who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?
Mar. 31st, 2008 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbBooks, the oops I lost track again edition.
Books 2008: 32-42.
32-36. Jim Butcher, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, and White Night.
I do not love the Harry Dresden books. But they are a tolerably amusing diversion when one is completely out of steam and higher brain function, and thus, worthwhile.
37. Sandra McDonald, The Outback Stars.
Recognisably space opera, and yet... Different. Smart. Sharp. No giant ship battles, but odd alien remnants and personnel problems, interesting characters, and much else that is diverting and pleasant.
38. Kelley Armstrong, Personal Demon.
I wish I hadn't got this in hardback. Oh, it's a perfectly okay book, just... meh. It feels entirely too similar to her earlier books. Formulaic, almost.
39. Tobias S. Bucknell, Ragamuffin.
Oh, my. Lovely science fiction. Lovely. I remember it taking me oh, a good six months and sixty pages to get into Crystal Rain. This book? Does not have that problem. Not by a long shot.
40. Robert V.S. Redick, The Red Wolf Conspiracy.
A debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy. (I did not know this when I purchased it.) It's solid, and solidly interesting, with ships and conspiracies and empires, and several pretty damn interesting characters. Looking forward to book #2.
41. Alma Alexander, Worldweavers: Spellspam.
...Wow. I do not love this book as much as I love Alexander's other books.
But I still love it quite sufficiently enough to fail of adequate description.
42. Sarah Monette, The Mirador.
This book has been on my shelf since within a couple of weeks of its publication. I waited, and waited, and waited, for the right moment to read it.
The right moment was yesterday, and god, it was good. Rich, lucid prose, great characters, a story that both took its time and knew exactly where it was going... Yep. I liked this one a lot. I really, really did.
43. Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria's Little Wars
Nonfiction. A brief run-through of the many, various, little wars which Britain fought during the Victorian period, published in 1972.
Aside from being notable for sentences which made me do a double, and then triple, take, such as, say, "No one ever had a good word to say about the coastal Africans, the middlemen in the slave trade, who adopted the worst aspects of European culture and lived in fear of the more virile and vigorous tribes in the jungle behind them," [p164], it also has a whole lot of unexamined racism, colonialism, and a certain unthinking chauvinism also. It's slack on analysis, too.
That said, the author's biases probably make this a more, rather than less accurate, reflection of the fighting Victorian. And as far as I can tell, he's not factually inaccurate.
Books 2008: 32-42.
32-36. Jim Butcher, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, and White Night.
I do not love the Harry Dresden books. But they are a tolerably amusing diversion when one is completely out of steam and higher brain function, and thus, worthwhile.
37. Sandra McDonald, The Outback Stars.
Recognisably space opera, and yet... Different. Smart. Sharp. No giant ship battles, but odd alien remnants and personnel problems, interesting characters, and much else that is diverting and pleasant.
38. Kelley Armstrong, Personal Demon.
I wish I hadn't got this in hardback. Oh, it's a perfectly okay book, just... meh. It feels entirely too similar to her earlier books. Formulaic, almost.
39. Tobias S. Bucknell, Ragamuffin.
Oh, my. Lovely science fiction. Lovely. I remember it taking me oh, a good six months and sixty pages to get into Crystal Rain. This book? Does not have that problem. Not by a long shot.
40. Robert V.S. Redick, The Red Wolf Conspiracy.
A debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy. (I did not know this when I purchased it.) It's solid, and solidly interesting, with ships and conspiracies and empires, and several pretty damn interesting characters. Looking forward to book #2.
41. Alma Alexander, Worldweavers: Spellspam.
...Wow. I do not love this book as much as I love Alexander's other books.
But I still love it quite sufficiently enough to fail of adequate description.
42. Sarah Monette, The Mirador.
This book has been on my shelf since within a couple of weeks of its publication. I waited, and waited, and waited, for the right moment to read it.
The right moment was yesterday, and god, it was good. Rich, lucid prose, great characters, a story that both took its time and knew exactly where it was going... Yep. I liked this one a lot. I really, really did.
43. Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria's Little Wars
Nonfiction. A brief run-through of the many, various, little wars which Britain fought during the Victorian period, published in 1972.
Aside from being notable for sentences which made me do a double, and then triple, take, such as, say, "No one ever had a good word to say about the coastal Africans, the middlemen in the slave trade, who adopted the worst aspects of European culture and lived in fear of the more virile and vigorous tribes in the jungle behind them," [p164], it also has a whole lot of unexamined racism, colonialism, and a certain unthinking chauvinism also. It's slack on analysis, too.
That said, the author's biases probably make this a more, rather than less accurate, reflection of the fighting Victorian. And as far as I can tell, he's not factually inaccurate.
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Date: 2008-04-02 09:34 pm (UTC)Thanks for your continued support, though!
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Date: 2008-04-03 07:13 am (UTC)