Things I've read lately

So it was an outage for 89 days and I didn't read much and didn't update this with any of the books.

Absolution Gap--A reread, but good.
On Basilisk Station--Enjoyable
Bright of the Sky--Mostly interesting, but probably not enough to pay for the book on Kindle.
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger--Very funny. You should read it.
The Paradise War--Kind of interesting, but less so when I discovered that this is part of a long series. Neat that an established author put something out for free on the Kindle.
The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1--Another free book. This was okay, but geared toward young adult or something.
The Paths of the Dead--I don't know why I keep reading these books. Plot is just fine, but the writing style annoys me.
The Jennifer Morgue--I liked The Atrocity Archives and some of the later works in this series better, but this one suffered by being read very slowly over a week or two.
One of Our Thursdays is Missing--I don't know why I keep reading these books.
How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe--Not that good.

A Clash of Kings--Partial reread to prepare for the upcoming 5th book.
The Color of Magic--I got about half way though one night before I needed to go to sleep.
Way too much stuff at work--I spent the first portion of the outage reading. Stuff about why the analysis done on nuclear fuel and nuclear cores and whatnot is done correctly. I think that got up to ~2000 pages not including graphs and the pages I skipped. But that doesn't count toward my total.

Hugo nominees thus far:
Novella
"The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window" by Rachel Swirsky--This was rather good. If there weren't an Alastair Reynolds up in the same category, I would vote for this.
"The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang--I read this one a while back (during the nomination period) because it seemed likely to get a nomination. It was interesting, but a lot more about people's feelings than I liked.
"The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand--This one didn't explain enough before the end. And just not that interesting.
Best Novelette
"The Emperor of Mars" by Allen M. Steele--I listened to this one on a podcast, StarShipSofa. But I read it again for now (because I couldn't remember whether the name was the same). This feels like a strong contender to me. Neat that this was largely meta-sci-fi.
"Plus or Minus" by James Patrick Kelly--Not actually that interesting. There is possibly potential in this universe, but this story was not compelling.
"That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone--I think I want to reread this one during a non-outage time. There were definitely interesting ideas here and the religion aspect somehow didn't throw me off.

Pages: I'm saying 20 pages/novelette and 85 for novellas as I don't know the pagecount due to reading on Kindle.
4113

Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi

More trying to figure out what to nominate.
http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring-2010/fiction-elegy-for-a-young-elk-by-hannu-rajaniemi/

This one was okay, but not anything I'd want to win a Hugo. 

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

I'm trying to figure out what to nominate for the 2011 Hugo Awards, and I found this on some random person's list of neat things.

This story was fairly long--enough so that I read it over the course of two days instead of a couple hours in one night. That detracted some. But I did not particularly like that the story did not have any clear climax and that the ending sort of petered out instead of ending more normally.

I do not think this one is worth a Hugo. The last time Chiang won a Hugo, it was definitely worth it. Not this time.

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/fall-2010/fiction-the-lifecycle-of-software-objects-by-ted-chiang/

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.

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

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