. Both Ransom and Carson feel like real people with real personalities, though Carson appears only occasionally. Gilman's world is also alive, at least in the enclaves where the plot brings us. Jasper City feels most real of all.
I loved HMW, but I felt it petered out toward the end, in need of editing and direction. RRC's aimless period is in the middle and is thankfully brief; the end, if anything, wraps up awfully fast.
Worth reading if you enjoyed the world of HMW.
Thoroughly enjoyable. A light read, nothing world-changing, about a bookstore clerk's investigation into the unusual clientele of the unusual bookstore where he takes employment; I don't want to talk too much about the plot, since the enjoyment is in the protagonist's exploration.
The finest quality of the book is its prose. The author turns a phrase wonderfully. The writing is very modern, and here I want to highlight another excellent trait: it deals occasionally with very current technology, and in many other books this sort of thing is very forced, and sometimes makes me all but certain the writer hasn't the faintest idea what they're talking about. Not so here. Sloan writes about the technological aspects with facility, rendering them well for a technically-inclined audience and simultaneously accessible – I think – to those not so inclined. This is a rare feat. It's very genuine.
If I have any complaint it would be the rendering of Kat Potente, in that she feels a bit like nerd wish fulfillment: a brilliant, pretty girl who's into the protagonist. But she's also a very strong, smart female character, so there's that.
Quite liked this. A nice, well-written summer read.
Second entry in the series is still solid. Bit confused about one point in the epilogue, but I'm still enjoying the series. Kind of nice to have a little moral gray in a protagonist.
I bought this by mistake. At 99c, you could do worse. But it isn't particularly novel or insightful and it does little to demonstrate that the Kindle Singles program is creating anything of substance,
The fifth and final volume in the “main” Wool series.
Howey gives himself the room to stretch himself again, narratively, in a way he hasn't since the first volume. The result feels like a complete work, as volumes 2 through 4 didn't. You'd still need to read the earlier entries, of course, as with a traditional series.
Generally: satisfying. The ending leaves a lot unanswered, presumably to be addressed in further entries. I spent a fair bit of this volume worried, waiting to see what was coming next.
As an experiment in format, I think Wool is a solid success. The first and fifth volumes are easily my favorites; it's probably best enjoyed in omnibus format with no regard for the different volumes; volume 1 can truly stand on its own, but not the others. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Howey releases.
Really enjoyed this. Pretty solid story in its own right, and it's pretty rare for a book so steeped in Islam to come to my (or mainstream, really) attention. I'm glad it did. Not so many new (to me) frontiers left to discover these days.
Several times while reading, something struck me as strange, and I realized that it only seemed strange because of my lack of familiarity; recast in more familiar terms, most of it became totally normal, and I realized I needed to recalibrate.
The story involves a fair bit of computing; it isn't all practical, but it's plainly written by someone who understands what they're writing about, which is so rare in creative media.
I haven't read as much this year as I'd like, and it's partly because some of what I've read hasn't pulled my attention back to it, so that I wanted, when I wasn't reading, to go read. This did.
Wool, volume 4.
This went very fast; I guess volume 5 is the bulk of the omnibus. For all that, it's pretty eventful. Looking forward to volume 5.
Book 3 of Wool.
Fine for what it is, but I was a bit disappointed in it as a volume. From what I'd heard from others, volume 2 was supposedly a bit slow but volume 3 was back on the express train. But this one was still mostly transitory, and just as it gets interesting, it's over. Taken as part of the larger story, it's pretty solid, but it can't stand on its own the way volume 1 could.
Not bad. The second entry in Hugh Howey's self-published Wool series. I've heard it described as the weakest of the original five novellas, and I agree that it isn't as good as the first, but I thought it was solid.
Proper Gauge moves the story along, as the Silo's mayor travels deep down into the Silo to meet with someone, and explores the strata of the Silo as she goes. The story is fine; it's a lot of space, though – a hair under 80 pages – for what it is.
I'm told this volume sets up the remainder, and I can see how that might be. Certainly worth continuing, but not as arresting as volume 1.
Surprisingly decent Dresden-esque fantasy. It knows what it is, there's a clear Dresden reference in the first page or so. The big gimmick here is that mages have a specialty and can't do much outside of that specialty, and the protagonist's specialty here is divination, reading the future and predicting outcomes.
Urban fantasy is kind of a cursed genre, where even the better stuff is pretty bound by its tropes and conventions. This is one of the few decent ones, and the friend who recommended it to me told me this first book wasn't that strong but the series improves. That's not to say it's not bound to those tropes and conventions, but I still think it's better than most of its contemporaries, so it's definitely suitable for fans of the genre looking for something new to try.
This is a book with a lot of good ideas, written badly. I'm not sure if that makes it a good book, a bad book, or somewhere in between.
The opening is almost a cliche: woman wakes up with amnesia and is in danger. Several other elements are well-worn tropes as well. People with assorted superpowers! Secret elite school for those people! Hell, the X-Men alone tick both of those boxes.
So, the good ideas. For starters, clichés don't mean a book can't be fun, and everything has been done before. The specific situations are interesting and novel. I am really not selling this well. I really did enjoy the read.
What I didn't like is the writing. Not that the author can't turn a phrase. But I have some specific complaints. One of them is that there are plot inconsistencies. Another is how the author writes about women. He just can't help but remark on the attractiveness of female characters (sometimes male characters, too, actually), the size of their breasts, and so on. It's jarring, and it just seems so juvenile. Maybe the biggest problem is the hamhanded exposition. A truly incredible amount of information is conveyed to the protagonist, and therefore to the reader, by way of letters from her pre-amnesia self. It's just a bit hacky. And the letters are weirdly novelesque. Not at all the style you'd expect from the situation.
At some point I think I mentally modified my expectations to be less in line with... whatever I was expecting? Literature? and more in line with the standards of urban fantasy, which regrettably never seem to be as high. By those standards it's pretty good. I am not sure why I expected more from it. I guess it's because an awful lot of people spoke very highly of it, including the friend who recommended it, whose taste is normally impeccable.
This is a book that I enjoyed and am just a tiny bit embarrassed to admit I enjoyed. It's a fun read. Just temper your expectations.
It took me a while to get through this, although at ~486 pages it's not all that long, but I did enjoy it. Set in postwar Spain, it's about Daniel Sempere, a young boy who discovers an obscure book of which few copies remain – because an unknown figure has been seeking out and destroying all copies of it. Sempere's investigation covers years and entails danger to both his person and his personal relationships.
Sempere is likeable, well-meaning if not always sensible; the supporting cast has plenty of charm, especially friend and confidant Fermín Romero de Torres. I am often wary of translated titles, only because I have seen too many translations that butchered the author's voice; I thought Lucia Graves' work here was exemplary. Recommended.
Fascinating and definitely worth reading.
I would not like to review this book without talking a bit about the context in which it comes to exist, coming as it does at the forefront of a possible shift in what we consider to be the business of publishing, both for that reason alone and because it's important to understand how it's structured. If you are only interested in a review of the content contained in it, you will probably want to skip to the last paragraphs.
Within the last few years, self-publishing your work as a writer has become possible without the expense of a vanity press; in the much more recent past, the possibility has begun to emerge that it might shed its stigma as well. Wool is among the first titles entirely self-published in ebook form to achieve widespread recognition as a product of quality. Its author, Hugh Howey, has been fairly transparent about the process, which has provided an interesting opportunity to view what can be an opaque process. Howey commented earlier that his book has been on multiple ebook stores in the past, but it is currently exclusive to Amazon and the Kindle. He's not averse to tinkering and has said it may end up elsewhere again as he experiments to see what works out best for an author. He's also recently signed an agreement with a traditional publisher – Simon and Schuster, I think – and while I don't love the idea that a book can only gain legitimacy if a publisher deems it worthy, it's good for Howey and I'm glad for him.
First, let me dismiss a misgiving you may have: Wool does not suffer in the editing department as a function of its DIY roots. Howey has been clear from the outset that he considers good editing critical in a venture like this, and has not skimped. He says, and I agree, that poor writing, grammar, and spelling errors are a real threat to self-published ebooks.
Lastly, a note about the structure. This first volume, according to its standalone ebook listing, weighs in at about 56 pages and is titled “Holston.” It's a stretch to even call it a novella; it's closer to a short story, albeit one with several chapters. I'm reading in the omnibus format that collects all five of the Wool ebooks; that one comes out to about 550 pages. Technically, the series is called the Silo series, and there have been a few ebooks published after; these five together seem to be demarcated as “Wool.” I debated whether to review the omnibus as one volume or five and eventually decided to go with five. Although the first volume is shorter than most, the full length of Wool averages to about 110 pages per volume, a reasonable length for a novella, and since the first one is so short, some or all of the others are presumably above that average. I also wouldn't like to imagine that length is a necessary component of status as a “book”; some very well-regarded classics are quite short – Hemingway, Kafka, and so on. I also might decide to stop reading partway through if I don't feel the quality is consistent. I would certainly regard the Great Book of Amber as a collection of ten discrete books.
On to the content. I liked this quite a bit. It concerns Holston, a sheriff and a member of a future society living inside a silo. No one is permitted outside, which is an uninhabitable wasteland for unknown reasons stretching back generations, visible on monitors by way of cameras outside. Life inside the silo is carefully rationed, down to who is permitted to have children. Once in a while, someone will commit the gravest possible offense: they will express a desire to go outside. The punishment is swift: they get their wish.
This was a really effective story and I suggest it for anyone.
Harkaway's sophomore effort, a follow-up to The Gone-Away World. It is possessed of similar literary flair, but was rather slower to get started; it picks up dramatically and is very much worth the wait. I didn't love it the way I loved The Gone-Away World, which would have been quite the feat, but I loved it all the same. An excellent effort by Harkaway.
I don't know if I can describe how much I loved this book. What a superb accomplishment.
The Goodreads blurb describes Twenty as a cookbook, which is sort of true. It does have recipes, and it is about how to cook, but I think that description is a terrible disservice to it. I wouldn't like to have to describe it in one sentence, but if I had to, I would say that it's not so much about how to cook as it is about how to cook better.
The basic structure of the book, as you're probably already aware, is a set of the twenty (mostly) distinct techniques that Ruhlman regards as the essential techniques of a well-rounded cook. We can debate whether “well-rounded” is the right term – initially I wrote “complete,” but I suspect an absolute is inappropriate – but I think it's approximately on target.
Ruhlman begins by explaining what each technique comprises, delves into the theory of why you would choose to use that technique along with some nuances, and then provides several recipes that use that technique, so that you can put theory into practice. Recipes here are an educational tool, a lab, a practicum.
Twenty is a lot of things, but most of all it's blueprint for self-improvement, and I value that very highly. I found it educational and also inspirational. I don't know that this is where I'd recommend a new cook start, although you certainly could work through the chapters and recipes and learn a lot; there are some important things to know – like safe knife technique, for example, and lots of others. I think a new cook also needs a gentler introduction. My recommendation for someone who doesn't cook already remains Bittman's How To Cook Everything: The Basics.
The audience I'd suggest for this book is basically people like me: people who already cook, but are seeking to elevate their game to the next level. For that audience I can't recommend Twenty enough. A remarkable achievement, and one that will help me, personally, to improve and change the way I think about cooking.
A book that tries too hard.
I'm not talking about it being a Cancer Book, although it is that, and an author's choice to write a Cancer Book always invites the question of whether it's a cheap attempt at award-whoring. I'm not prepared to cast that particular aspersion at The Fault In Our Stars, although it's always in the back of my mind with a work like this. Unfortunately, it falls down in other ways.
Fault is the story of Hazel, a cancer patient. Hazel was not expected to be alive at this juncture, but thanks to an entirely fictional miracle drug known as Phalanxifor, she's still alive. She's not cured, she still has cancer, she just isn't dead. Further details might just spoil the plot, so I'll omit them.
The title is taken from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, excerpted below:
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar'?Why should that name be sounded more than yours?Write them together, yours is as fair a name;Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ‘em,Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
(Thanks for the reference, MIT.)
Initially I didn't make the connection, because the amount of actual Shakespearean language I've retained at any one time is vanishingly small, and I interpreted the title completely differently. I liked the book more when I just had the title and my misinterpretation to base my opinion on.
I had great hopes for the book, but almost immediately it disappointed me. With apologies to Ed Byrne: Ever had a friend tell a story culminating in his witty, conversation-ending one-liner? It's bullshit, right? There's no way he came up with that on the spot. Green's characters are like that. His protagonist is a 16-year old girl, but she's the wittiest 16-year old this side of Rory Gilmore. She's like your hypothetical friend. It's bullshit. It sounds false to my ear and takes me completely of the read.
Green's concepts about video gaming are of the same bent that gave us 1995's Hackers: a failed attempt by an outsider to talk as though he understands the subject matter. It's as phony as Hazel's snappy patter.
Green plays fast-and-loose with his central concept as well. As he freely acknowledges in his afterword, he solicited medical consultation, and then ignored it when it suited him.
It's not all bad. When Green isn't overindulging himself, some of the prose is natural and wonderful. I still don't think getting to those bits is worth reading the rest of it. Two stars for the bits of good prose and for not sugarcoating mortality. It certainly did not deserve to be Time's #1 fiction book of 2012. I thought Lev Grossman had better taste than that.
Nota bene: This is nominally a “young adult” book. I cannot for the life of me see why, unless we are subscribing to the apparently-common but nonsensical definition of “young adult” literature as being literature about young adults, a worthless category that does not merit recogniition. To be “young adult” is not a license to be a bit shit.
Hard to know how to classify this one. A very Murakami story about growing up, love and loss. I enjoyed it, I will say that. It suffers a bit, through no fault of its own, from being translated out of its original language, and sometimes feels unnatural as a result, especially in its dialogue. For all that, very much worth reading,
Liked this quite a bit, and was surprised by how well it held up.
Rendezvous With Rama is a 1972 science fiction classic, about a future human society exploring an extraterrestrial... I guess I'd call it an artificially-made planetoid. It's light on what you or I might consider plot, preferring to cover the exploration and the challenges such explorers might encounter.
What strikes me about Rendezvous is how well thought out everything is. There are virtually no silly plot twists borne of a desire to artificially inject drama – no one acting irrationally, no decisions being made on the basis of barely-plausible emotion, no one incompetent. That is so rare it's striking when it happens.
This is one of the early sci-fi novels, so don't expect it to be different from what it is. It's a relatively self-contained work, content to explore within its boundaries. It does that beautifully.
Recommendation via someone on Twitter I don't really know personally. Had it for a few years now, but only just got around to reading it. Pretty good read!
Two neighboring countries have differing policies on magic: Ninaveh, where mages operate more or less freely, and Alathia, where magic is regulated and most major magic is forbidden. Dev is a smuggler, who's just taken on a job to smuggle a person into Alathia rather than normal contraband, but doesn't get the full story from the person contracting him.
Story is basically good, although the author's own predilection for rock climbing is shoehorned in for no particular reason. (I also climb. I sympathize. But it doesn't add much to the story.) Lots of turns, and the author manages the complexity well. Occasionally it seems like the rules of the world are made and tweaked according to the author's need, but overall the systems are handled well.
Abrupt ending, but I was happy enough with this that I'll probably continue on with book 2.