Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic 50 Book Challenge 2013/What I've Read In 2013

The Year's Best Science Fiction Stories edited by Gardner Dozois.
Haunting the library, I picked up this edition which featured stories published in 1991. One of the most interesting parts was the editor's prologue, where he gives kind of a "State of the SF Universe" speech. He talks about publishers, and how "e-books are on the horizon". It makes me realize how much computers, the internet, etc., have changed in the last 20 years. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a vacation cottage with old books lying around in it. I read many a book on those slow summer days, and I was fascinated by "Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone":



I love seeing the cover, where Tom is talking into a weirdly mixed style of phone - the video screen is right from the 2000's, but the telephone handpiece and speaking tube are more 1870's. Just an example of technological change.

Oh yes, the SF stories in the "Year's Best" anthology were excellent, too.

#11 Where We Belong by Emily Giffin

Girl gives up baby for adoption. Eighteen years later she's visited by her daughter. Entertaining read.

Joan

The Shape of Desire and Still Life With Shapeshifter, both by Sharon Shinn.
I've liked Sharon Shinn's work ever since I came across her "Archangel" series. In these two books, she examines what life would be like if you were the person who loved a shapeshifter. What if the person you loved couldn't control his or her transformation into an animal shape? What if they were hurt or killed in their other shape? How would you ever know what happened to them? Haunting and moving.

I finished that one a couple of weeks ago and I'd definitely recommend it, too. Rowling has such a great eye for little details in her characterizations.

Thus far this year, in addition to The Casual Vacancy (make that #1), I've also read:

2. Katherine by Anya Seton. It's an old book, recently reissued that is a fictionalized telling of the love affair between Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt. As you'll see from the rest of my list, I wallow in English history.

3. Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II by Paul Doherty. A re-examination of the events surrounding the death of Edward II. In the end, Doherty postulates the Edward escaped and some unfortunate doppelganger is buried in Gloucester Cathedral. I'd come to this book after reading Alison Weir's "Isabella" and I've now started "The Greatest Traitor" by Ian Mortimer (about Isabella's lover, Roger Mortimer).

4. 1066, The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth. A fun slice of life kind of book, putting you back in 1066 and explaining how people lived ordinary (and recognizable to modern eyes) lives in the midst of a world-changing year.

5. The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester. I love ALL of Simon Winchester's books and started off the year by rereading this one. He documents his journey up the Yangtze River just before the Three Gorges Dam was built. He touches on history, culture and geography. He's a wonderful storyteller with a keen eye for human nature (including his own lesser moments).

Currently, I have three books going. I'll report back when I'm through them.

Mark me down as having adored Trixie Belden as a kid. I inherited a ton of books from an older cousin. Trixie Belden, The Bobbsey Twins, The Happy Hollisters, and The Boxcar Children are the ones I chiefly remember. I also gorged myself at the library on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I personally collected all the Encyclopedia Brown books. And then I hit about 12 and someone loaned me Flowers in the Attic and I went on a trashy reading binge that lasted for years.

The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos
A Crown of Swords

So, halfway through now and I find that I'm enjoying all of this tremendously. Even more than I did first time round, I suspect.

Reading this on the Nexus is a real pleasure because when I get confused over who someone is, I can quickly pop onto Google and check them out, so I find I'm following events much more easily than I did before and am more able to keep up.

LabRat

2. Salmon fishing in the Yemen - Paul Torday.

3. A Full Cupboard of Life - Alexander McCall Smith.

4. A guide to the birds of East Africa - Nicholas Drayson.

#12 Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

My daughter liked this one so I thought I'd try it. I was a little worried it was a Twilight knockoff but it seems to have more to it.


Joan

The Bright Empires series by Stephan Lawhead
6. The Skin Map
7. The Bone House
8. The Spirit Well

This is books 1-3 of a 5 book series. The last two haven't been published yet. Kit Livingstone one day takes a shortcut through a London street, and meets his great-grandfather, who introduces him to travel through ley lines, which can take a person to any point and time in history, or just around the world (never the future). When Kit tries to show his girlfriend that he's telling the truth, he loses her. What follows is an adventure through various times and places as he looks for both her and the Skin Map.

The books are a bit confusing at times (after all, it is about time travel, which is never linear). Book 1 ended with "How did that person get there?!" It doesn't follow just Kit, but also several other travelers. But for the most part it's an enjoyable read.

#13 Teach Your Children Well - Parenting for Authentic Success by Madeline Levine

It's refreshing to read about ideas you already believe in and see them backed up by research.

Joan

#6 - Death, and the death of Quincas Wateryell - Jorge Amado

Tragicomic story about a stubborn man that died twice because the first death wasn't to his liking. Amado is a master at storytelling.

#7 - The Gospel according to Jesus Christ - José Saramago

It was (and is) considered a very controversial book because in it Jesus Christ is portrayed as a regular male, who happens to be a living puppet in the hands of a mean God - his father.

#8 - Beowulf

It took me a few days and a good dictionary to get used to the old English, but after that I greatly enjoyed the epic poem.

#9 - Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery

I don't know where this book was while I was growing up. It was one of the best I've ever read, this tale of an awkward and imaginative red haired girl who grows up to be very special.

#10 - The Drama of the Gifted Child - Alice Miller

The premise is interesting: some children are born gifted but, because of their narcissistic parents, end up wasting their potential and becoming themselves narcissistic adults. That said, the book centers on psychoanalysys and how it could help discover those childhood traumas. The problem is that the author of the book in the preface of the most recent editions discredits the value of psychoanalysys. The book is pretty much bereft of any credibility and is only interesting from an anedoctal point of view.

#11 - Stranger to History - Aatish Taseer

It was hard to follow for someone like me who doesn't have a profound knowledge of the islamic nations. I found it confusing in some parts, but it's noticeable the effort that the author put into this first-person report of his voyage through islamic lands.

WAR and PEACE by Tolstoy

Its time I read this one.

6. - Trixie Belden #3: The Gatehouse Mystery by Julie Campbell.

Trixie and her friend Honey find a diamond in the dirt of the old abandoned Gatehouse of Honey's estate. With the help of Jim, Honey's adopted big brother, and Trixie's older brothers, Brian and Mart, now home from camp, they piece together the clues to find out who had stolen the diamond and dropped it in the Gatehouse.

Another fun adventure with these young teens. The amount of time they allow younger brother Bobby to spend time alone with a total stranger (Honey's new chauffeur, aptly named "Dick") is another example how today isn't the 1950's.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova.
"Sarah Nickerson, like any other working mom, is busy trying to have it all. One morning while racing to work and distracted by her cell phone, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In that blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her over-scheduled life come to a screeching halt. After a brain injury steals her awareness of everything on her left side, Sarah must retrain her mind to perceive the world as a whole. In so doing, she also learns how to pay attention to the people and parts of her life that matter most." Good novel about facing the world when you're not aware of your left side (due to right brain injury). You can't walk because you not aware of where your left leg is. You can't read because you can't see the left side of words. Powerful and moving.

In The Dark Of Dreams by Marjorie M. Liu.
OK romance about two lovers sharing dreams. Apparently Liu has written for the comics which might explain how much action happens in this book and how it takes a long time for our protagonists to actually communicate with each other.

The Dream-Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
"Dr. Megeara Kafieri watched her father ruin himself and his reputation as he searched to prove Atlantis was real. Her deathbed promise to him to salvage his reputation has now brought her to Greece where she intends to prove once and for all that the fabled island is right where her father said it was. But frustration and bad luck dog her every step. Especially the day they find a stranger floating in the sea. His is a face she's seen many times.... in her dreams.
What she doesn't know is that Arik holds more than the ancient secrets that can help her find the mythical isle of Atlantis. He has made a pact with the god Hades: In exchange for two weeks as a mortal man, he must return to Olympus with a human soul. Megeara's soul."
Part of Kenyon's "Dream Hunter" series and a serviceable read.

Be Still My Vampire Heart by Kerrilyn Sparks.
Romantic fluff and fun. The vampires are the good guys in this series. You might guess it's comedy when the first book in the series was titled "How To Marry A Millionaire Vampire".

Long Hot Summoning by Tanya Huff.
Laugh-out-loud book 3 of the "Keeper's Chronicles" where our heroes must stop an encroaching of Hell into our dimension... yes, Hell is in a shopping mall.

In Fury Born by David Weber. Space opera.

A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park.
"Many girls daydream that they are really a princess adopted by commoners. In the case of teenager Miranda Popescu, this is literally true. Because she is at the fulcrum of a deadly political battle between conjurers in an alternate world where "Roumania" is a leading European power, Miranda was hidden by her aunt in our world, where she was adopted and raised in a quiet Massachusetts college town."

Over The Wine-Dark Sea
The Gryphon's Skull
The Sacred Land
Owls To Athens
all by H.N. Turteltaub (pseudonym for Harry Turtledove)
Sostratos and Menedemos are cousins (Menedemos is the captain, Sostratos is the toikarkhos or business manager) on the "Aphrodite", an akatos (ship with twenty oarsmen) that plies the luxury trade in the Mediterranean about 310 BC, about 15 years after the death of Alexander the Great. Over the series, they travel from their home island of Rhodes to various destinations - Great Hellas (southern Italy), Sicily, various Greek islands, Phoenicia, and (obviously) Athens. Very enjoyable if you like to read "how things really were" in those days. Not so fun if you were actually living at that time - the Macedonian marshals were squabbling over Alexander's empire and common people get caught up in the affairs of the great.

Schism
The Final Key
by Catherine Asaro.
Very readable and fun books in her "Skolian Empire" series. However, there is a big vulnerability to the good guys' empire: If your huge galactic empire depends entirely on only two people (Rhon telepaths) that can keep the infrastructure going, you've got a big problem.

Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle To Save The World by Evan Thomas.
It's the 1950's, you're Dwight Eisenhower, you've just been elected president, and you have control over the nation's nuclear arsenal. Should you wage pre-emptive war on the Soviets? Should you bomb North Korea to end the Korean war? Should you support the troops at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam and perhaps drag American into another Asian land war? Should you support the British and the French in the Suez crisis? Eisenhower navigated his way through the stormy shoals of statecraft and he never got full credit for it - he's a hugely underrated president.

#14 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

A wife goes missing and her husband is suspecting of foul play. But there's far more going on than initially meets the eye.


Joan

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz.
Well-written and readable bio of the famous TV chef who was a rich debutante, went to Smith College, joined the OSS during World War II, traveled the world, met her husband, moved to Paris, and learned how to cook. And yes, they do reference the famous "Saturday Night Live" Dan Aykroyd skit - "Save the liver!"

The Wheel of Time Series - Robert Jordan

The Path of Daggers
Winter's Heart
Crossroads of Twilight
Knife of Dreams

By Brandon Sanderson

The Gathering Storm
Towers of Midnight
A Memory of Light

Wow. Well, that's that then. It took over 22 years, but finally we reach a conclusion. And I have to say, right up front, that I thought Sanderson took over the series absolutely masterfully. All kudos to the man, it can't have been an easy task.

LabRat

Oh, I love it. In fact, you've made me remember that I meant to read it again once I finished A Memory of Light. Must get to it this week.

#15 11/22/63 by Stephen King

I think I've mentioned before that I've enjoyed his earlier books but haven't been as impressed by later offerings. This book was one of the best I've read of his in a long time. A man discovers he can use a portal to go back in time so he decides to try to prevent the assassination of Kennedy. A great read!

Joan

#12 - Gabriela Clove and Cinnamon - Jorge Amado

#13 - The Old Sailors - Jorge Amado

# 14 - Brandwashed - Martin Lindstrom

#15 - Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#16 - Love Poems from Ancient Egypt - anonymous

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons.
Entertaining and downright hilarious book about the National Basketball Association. Worth reading for the footnotes alone.

Great North Road by Peter Hamilton.
Doorstopper with excellent plot that I couldn't put down. Twenty years ago, Bartram (one of the patriarchs of a very rich and influential family of clones) was brutally murdered, along with the rest of his household, in his billionaire's stronghold. One woman, Angela Tremalo, lived, and was convicted of the murders. She denies it and says that an alien did the deeds. She is now in prison - and yet another murder of another member of the clone family (the Norths, giving a double meaning to the title) with the same modus operandi, happens and makes people think - maybe she was right. Police Detective Sid Hurst gets the unenviable and highly politicized job of finding out what really happened. There's a lot more to the book than this; recommended as a very good read. Hamilton doesn't disappoint.

The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde.
Fforde's patented absurdity in the next volume of the adventures of Literary Detective Thursday Next. Too much fun to summarize. Best if read from the beginning of the series, which starts with The Eyre Affair . Don't miss this series if you love books.