Maniford Time by Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter writes very good books. He writes horrible endings. Honestly, very few stories should be about how life continues in the universe. Most should be about some big event and then maybe hint that the event was important. Not directly state that man's purpose was to make more life in the universe.

Pages: 441

Lots of books in December

 I got behind in writing down what I'm reading, so here's everything I missed.

Gateway by Fredrick Pohl
Okay, but not that great. I prefer happier books

Pages: 278

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Fredrick Pohl
Not actually that interesting, not much happens, and leaves off annoyingly.
Pages: 336

Dragonseye by Anne McCaffery
Not much happened in this book. I didn't really care about most of the characters.
Pages: 416

Protector by Larry Niven
This book is enjoyable. I had read it before.
Pages: 224

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
This was interesting, but the towards the end things went far too slowly. Lots of plot threads were quickly introduced because they contributed to the ending.
Pages: 304

Misspent Youth by Peter F. Hamilton
Kind of weird, but okay. An awful lot of sex is implied, like if Heinlein had made sex a bigger plot point. Yes, sex can be a bigger plot point than in Heinlein and the book is still sci-fi. I'll give this author another try or two, but I don't particularly recommend this book. Some interesting commentary on politics and family relations though.
Pages: 416

Riverworld and other stories by Philip José Farmer
Riverworld was okay, I wasn't super fond of some of the other stories because they dealt more with religion and crazy people than I was interested in. I would like to read more in his Riverworld series.
Pages: 264

The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury
This wasn't very good. I only kind of like Bradbury, so that isn't surprising. I thought it was silly to include scanned copies of the manuscripts for two of the stories.
Pages: 247

And Another Thing ... by Eoin Colfer

I was kind of disappointed with this one. Douglas Adams made it seem easy to write funny books, but Eoin Colfer shows that it isn't really.

Pages: 288

The Dawn of Amber by John Gregory Betancourt

So I read this a couple weeks ago and should probably have written something then
Pages: 304

Chaos and Amber by John Gregory Betancourt

Surprisingly good. I want to hear the rest of the story.
Pages: 313

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fford

Better than the previous book, but not by all that much.

Pages: 484

A Tower of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

I am really glad that I was very high on the hold list for this book. Tor and Brandon Sanderson did a good job getting interest up for this book between the sale of the prologue for $2.99 (I didn't buy it though) and the Great Hunt where Sanderson hid chapter titles for ToM with his Way of Kings books. The chapter titles then decoded a chapter of ToM on Sanderson's website. I only kind of enjoyed the chapter because I am only willing to read a certain amount about how Mat is now married and only looks at women to offer them to his men. Yeah.

Well, this one seems just slightly better than book 8. I don't care for Perrin develops as a wolf person.

Pages: 784

Something Rotten by Jasper Fford

This one has a happy ending and everyone is back together. Very well.

Pages: 416

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fford

I'm having a hard time typing today for whatever reason. I'm home alone, so I stayed up way too late last night reading this book and finished it this morning.

I'm not entirely certain why I'm still reading the Thursday Next series. It isn't great, but is okay. This book is also just okay. At least the ending was kind of happy, even if it isn't what I was hoping for.

Pages: 375

Starship Sofa Stories Volume 2 edited by Tony C. Smith

I buy the SSS books to support the podcast. I didn't buy the Captain's Logs because I wasn't interested in reading a bunch of "um"s. I was sort of disappointed with this edition because I strongly prefer authors who give stories to SSS. This one contained maybe half people who have contributed stories. But, on the whole, the book was good. Larry Santoro did a neat five minutes and thirty four seconds on one of the episodes where he read a little bit of each story, mostly in different voices for everything.

Pages: 316

Queen of the Legion by Jack Williamson

I should go to the library because it is quite a while until the next WoT book comes out.

This book is okay. I both like and strongly dislike the Giles Habibula. There are a lot of parts that are pretty much lame and the actual "battle" against the villains isn't that interesting. I don't recommend this book.

Pages: 260

Pump Six and Other Short Stores by Paolo Bacigalupi

It seems like the well-regarded books this year are dark. At least, Bacigalupi and Miéville are the two rising sci-fi/fantasy authors and they are very dark.

In this collection, I did not enjoy Softer at all. It isn't written particularly well, the approach isn't that interesting, and I just don't want to read about a guy killing his wife casually and getting away with it.

The Fluted Girl was nifty, but still dark with strong almost sexual abuse. It isn't clear how abusive the sex is, but the rest is abusive. Kinda neat ending also.

I did like Pump Six. I had read this one previously, though I can't remember where. I identify with the guy keeping the pumps running because sometimes I feel like I am so much dumber than the people who designed the plant. I think it is mostly that I'm just one person and lots of people designed the plant, but I still like that someone is just slightly more knowledgeable than other people and still doesn't know a fraction of what he needs to. Also, I love the idea that people could build these fancy pumps that last for six centuries before finally breaking down. Yay for Engineers!

Pages: 239

New Spring: The Novel by Robert Jordan

I read this one pretty close to when it came out. By that time, I was sort of impatient that Jordan hadn't written another book for WoT. I enjoyed understanding more of the back story. I had recently (within a year or so) read earlier books in the series where Moraine and Lan had larger roles, so it was more interesting on the first read than it was this time.

Pages: 334

Exiles at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker

Back in high school (freshman year, I believe) we were assigned to read a book during winter break and then talk to the class about it when we got back. That wasn't good enough for me, so I read the entire series of The Rings of the Master by Jack L. Chalker. I hadn't read tons of sci-fi at the time, so pretty much anything seemed good to me. The books were good enough that I generally consider Chalker to be an author worth picking up at the used book store. Which is why I picked up Exiles.

This book was interesting because the tech/mystical neat stuff was sufficiently different. The main idea is that reality is governed by equations and that a sufficiently advanced computer can adjust the equations for new bits of reality. Then, there is a world composed of a bunch of hexagons, where each hexagon has a completely different environment. Some people crash land on the planet and the main part of the story starts. I was disappointed that there is another book in this series because it ended rather abruptly.

Pages: 337

Distraction by Bruce Sterling

I didn't realize that I had read this one before, from the library at least a year ago. It is sort of biopunk, but not particularly revolutionary, either in content or within the context of the story. Things are nifty, but not exciting. Also, this story doesn't have a "and they lived happily ever after because they were together, even if everything else sucked" or even a "at least they died together". It has a "it would never actually work" ending.

Some of the ideas are interesting, but I'm not sure it is worth the time to read five hundred thirty-two pages.

Pages: 532

Titan by Stephen Baxter

I was all set to write a really good review of this book, but then I had to go to bed and didn't come back to it for a week. This was a really good book until the last hundred pages or so. The end sucks as much as the vacuum of space that is occasionally discussed in this novel. The beginning of the book is wonderful. The middle is both neat and really annoying. If you want, I'll make up a new ending for you. Read through to where the end starts sucking (wherever you think it is) and send me a message. My ending won't suck nearly as much as Baxter's.

Pages: 676

Mort by Terry Pratchett

I am rather fond of any Discworld book that contains DEATH. 
Pages: 243

Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

I'm getting ready for A Tower of Midnight and therefore reading some of the books earlier in the series in a random order. It isn't actually that useful because now I'm kind of confused about what happened when.

I liked that a lot happened in this book. Perrin rescued Faile, Mat actually got married, Rand lost his hand, and Elayne won the throne. It seems action packed (in terms of moving the plot along), though Gathering Storm has even more actual events. Initially, I thought I was reading book 9, which is a very sucky book. But Knife of Dreams is worth reading as more than a time filler. And I'm kind of swamped with books right now so I don't need any time fillers. I'll probably read one more WoT book before November and it will probably seem slow in comparison.

Pages: 880

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

I don't like when the two characters clearly meant to be together are forced apart by the story. No. If people are happy together I don't care how cliched it may be, I want them to live happily ever after insomuch as they stay together no matter what happens.

I was also kind of disappointed that the original universe wasn't continued in this book. I really enjoyed the just slightly different world in the Eyre Affair. I just don't have nearly as much interest in jumping into books. Once the book jumping is postulated, a lot becomes possible. And I don't mean interesting plot lines become possible. If there is a hard situation, it is just required that someone read something and then there is no longer a problem.

I'll still keep on reading these books. I hope the next book is better, but I won't get to it for a long time. I think part of my flagging interest in Fford is that his stories aren't epic enough. I always feel like he has this wonderful universe, but uses it for young adult writing or something.
Pages: 399

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

This was seems like it was still set in the Revelation Space universe, but didn't particularly reference anything from the previous books. I was disappointed that the book was essentially a human interest story (including a love story) about a conspiracy theory. There were a few interesting moments, but this one wasn't really worth it for me.

Edit: I was mistaken, this isn't in the Revelation Space universe. That explains why nothing seemed to be referenced. Still, the book wasn't very good.
Pages: 576

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fford

I liked Shades of Gray, so I figured some other Fford novels might be good. I was very frustrated at the library because none of the books I looked at would tell me any other books that Fford wrote or the series order. I ended up using the library catalog.

I was a little disappointed and a little impressed. Fford does a good job of writing fantasy that isn't about good vs. evil. He takes the standard Earth and changes one major thing and then writes a story. This was a detective story. He even managed to work in vampires in a non-annoying way, though I won't mention how because that would give it away. But the writing in Eyre Affair was sometimes annoying. Sort of like Fford grew up reading Dan Brown and the horror was only mostly beat out of him. Some really stupid phrases and cliches. Annoying foreshadowing at times. But on the whole I liked this book. I have some more of the Thursday Next books on my reading list.

Pages: 384

Galatic North by Alastair Reynolds

This book is a collection of short stories in the Revelation Space universe. The back story about Nevil and the Conjoiners at Mars was really great to read--the events are referred to in other Revelation Space books, but here much of the story is explained. I love seeing the partial conclusion of the universe in the last story, Galactic North, where the galaxy has been taken over by the greenflies. I'd be even more interested in what life is like in the galaxy at that point, but seeing what most of humanity is doing is interesting as well. There are a couple of throw away stories--little bits of the universe that would never merit inclusion in a novel because they aren't important to any storyline, but that help fill out a character or an idea. I particularly like learning that the Conjoiner drives are controlled with a disembodied Conjoiner brain. I do not recommend reading this book before some of the other books in the universe because it does fill in a lot. I like trying to work out some information myself. But this is a good addition to the Revelation Space universe.

Pages: 384

The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

Work has been alternating between really annoying and interesting for the past couple weeks, so I stocked up on lighter reading at the library. I read The Light Fantastic years ago (late high school, I believe). This book doesn't have as many funny footnotes and there aren't quite as many puns for names as in other books. However, I love Rincewind and the Luggage. I don't particularly care for the part with Conan because it gives less time for Rincewind.

Pages: 241

The Gathering Storm by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

So maybe I should have read some of the other WoT books before jumping ahead to the one published last year, but I got ahold of an ebook and it was only a few days to finish it. I was very impressed with Gathering Storm on the first read because so much happened and there weren't as may repetitive statements ("she tugged her braid"). I'm very excited for the next book to come out in November.

Pages: 1120

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan

In preparation for the next WoT novel in November (I'm 17 on a hold list for 25 books) I'm rereading some of the older books. Also, I have run out of books to read and the library has been closed all of Labor Day weekend. This book was moderately annoying the first time I read it. I really disliked the Halmia character and I thought it was stupid that Egwene didn't think to connect Halmia to the headaches. Also, not much happened in this book. The neat parts of cleansing the source happened in an earlier book. Eh. This was okay reading for a long weekend, even if I was distracted by the internet every twenty minutes.

Pages: 680

Also, wonderful that StarShipSofa won a Hugo. I got the supporting membership just so I could vote for them.

Crime Scene at the Cardwell Ranch by B. J. Daniels

I volunteered at the Xcel Energy booth at the Minnesota State Fair. Prior to working at the booth, I wandered around the fair with Caroline and Clay. One of the free things we picked up was a book from topless cowboys. It was a mystery with a major romantic subplot. Being from Harlequin, I expected it to be mostly just erotic literature with a mystery plot to get from one steamy scene to another. However, it was mostly a bad mystery that spent a lot of time talking about how the two main characters felt about each other. I mostly read this one because the bus ride back to the car was really long, so I got about half way through on the bus. I wouldn't read this one again and I probably will just recycle it.

Here's the picture Caroline wanted. She didn't quite get up the courage to ask them for a picture, so I made one for her. I don't have many pictures of her.

Pages: 248

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

I purchased this book at Borderlands. The staff there is fairly helpful--I am doing my early Christmas shopping and wanted a sci-fi or fantasy book for my cousin. Her parents are rather religious and tend not to let her read a lot of stuff. I got her Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for last Christmas and that was not acceptable. Levaithan was the suggestion made by the Borderlands staff. It is steampunk and apparently slightly subversive, but doesn't have any magic or undead people.

The book was okay. A very fast read (three or four hours) with somewhat compelling characters. Maybe I just don't connect as well with teenage characters. I don't want to search out the next book right now, but I would be willing to read it if I came across it. I think a very interesting book could be written in this universe, with the steam/biopunk interactions. The genetic engineering is less polished than in universes such as The Windup Girl. Levaithan is good enough as a gift for my cousin, but I'll wait for her reaction before buying the next in the series.

Pages: 440

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

In my quest for anything to read, I picked up Anathem again. I wish Anathem were more interesting, but it does an excellent job of pulling me in. Even though I've read it before, I still enjoy re-reading the entire book. The various words that Stephenson invented were nifty the first time, but now I just gloss over them and substitute the normal words without thought. The Anathem world is a very interesting place.

Pages: 1008

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

This was the used book I purchased at Borderlands. I've been meaning to read something by Baxter, but never seem to remember when I'm at the library.

I initially didn't even want to start reading this book. It take up where Well's Time Machine leaves off. I appreciate that Well's was very important to science fiction, but I do not enjoy any of his books. The writing style annoys me, particularly the first person narration by an annoying person who really enjoys pontificating. The Time Ships keeps the narrator, but makes him a little less annoying and writes a much more interesting story. This story becomes slightly tedious when it goes through various periods of history and far too didactic. I don't really need a lesson in both the futility of life and that people need to go on afterward. However, this was good enough to spend my travel day reading.

Pages: 544

The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds

This novel isn't as good as some of the earlier books in the Revelation Space series. This book was enjoyable enough, but not particularly worth the $7.99+tax. I liked the more technological parts of this book, but didn't particularly care for the more political statements or the foreshadowing of the Plague time. I am much happier that The Prefect was written after the better books in the Revelation Space series because I wouldn't want to those books ruined by the foreshadowing in this book.

Pages: 416

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

I mailed this book to Travis a while back. He thought it was decent, but not good enough to bother reading the other books in the series. I wanted to look at Red Mars because I read Moving Mars a while back. I still think Red Mars was more interesting on the whole, but Moving Mars was more physics science and less social science.

Pages: 592

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

I was still out of things to read and I recently read Dune, so Children of Dune came next (I don't own the one between the two). This was okay, but not nearly as good as Dune.

Pages: 416

The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker

Recently, Rudy Rucker released his Ware tetralogy as a CC licensed ebook. I read Software a few years ago (found at the same time as The Slaughterhouse Five in Wendt Library). Unfortunately, the books have gone out of print and most libraries do not have any of the books. I've yet to run across one in a used bookstore either. It was a bit uncomfortable to read 703 pages on my laptop screen. I should have transferred over to the netbook, but that means I can't switch between the book and general computer usage as easily.

These books are sometimes disturbing. There is a lot of sex and violence and violation. There is also a lot of imagery and introspection and commentary. I think it was worth my time. Even though Rucker pioneered the ___punk genre, I have never enjoyed his work as much as others'--Gibson for example. I think the difference is the prevalence of drugs because that's not something I can empathize with. Also, I have a harder time staying interested in the hard science of biology or the tough math. Rucker definitely knows his math. These stories have people, not heros. There are events and people sometimes lead through the events and sometimes react.

Also, the ending kind of sucks. Well, it is a very happy ending and that feels weird after everything that has happened in the Ware universe.

Pages: 703 (didn't read the foreword or Software)

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

I read His Dark Materials years ago. The stories were interesting and I am generally unable to pick up on religious subtexts. Seriously, I read the Chronicles of Narnia in middle or high school without picking up on anything. I figured I should attempt to read some other works by Phillip Pullman and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was the only one I'd heard of.

This book was really short. The pages number up to 245, but the margins are large, the book itself is small, and there are many blank or half pages due to new chapters. I was disappointed that the book was so short and lacked much of an original twist.  is part of the Myth series, wherein authors rewrite myths. Sort of like Little Red Riding Hood remake The Wolf's Side. I have not read the Bible in particular (small bits and Genesis only), so I don't entirely understand how this deviates. The idea is sort of interesting, but not interesting enough for an entire book.

Pages: 245

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

This writer is the geek version of Dan Brown. The writing is slightly better. This book wasn't a compete waste of time, but there are a lot of things that would have been more worth the time, such as looking at LOLcat pictures. Which brings up the fact that the geek parts of Daemon are mostly just pop culture references that already sound stupid.

Pages: 429

Dune by Frank Herbert

I ran out of library books and wanted something light to read while I finished up a section of the training at work. Dune is a very good book, as is well known. I particularly enjoyed the conversation with classmates about both Dune and sci-fi in general.

Pages: 544

Matter by Iain M. Banks

This was a very enjoyable book. Instead of focusing entirely on the primitive areas or the Culture, it explores the intersection of the two and reminds the readers that the Culture is still a newcomer in this universe. This one was far better than the previous couple I read.

Pages: 624

A previous reading list

My boyfriend is cataloging my books for me. I think a big chunk is because he is nice, but he also wants the practice with the new-ish keyboard alternative. Finally, he used to work at a library and it already bugs him that I group by books by subgenre instead of alphabetically. I thought I had a catalog of my textbooks, so I went looking through old lists. I don't have one of textbooks, but I do have a list of all the books I read from Feb 2007 to Feb 2008, complete with pagecounts. I kept track then (as now) so I can ensure that I am reading enough to stay happy. I needed baseline data for that in college, so I logged everything. As now, I am only logging books I read in whole, or complete short stories.

The interesting period in the middle of the year was the summer of alphabetical reading. I was working at a coffee/ice cream shop between the comp sci building and the engineering campus. After about 2pm, it was the closest non-vending machine general food source for the med college and the math/physics/chemistry departments. It was tons of fun to interact with all these smart people who functioned a lot like me. The summer of '07, I wasn't taking classes and I didn't have research work, so I had massive amounts of free time. I asked my customers for book suggestions. The idea was that I would read one book for each letter of the alphabet, by author last name. Some of the letters were very hard to fill in. I was introduced to many new books and I've continued reading a number of the authors. I did read other books between authors that summer--just 26 books (even when #26 is the entire Amber series) was not enough.

The niftiest part was finding out that the engineering library had ~15 fiction books. A lot of the librarians didn't even know that.

Start Date    End Date    Title    Author    Pages    total_f
9-Feb    10-Feb    Glory Road    R. A. Heinlein    294    294
10-Feb    10-Feb    Caves of Steel    Isaac Asimov    270    564
11-Feb    11-Feb    The Naked Sun    Isaac Asimov    269    833
12-Feb    13-Feb    On a Pale Horse    Piers Anthony    325    1158
13-Feb    14-Feb    Bearing an Hourglass    Piers Anthony    371    1529
15-Feb    16-Feb    Dune    Frank Herbert    535    2064
16-Feb    17-Feb    Assignment in Eternity    R. A. Heinlein    276    2340
18-Feb    23-Feb    The Man Who Sold the Moon    R. A. Heinlein    238    2578
13-Feb    23-Feb    Penguin Book of Leider    divers    189    2767
26-Feb    3-Mar    Illustrated Man    Ray Bradbury    186    2953
1-Mar    7-Mar    Glory Season    David Brin    772    3725
7-Mar    16-Apr    Glory Season    David Brin    772    4497
15-Mar    16-Mar    Sundiver    David Brin    340    4837
16-Mar    19-Mar    Hyperion    Dan Simmons    482    5319
20-Mar    2-Apr    Hyperion    Dan Simmons    482    5801
20-Mar    21-Mar    The Wee Free Men    Terry Pratchett    375    6176
21-Mar    24-Apr    Sundiver    David Brin    340    6516
22-Mar    24-Mar    The Stochastic Man    Robert Silverburg    240    6756
24-Mar    25-Mar    Slant    Greg Bear    506    7262
26-Mar    12-Apr    Beowolf    Burton Raffel    100    7362
26-Mar    22-Jul    Brighter than a Thousand Suns    Robert Jungk    360    7722
27-Mar    30-Mar    Weilding a Red Sword    Piers Anthony    313    8035
2-Apr    4-Apr    With a Tangled Skein    Piers Anthony    404    8439
13-Apr    1-Aug    Beowolf    Burton Raffel    100    8539
11-May    16-May    The Dragon Reborn    Robert Jordan    674    9213
12-May    15-May    The Rest of the Robots    Isaac Asimov    556    9769
16-May    18-May    Nebula Awards 31    edited by Pamela Sargent    331    10100
19-May    20-May    Infinity's Shore    David Brin    524    10624
20-May    23-May    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: A Novel    Susanna Clarke    782    11406
24-May    26-May    Lord Valentine's Castle    Robert Silverburg    446    11852
25-May    25-May    Ubik    Philip K. Dick    216    12068
25-May    5-Jun    The Worm Ouroboros    E. R. Eddison    444    12512
26-May    28-May    Valentine Pontifex    Robert Silverburg    368    12880
27-May    29-May    Pebble in the Sky    Isaac Asimov    223    13103
31-May    3-Jun    The Currents of Space    Isaac Asimov    217    13320
4-Jun    4-Jun    Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!    Richard Feynman    346    13666
6-Jun    8-Jun    The Origins of the Future    John Gribbin    276    13942
9-Jun    9-Jun    Stainless Steel Visions    Harry Harrison    254    14196
10-Jun    11-Jun    The World According to Garp    John Irving    437    14633
20-Jun    21-Jun    Master's Choice    edited by Laurence Janifer    350    14983
22-Jun    22-Jun    Lonesome Gods    Louis L'Amour    450    15433
23-Jun    29-Jun    The Source    James Michener    909    16342
30-Jun    2-Jul    Laughing Space    edited by Asimov    521    16863
1-Jul    1-Jul    My Name is Asher Lev    Chaim Potak    369    17232
2-Jul    3-Jul    The Persian Boy    Mary Renault    419    17651
3-Jul    4-Jul    The Fall of Hyperion    Dan Simmons    517    18168
3-Jul    23-Aug    Down and Out in London and Paris    George Orwell    106    18274
6-Jul    9-Jul    The Stand    Stephen King    1153    19427
10-Jul    10-Jul    Slaughterhouse Five    Kurt Vonnegut    215    19642
11-Jul    22-Jul    One Man's Bible    Gao Xingjian    450    20092
13-Jul    15-Jul    Snow Crash    Neal Stephenson    471    20563
18-Jul    9-Aug    Sundiver    David Brin    340    20903
18-Jul    21-Jul    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince    J. K. Rowling    652    21555
21-Jul    21-Jul    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows    J. K. Rowling    759    22314
25-Jul    26-Jul    Mama Day    Gloria Naylor    312    22626
28-Jul    15-Aug    The Winds of War    Herman Wouk    885    23511
2-Aug    14-Aug    Snow Crash    Neal Stephenson    471    23982
1-Aug    18-Aug    Monster of God    David Quammen    513    24495
19-Aug    22-Aug    Dune    Frank Herbert    535    25030
22-Aug    26-Sep    War and Peace    Leo Tolstoy    696    25726
23-Aug    23-Aug    The Chronicles of Amber, Vol 1    Roger Zelanzy    338    26064
24-Aug    24-Aug    The Chronicles of Amber, Vol 2    Roger Zelanzy    434    26498
24-Aug    25-Aug    The Telling    Ursula K. LeGuin    264    26762
25-Aug    26-Aug    Unicorn Variations    Roger Zelanzy    249    27011
27-Aug    7-Sep    Unicorn Variations    Roger Zelanzy    249    27260
30-Aug    31-Aug    The Color of Magic    Terry Pratchett    210    27470
1-Sep    3-Sep    The Disposessed    Ursula K. LeGuin    311    27781
3-Sep    5-Sep    The Cat Who Walks Through Walls    R. A. Heinlein    388    28169
7-Sep    7-Sep    The Last Yggdrasill    Robert F. Young    135    28304
8-Sep    8-Sep    Trump of Doom    Roger Zelanzy    183    28487
8-Sep    8-Sep    Blood of Amber    Roger Zelanzy    215    28702
8-Sep    9-Sep    Sign of Chaos    Roger Zelanzy    214    28916
9-Sep    9-Sep    Knight of Shadows    Roger Zelanzy    251    29167
9-Sep    9-Sep    Prince of Chaos    Roger Zelanzy    225    29392
9-Sep    10-Sep    The Chronicles of Amber, Vol 1    Roger Zelanzy    338    29730
11-Sep    14-Sep    The Chronicles of Amber, Vol 2    Roger Zelanzy    434    30164
14-Sep    15-Sep    Trump of Doom    Roger Zelanzy    183    30347
15-Sep    15-Sep    Blood of Amber    Roger Zelanzy    215    30562
15-Sep    15-Sep    Sign of Chaos    Roger Zelanzy    214    30776
15-Sep    15-Sep    Knight of Shadows    Roger Zelanzy    251    31027
15-Sep    16-Sep    Prince of Chaos    Roger Zelanzy    225    31252
16-Sep    28-Sep    The Winds Twelve Quarters    Ursula K. LeGuin    277    31529
28-Sep    28-Sep    Pawn of Phophecy    David Eddings    258    31787
30-Sep    30-Sep    Queen of Sorcery    David Eddings    322    32109
1-Oct    2-Oct    Magician's Gambit    David Eddings    320    32429
3-Oct    3-Oct    Castle of Wizardry    David Eddings    384    32813
3-Oct    5-Oct    Enchanter's Endgame    David Eddings    384    33197
7-Oct    10-Oct    Game of Thrones    George R. R. Martin    835    34032
10-Oct    13-Oct    A Clash of Kings    George R. R. Martin    1040    35072
13-Oct    14-Oct    Changing Planes    Ursula K. LeGuin    246    35318
14-Oct    16-Oct    Lord of Light    Roger Zelanzy    257    35575
16-Oct    24-Oct    The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other stories    Roger Zelanzy    229    35804
24-Oct    1-Nov    Prisoners of the Stars    Isaac Asimov    538    36342
5-Nov    17-Nov    A Storm of Swords    George R. R. Martin    924    37266
17-Nov    17-Nov    Moonraker    Ian Fleming    247    37513
21-Nov    22-Nov    Mask of Loki    Roger Zelanzy    340    37853
22-Nov    23-Nov    Kiln People    David Brin    568    38421
23-Nov    25-Nov    Starship Troopers    Isaac Asimov    309    38730
26-Nov    1-Dec    Singularity Sky    Charles Stross    337    39067
2-Dec    5-Dec    Patriot Games    Tom Clancy    503    39570
6-Dec    8-Dec    The Venetian Affair    Helen MacInnes    352    39922
14-Dec    14-Dec    Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel    Scott Adams    350    40272
14-Dec    21-Dec    Feast for Crows    George R. R. Martin    978    41250
20-Dec    27-Dec    In the Beginning …    Isaac Asimov    227    41477
23-Dec    24-Dec    Gray Lensman    E. E. "Doc" Smith    253    41730
24-Dec    30-Dec    The Early Ayn Rand    Ayn Rand    528    42258
27-Dec    27-Dec    Neuromancer    William Gibson    271    42529
21-Dec    4-Jan    Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Vol. 2    Isaac Asimov    557    43086
5-Jan    21-Jan    Cardinal of the Kremlin    Tom Clancy    624    43710
7-Jan    18-Jan    Cryptonomicon    Neal Stephenson    1152    44862
24-Jan    26-Jan    Half Life    Hal Clement    252    45114
26-Jan    28-Jan    The Salmon of Doubt    Douglas Adams    299    45413
31-Jan    4-Feb    Selected Stories    Theodore Sturgeon    439    45852
4-Feb    5-Feb    Isle of the Dead    Roger Zelanzy    201    46053
6-Feb    9-Feb    I Dreamt Revolution    William Reswick    328    46381

Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks

These Culture books are due back rather soon (perhaps even yesterday), so I'm not reading other things between. This book was okay, certainly more interesting than the last one. I have a difficult time telling whether I'm less interested as the stories continue because I've read lots of stories or because they are actually getting lamer. The Culture idea is really nifty, but is most interesting when I'm learning something new about the universe, not when I'm just following around a couple characters and when it is generic sci-fi/space opera.

Pages: 357

Inversions by Iain M. Banks

Another Culture novel that doesn't directly show any of the Culture. There are two characters that are from the Culture, but they are pretending to be from faraway places on a plant that doesn't yet have reliable gunpowder-based weapons. The story here was kind of interesting, but only okay. This was a fast read. The next book is more interesting.

Pages: 343

Moving Mars by Greg Bear

We were at the craft fair in Anoka yesterday because it was something local and we don't really do local things. As expected, the craft fair was not interesting, so we went over to the bookstore. Not wanting to wander around and not buy anything, I picked up Moving Mars, hoping that it would be slightly as nifty as the Mars books by Kim Stanley Robinson. Moving Mars is okay (good enough to get nominated for a Hugo), but is very small in scope compared to even Red Mars. There's a weird piece of science toward the end and the politics are uninteresting. It was an okay read for a summer afternoon, but not fantastic.

Pages: 500

WWW: Wake by Robert J Sawyer

The last novel up for a Hugo. This one is about a blind girl who gets an eye implant that can communicate with the inventor via wi-fi. An AI that evolved out of missing packets on the internet starts reading the datastream from the eye implant. The girl realizes it, then teaches it until it becomes super intelligent (which mostly entails pointing it to various websites). The story ends. Yes, the book spends over three hundred pages to get to the interesting part and then ends. Also, WWW: Wake was big on pop culture buzzwords like "Live Journal" and "Google". It looks like The Windup Girl will get my vote, since it was the closest to a Hugo winner.

Pages: 310

Spar by Kij Johnson

This was about a woman trapped in a spaceship lifeboat with an amoeba-like alien that constantly pushes itself into her.

Pages: 7

Non-Zero Probabilities by NK Jemisin

Another Hugo nominee that I first read on my iPod. I also listened to this one on Escape Pod. I liked the way this book took a different turn on generally accepted conclusions. The city of New York seems to be non-random now--superstitions that nominally change the probability of an event seem to work. In the end, the main character decides that the world isn't actually a more dangerous place by remembering that bad things happened before.

Pages: 9

Bridesicle by Will McIntosh

Somewhat surprisingly, I mostly enjoyed Bridesicle. I initially read it on my iPod and it got mixed up with all the other short stories I read during the breaks in class. The only thing that bothers me is that this one is pretty much entirely about the human interactions--it makes you hope that the two people get together in the end. I'd prefer something that wasn't so blatantly emotional.

Pages: 11

Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente

Palimpsest felt like a drug dream fueled by Viagra and Ecstasy. I believe I was in violation of corporate policy by reading it on company property during lunch. The idea with this book is that a person sleeps with an infected person, has a weird dream, wakes up with a tattoo-like map somewhere on their body, then sleeps with lots of people who have a tattoo-like map to have more weird dreams. After about the first third of the book, the sex scenes are not described in detail. But various mutilations are discussed in detail throughout the book. I did finish Palimpsest, which is more than a lot of other people who didn't like it. I don't recommend this book. The writing is fairly good, though a bit descriptive.

Pages: 384

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Hugo Award nominee number three. I've been doing other things with my time this week, so it's been a long time since I started this book. Also, I realized that I forgot to include the last Hugo book I read, so I'll enter that after this.

I enjoyed The Windup Girl. I liked the science and the attention to detail, including using tropical fruits in metaphors. I was a little disappointed that it ended up being about how a windup girl (Japanese gene-crafted person who has jerky movements, but is evolutionarily better in almost all other ways) finds herself and survives. The male and female characters balance well, with some strong characters pulling the plot on both sides.

I'm not sure that I'll vote for The Windup Girl. It is good, but not amazing. On the other hand, despite the near-apocolyptic future due to genetic engineering, this book ends up hopeful, which isn't particularly true of either of the other Hugo books I've read. I have decided not to read Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson or The City & the City by China Miéville as both promised to be incredibly graphic and depressing.

Pages: 300

Excession by Iain M. Banks

Another Culture book. I interrupted my reading of Palimpsest because at least the Culture books aren't completely depressing/desperate stories, but more on Palimpsest later.

The main thing that struck me about Excession is how the Culture novels tend to use the story premise that a ship (fully sentient) decides that it will only talk to one person. The rest of the Culture always needs information or some action from that particular ship for some reason, so everything comes down to one person agreeing to go do some random thing, usually just for about a week. It seems a bit much that this giant society depends on specific individuals for anything, particularly given that it is a decentralized society. But the book was still fairly enjoyable.

Pages: 499

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

So this year I decided that I wanted to vote for the Hugos. Also, at $50 for a supporting membership, I am able to read all the Hugo nominees at a slightly reduced rate. I think I got about 6 books and 2-3 more books worth of material. Given that some of the books are still out in hardcover, it seems like a good deal.

The first one I read is Boneshaker. I was relieved that the steampunk aspect of the book was not overpowering. Yes, the characters wear goggle and gas masks (a major part of steampunk, going by what people wear to cons), but there was a reason and though the masks were often mentioned, the descriptions didn't belabor how neat people looked with masks. In the end, this book was pretty good. It wasn't amazing. I don't think Boneshaker will get my vote because it doesn't leave me desperately wanting more, which should be a characteristic of Hugo winners.

Pages: 416

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

The third Culture novel. I didn't care for this one nearly as much for a few reasons. First, the novel dealt mostly with non-Culture people, so it wasn't about the differences between how people normally think and how people in Culture think. Second, I didn't enjoy the split way the story was told, jumping between things that happened in the past (where generally bad things were happening) and things that happen now in a way that didn't explain anything until the end of the book. Then, when I got to the end of the book, I found that I actually didn't want to know anything about the scenes from the past. Third, I did not like the main character, a feeling that was strongly amplified by the ending of the book. I am glad that I read this book because I expect some of the later books to reference Use of Weapons, but this was not a particularly enjoyable read itself.

Pages: 512

Frederick by Leo Lionni

This is the second picture book I'm reading between the Culture novels. After this, it gets a lot harder.


Frederick was slightly more interesting than the previous Leo Lionni book because Fredrick has an implied "and then everyone died because talking cannot substitute for food for the last month of winter."

Pages: 32

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Second book in the Culture series. Two things particularly interested me in this story. The first was an interesting ecosystem of one of the worlds. Jupiter has the storms that never end, the great red eye; this plant has a single band of land around the equator and there is a fire that moves around the plant on a yearly basis. I enjoyed that Banks wrote out some of the ecosystem instead of leaving all the background just in his head. The second interesting part was the plot itself. Banks told the old story of  "outsider comes in, beats everyone at some game, and wins the kingdom/empire" from the perspective of the gamer. He made the empire a horrible place, but didn't try to lecture me about it. The story was a story, with only enough didactic overtones to build a better understanding of the culture the outsider came from for the rest of the books in the series.

Pages: 416

Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse by Leo Lionni

 I'm reading the Culture books by Ian M. Banks right now. I figured out that there were eight books in the series and rushed out to the library almost immediately. While I am enjoying the stories, I do feel like I should take some sort of break. I asked Clay to pick out books of his to read between the Culture books. Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse was the first. Certainly I would not normally read a child's book of this level, it does seem like the sort of thing I would read to my nephew if I weren't already reading him The Nation by Terry Pratchett. These pages should hardly count, but I'm going by Amazon.com pagecount instead of trying to find an e-book and determining the word count.

Pages: 32