There was some good stories in here but ultimately I was hoping for more of a general history and not a personal essay.
By Joanne McNeil
Not sure Philip Pullman is really qualified to write 600 pages about a college aged woman.
By Philip Pullman
One of my favs.
By: Diana Wynne Jones
Palette cleanser. Not as bad as these books usually are!
By E.J. Russell
Fun game of thrones vibes but set in alternate maybe 14th century China.
By Dave Duncan
Not bad. I learned a lot of random historical things but not sure the main points were consistently well delivered. Really enjoyed the first half, but then it mostly just turned into a Japanophile travel log.
By Kyle Chayka
Great overview of the Mesozoic period. Wish it included more about the marine ecosystems, but I guess those weren’t technically dinosaurs.
By Stephen Brusatte
Really enjoyed these two books. The setting in a future Navajo nation was really good.
By Rebecca Roanhorse
Nice addition to the collection of alien invasion novels not set in white places.
By Cadwell Turnbul
1. Rest
This one took me a couple months to get through because I only read it on vacations 😎
I’m already a pretty big proponent of relaxing living, but I really enjoyed the amount of research and citation that went into this. The chapter about hobbies and deep play was my favourite. Also this quote:
By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
2. The Advantage
Mandatory work reading. Definitely falls into the category of ‘management books that could be blog posts’.
By Patrick Lencioni
3. Ambiguity Machine and Other Stories
Enjoyed the title story about a chronoscope and ancient Indian poet, but found things less interesting as I went through.
By Vandana Singh
4. Amberlough
Very enjoyable gay political spy thriller set in a fantasy world based on the 1920s. Not a book to read in short bursts.
By Lara Elena Donnelly
5. Black Helicopters
So good. Cthulhu mythos themed spy story where almost all the characters are women. Lovecraft would have hated that :)
By Caitlin R. Kiernan
6. The Napoleon of Crime
Great non-fiction about Adam Worth, arguably the most successful thief in history and inspiration for Sherlock Holmes character Moriarty. Also includes a lot of excellent descriptions of Victorian society (they were all bonkers) and early New York history (everyone was a criminal).
By Ben Macintyre
7. Articulating Design Decisions
Work book. Good if you’re a designer and need to talk about design with people who aren’t.
By Tom Greever
8. The Making of a Manager
Another work book. Not bad, but worth keeping in mind it’s written by someone who has only worked at Facebook - a horrible company.
By Julie Zhou
9. The City in the Middle of the Night
Wow kind of disappointing second book by Anders. Extremely cool world building, extremely idiotic characters.
By Charlie Jane Anders
10. How To Do Nothing
Really great book about resisting the attention economy and just like, enjoying the birds for a bit.
By Jenny Odell
11. The Golden Compass
Saw HBO is remaking this so I reread it to prepare. Still a great book.
By Philip Pullman
12. The Night Tiger
Loved her first book, loved the second also. This one was a little less blatantly fantastic, more about Confucius lore and humans, but some solid were tiger action.
By Yangze Choo
13. The Past
Not my normal sort of book (family drama) but the writing was very very nice.
By Tessa Hadley
14. The Demon Lord of California
Wtf did I just read?
By Jeanne Marcella
15. Worlds Enough & Time
Collection of speculative fiction short stories that were all really great! Good pacing and complex world building stuffed so successfully into short format. Author knows what he’s doing.
My favourite was the story about climbing K2 with an alien preying mantis.
By Dan Simmons
16. Revolutions
Pretty good! The pacing was a bit weird but it seems like the author just really wanted the characters to wander around on mars for several chapters doing nothing and I respect that.
By Felix Gilman
17. Dune
I want a cone of silence.
By Frank Herbert
18. River of Teeth
Wild ride. Kind of violent western but with hippos instead of horses and super lgbt+ positive.
By Sarah Gailey
19. Magic For Liars
Author double feature for book club. I’m not usually into murder mysteries but I only managed to figure out half of it by the end so good job.
By Sarah Gailey
20. The Subtle Knife
Continuing on.
By Philip Pullman
21. Gods of Jade and Shadow
Yess loved this. Jazz time Mexico, lots of Aztec death gods. Satisfying slow burn romance.
Will def read again.
By Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
22. The Amber Spyglass
Done. Still good as an adult.
By Philip Pullman
23. Hollow Kingdom
Cool premise - zombie apocalypse from the POV of a domesticated crow. Not great execution. There was a good part where a cat decides an orangutan escaped from the zoo is now his pet.
24. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Maybe not completely accurate and missing some vital stuff, but really enjoyable overview of the Mongol empire in the 1200s and the lasting effects.
25. Carry On
Cute.
By Rainbow Rowell
26. Gideon the Ninth
Can’t go wrong with lesbian necromancers in space.
By Tamsyn Muir
27. Strange Practice
Cool premise but really not good. Main character is a doctor to the supernatural (cool) but spends most of the book holed up and hiding with a bunch of old vampires (boring).
By Vivian Shaw
28. This is How You Lose the Time War
Awesome. So good. Loved it.
By Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
29 + 30. Meg: Hell’s Aquaruim & Nightstalkers
Some relaxing holiday reading.
By Steve Alten
31. Over Sea, Under Stone
I didn’t read these as a kid, but I think I would have liked them then.
By Susan Cooper
32. The Fear Institute
Kinda messy plot wise but great characters so whatever.
By Johnathan L Howard
33. The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza
Not bad but I think I was not the intended audience. Something I did really like was the high amount of queer characters where that wasn’t a plot point. They just were 👍🏼
By Shaun David Hutchinson
34. The Brothers Cabal
Went downhill once the main character got his soul back imo.
By Johnathan L Howard
35. The Guest Cat
Book club pick. Very beautifuly written and just generally relaxing and nice to read.
By Takashi Hiraide
36. Childgrave
Pretty creepy but enjoyable.
My first book from Valencourt because I’ve been too scared to give them a try up until now.
By Ken Greenhall
37. Authority
Been sitting on this one for a bit waiting for the right vibes. Plane ride in a snowstorm was perfect.
Good. Weird. Purchased the 3rd.
By Jeff Vandermeer
38. The Starless Sea
A book to really luxuriate in.
By Erin Morgenstern
1. Autonomous
Good world building but somehow either too long or too short.
By Annalee Newitz
2. Radical Candor
Some good ideas but overall too heavy on that bullshity lean in style of feminism.
By Kim Scott
3. Turn Right at Machu Picchu
Loved this one. Travel editor retraces the steps of the guy that ‘rediscovered’ Machu Picchu along with an amazing Crocodile Dundee sort of man.
By Mark Adams
4. Odds Against Tomorrow
I liked this one a lot despite it not having that nice sci/fi diversity I’ve gotten used to lately.
Futurism is is a cool genre.
By Nathaniel Rich
5. A Wrinkle In Time
Classic
By Madeleine L'Engle
6. Soulless
I wonder if when Brook picked this for book club she realised it was basically a regency romance novel only with werewolves 😂
*update, she did not 😂😂
By Gail Carriger
7. Night Watch
Unsurprisingly good. Best part was the segue in the middle of a fight scene about how the crows came to be idiot savants.
By Terry Pratchett
8. Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country
Book club. Not my jam.
By Chavisa Woods
9. The Alchemists of Kush
Also book club. This was really good.
By Minister Faust
10. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
More affirming than anything else.
By Mark Manson
11.Farenheight 451
Missed reading this in school somehow. Excellent book.
By Ray Bradbury
12. Beastly Bones
Taking a YA break. Love Sherlock Holmes themed books.
By William Ritter
13. Working It
Trash. Didn’t even get to find out who the father of the baby actually was!
By Kendall Ryan
14. Owl and the Japanese Circus
Nice easy vacation read. Awesome world building, annoying main character.
By Kristi Charish
15. Space Opera
This book is amazing and excellent and one of the best I’ve read in awhile.
By Catherynne M. Valente
16. Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach
Book club book. Second book club book this year that was somehow either way too long or way too short. Main character was also an asshole.
By Kelly Robson
17. Telling the Map
Amazing. So good. I almost started it again immediately after finishing.
By Christopher Rowe
18. The Wedding Date
Cute. If you want to get into biracial romance novels this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
By Jasmine Guillory
19. Blackfish City
Yeah really good. Because I read it in a few sittings I had a hard time remembering who was who - all the characters have short names. But the pacing was nice, the setting was interesting and I’ll never say no to an orca eating gangsters.
By Sam Miller
20. The Magpie Lord
I just wanted a relaxing gay paranormal romance to read and this definitely did the trick.
By KJ Charles
21. The Price Guide to the Occult
I picked this up without knowing anything about it as the book design is beautiful. Ended up being a very nice YA-ish (but very violent) book about witches and women overcoming mental health and family issues with a nice magical background.
By Leslye Walton
22. Station Eleven
Amazing overall. I could think of some small plot improvements, but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
Two things I especially liked were the descriptions of Delano Island. It’s not a real place, but it’s based on where I grew up and I have similar issues when trying to describe it to people. And I enjoyed reading the Airport parts while on a plane and being completely freaked out on landing.
By Emily St. John Mandel
23. Johannes Cabal the Necromancer
Not sure how this went unread by me for so long as it’s completely my jam.
My favourite part
By Jonathan L. Howard
24. Storm Season
Too many emotions for my liking. But the characters were excellent.
By Pene Henson
25. Brilliant
A very good jewel thief novel. I appreciated the main character is just a normal middle aged woman.
By Marne Davis Kellogg
26. Convenience Store Woman
I didn’t care for this one much. I think because I’ve read a lot of books like it.
By Sakaya Murata
27. Bones and Bourbon
Very cool idea but soooo boring for me personally. I didn’t think a book with evil killer unicorns could be dull.
By Dorian Graves
28. Ghostly Echos
One more to go. Not sure I like where the series ended up, but it’s still a good story.
By William Ritter
29. The Tea Master and the Detective
Surprisingly good actually, but I wish much longer.
By Aliette de Bodard
30. Circe
Yes. Amazing, loved it would recommend.
By Madeline Miller
31. The Gathering
Cool idea and world building but way too much white space. And halfway through it seemed the author just gave up and explained everything in a few pages.
By Kelly Armstrong
32. Deathless
This was excellent. A retelling of Russian fairy tales. Very brutal and dark with awesome characters and writing.
By Catherynne M. Valente
33. Ancillary Justice
Took me a min to get through because of all the alien history and names I had to learn, but worth it in the end. Been awhile since I read a solid space opera.
By Ann Leckie
34. The Dark Vault
Way too long and emo.
By Victoria Schwab
1. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
A good overview of activism concerning black feminism, intersectionality and prison abolitionism but gets kind of repetitive and doesn’t go as deep as I had expected.
By Angela Davis
2. The Island in the Caldera
Cute. But I hate trilogies where the books just end on a cliffhanger. I like it when books are self contained.
By Lin Xeuling
3. Act Like It
Very good romance story with excellent dialog. Love the “fake relationship turns real” trope.
By Lucy Parker
4. The Sellout
Excellent. I think this is should be required reading on everyones “Fight The System” reading lists going around this year.
By Paul Beatty
5. Lagoon
I’m generally a fan of crazy sea monster aliens folklore witchcraft stories so obviously really liked this one. A lot of people have criticisms about the general plot and general stiltedness of the writing, but I read Kabu Kabu before this and wanted more of that. Which this book delivered.
By Nnedi Okorafor
6. Madam President
This book is not great, but it’s been kind of depressing lately and I needed a nice wishful thinking read where a 3rd party lesbian becomes president in 2020.
By Blayne Cooper and T. Novan
7. The Colour of Love
Nice and easy.
By Radclyffe
8. Desire by Starlight
Did you know every small town in America is full of good looking gay women?
By Radclyffe
9. Binti / Binti Home
Good.
By Nnedi Okorafor
10. The Happiness of Pursuit
A bit too self-helpy for me. Parts I did like were about this woman who got super into birding and decided she wanted to catalog the most bird species seen ever. I should have just read her book.
By Chris Guillebeau
11. A Conjuring of Light
A satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.
By V.E. Schwab
12. Exit West
Very good.
By Mohsin Hamid
13. Swimmer Among The Stars
Also very good.
By Kanishk Tharoor
14. Harris bin Potter and The Stoned Philosopher
Pretty funny parody of Harry Potter if it took place in Singapore and everyone was Malaysian.
By Suffian Hakim
15. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Okay.
By Becky Chambers
16. Mackenzie’s Mountain
Fine.
By Linda Howard
17. The Border of Paradise
Not my favourite of our book club choices. A good reminder for myself of why I don’t read family drama general fiction.
By Esmé Weijun Wang
18. New York 2140
This one took me awhile to read as it’s very long and I’ve been very busy but it’s very good. New York saves the world in some super uplifting utopian fantasy.
By Kim Stanley Robinson
19. Fantasian
This was for book club, and I didn’t read the synopsis before heading to the very public park to sit and read what turned out to be an erotica lol.
By Larissa Pham
20. 1001 Dark Nights
After not learning my lesson in the book before, I again don’t read the synopsis and thought this was about something TOTALLY different! Need to read some YA next to even this out.
21. The Unnaturalists
Magical steampunk YA. Pretty good.
By Tiffany Trent
22. The Bridge
Nice story, not great writing.
By Karen Kingsbury
23. Nocturne Falls 5
So bad. So, so bad.
By Kristen Painter
24. The Duchess War
Classic bodice ripper. Good read.
By Courtney Milan
25. The Book of Speculation
I like books that switch between time frames to tell a story. I’m not so much into the carnival themes, but this was a nice read.
By Erika Swyler
26. The Map of Time and The Turn of the Screw
This book drove me crazy.
By Felix J. Palma
27. Witches, Sluts, Feminists
Book club book. Not great.
By Kristen Sollee
28. God’s War
I liked this one. Set on a futuristic bug desert planet with muslim women bounty hunters.
By Kameron Hurley
29. All Our Wrong Todays
Pretty good. Especially the part with the time machine that moves backwards in real time so the main character sits in a metal cylinder for 50 years.
By Elan Mastai
30. Meet Me In Atlantis
This book is awesome.
By Mark Adams
31. A Study in Brimstone
Pretty funny. I like Sherlock Holmes mashups where Watson is the smart one.
By G.S. Denning
32. One Damn Thing After Another
Cool premise but could have reaaally used a good editor.
By Jodi Taylor
33. Ink and Bone
Pretty good even though i intensely disliked the main character. I picked this one up because after the last book, I wanted something about the Library of Alexandria.
By Rachel Caine
34. Vicious
Great. I love all her books.
By V.E. Schwab
35. Please Kill Me
Awesome book of interview exerpts going through the history of punk music.
By Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
36. Basic Witches
Book club (it’s October so we’re reading spooky things).
Okay. Not really in the realm of my personal witchcraft preference but I appreciate that it was written.
By Jaya Saxena and Jess Zimmerman
37. The Witches Of New York
Another October book club pick. This one was good.
By Ami McKay
38. Jackaby
This was cute. Like a supernatural, American Sherlock Holmes. I like Holmes themed books where the Watson character is a woman.
YA I think?
By William Ritter
39. The Book of Dust
I’m having a hard time deciding if this was good or not because I’m totally clouded by nostalgic giddiness.
By Philip Pullman
40. Snow Crash
I’d been putting off reading this for awhile, worried it wasn’t as good as I remembered. It’s as good as I remembered.
By Neal Stephenson
41. Range of Ghosts
Pretty good.
By Elizabeth Bear
1. The Night Circus
I hadn’t heard of this book or knew what it was about - but my mom told me it’s pretty popular. I picked it up on a whim from a book store in Hong Kong because it was part of a special cover release with other awesome books, and a night circus just sounded cool.
I really liked it. Great visuals and really interesting story. The tense and dates threw me off a few times, but I also read it on holidays so maybe wasn’t 100% focused. Good start to 2016!
By Erin Morgenstern
2. Ready Player One
Late to the game on this one as well. I didn’t really like this book. Maybe because I’ve read a few similar books and there was just nothing new here. I also find something super depressing about such a cool immersive world being predominantly populated by 80s pop culture. Like we get to 2044 and the 80s are our cultural zenith? That’s even worse than the lightly touched upon collapse of the entire human race also in the book.
I lost it when it was mentioned the main character had no eyebrows. That’s literally all I could think of for the remainder of the book.
By Ernest Cline
3. Guards! Guards!
I’ve never read a Terry Pratchett book, much to the horror of many of my more literary inclined friends. I picked this one at random because it had a magical library, and you can’t really go wrong with magical libraries.
Good book. Very funny.
By Terry Pratchett
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
January was pretty slow for reading. I was trying to get through a Tom Robbins novel, who like Pratchett, I’ve never read before. I dunno if it was just general Japan fatigue (where I just spent 3 weeks) or the fact that I was also doing a ton of research on Aleister Crowley and theosophy for a project but the whole Bangkok (where I had picked up the book in the first place) and Laos (where I am heading off to next) parts combined with the fairly accurate description of random white dudes in Asia was just frankly freaking me out. Also the weird sex.
After ughing all over the place, I just re-read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for probably the 10th time. Spell broken.
By Douglas Adams
5. A Darker Shade of Magic
Yeah this was a really great book. No complaints really. I’m not so much into trilogies these days (too many other books to read), but I’m excited for book number 2. I think because she actually buttoned everything up and it was a satisfying story just on it’s own.
By V. E. Schwab
6. Carry On
I suppose if I’m going to read YA it should be a fiction based on a fanfiction parody from another fiction with a lot of teenage boys making out.
By Rainbow Rowell
7. Snake Agent
Woah.
By Liz Williams
8. The Demon And The City
Just keepin’ this Chinese Hell party going.
By Liz Williams
9. Precious Dragon
Alright, I think 3 in a row is enough.
By Liz Williams
10. The Magicians
This book was like 18 books condensed into one. Lots of cool ideas, but I kept waiting for the story to start and it never did. Imagine if the entire 4th Harry Potter book (the one about the triwizard tournament) was condensed into a single chapter and just hinted at all the awesome stuff that happened and how insanely disappointing that would be. That’s what this book is like.
By Lev Grossman
11. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
I read this in a single shot on an 8 hour flight from Sydney to Singapore. It was nice, heart warming and allowed me to drown out the sounds of a Chinese teenage softball team having the time of their lives.
By Katarina Bivald
12. Archivist Wasp
Not what I expected. Good book I think, but not my taste.
By Nicole Kornher-Stace
13. The Ballad of Black Tom
I’m a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft, but I’ve always been unsettled by the more blatantly racist stories. It’s hard to figure out what to do with H.P. I think. Chalk up the hate as an ‘of the time’ thing? Totally ignore the work even though it’s been massively influential? I don’t know. I really enjoy reading modern work derivative of his world though. Maybe that’s the best way to proceed.
This book is a repurposing of The Horror at Red Hook but not cringeworthy to read. I liked it a lot.
By Victor LaValle
14. Dreams and Shadows
I read some kind of vague reviews of this book that described it as ‘dark’ and I assumed based on the back cover it would be the story of two friends who struggle with growing up. Turns out this is a super bloody and violent revenge story about fairies. Good read.
By C. Robert Cargill
15. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
I don’t know about this one. I really liked the parts about the world of rare book collecting, but the actual crime part was weird and sad and didn’t have a good ending.
By Allison Hoover Bartlett
16. Dolphin Island
If you ever feel bad about your own writing, just remember that even Arthur C. Clarke wrote teen novels about young people shipwrecked in the South Pacific, getting in the middle of a wars between dolphins and orcas.
By Arthur C. Clarke
17. The Rest of Us Just Live Here
This was very nice and clever and cute.
By Patrick Ness
18. Discontent and its Civilizations
A small collection of essays written by a guy of Pakistani origin who grew up in both Lahore and San Fran, lived in NYC for 4 years, left right before Sept 11, spent 8 years in London before moving back to Lahore. There’s some interesting stuff about identity, writing and the political and cultural state of Pakistan. I liked this book a lot.
By Mohsin Hamid
19. The Dip
I’ve always liked hearing Seth Godin talk on podcasts (which I listen to while folding laundry) but this book sucked. It was basically a really long blog post and definitely not worth the $10 as a book. If you read the amazon reviews you’ll pretty much get the gist and not have to read it.
By Seth Godin
20. Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend
Haha what the hell did I just read?
By Alan Cumyn
21. Practical Applications For Multiverse Theory
Fun little book about a bunch of high school students caught in the collapse of multiple universes. My favourite part were the rapey sloths.
By Nick Scott and Noa Gavin
It was published via ↠https://www.inkshares.com which is a cool crowdsourced publishing platform. Kind of like Threadless, but for books.
22. Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board
Picked this up for research. It actually started off really great, with a well written history of the ouija board. Kind of lost me at the invocation of angels and stuff, but I really enjoyed the authors continued reference to his Temple in Connecticut.
By J. Edward Cornelius
23. The High Places
Book of short stories I picked up in Sydney, looking for some local writing. My favourite was a story about a mechanical parrot.
By Fiona McFarlane
24/25. Desmond and Garrick
This was a real long book split in two parts. Gay teenage vampires in 1800s England. Basically nothing happens in this book, but the characters are so hilarious and well written, it didn’t really matter.
26. The Just City
I liked this book a lot. Greek gods Athena and Apollo pull a bunch of people out of time to try and recreate Plato’s Republic on Atlantis. Worth reading alone for the chapters about Socrates discovering the concept of zero and trying to figure out if the AI robot workers have souls.
By Jo Walton
27/28. Secret Manuscripts
I will count these as they were full novels and took longer to read as I was editing as well. Written by friends in the Science Fiction and Fantasy writers group I help run here in Singapore. I can’t wait till they’re done and published so you can all read them too.
29. Not In Kansas Anymore
A brief overview of the current state of magic in America. Interesting concept, but there was a little too much of the author struggling with her own beliefs in Jesus for my taste. Also found it kind of weird she skips the Wiccans and goes straight to people who live as elves.
By Christine Wicker
30. The Kings and Queens of Roam
This was written by the same guy who wrote Big Fish, that adorable early 2000s movie with Ewan McGregor, so I was expecting something whimsical and happy and light. Nope!
This was mainly about a dying town and a deteriorating relationship between two sisters. A lot of people die. Like a lot. I did really like the background though. It’s not clear when it was set, but there’s cars and television, but the town is an American frontier thing built by Chinese immigrants. There’s a cool lumberjack.
By Daniel Wallace
31. Carter & Lovecraft
I liked this one a lot. Another Lovecraft universe story, not written by him. But I maybe didn’t always agree with the editing. The world ended three times in two chapters. I feel that’s the sort of thing that can really only happen once.
By Jonathan L. Howard
32. A Gathering of Shadows
Second book in the Shades of Magic series. I really liked the first one, and this one was good also. BUT. One of the reasons I liked the first one was she had buttoned everything up so it was fine to read on it’s own. This one ends in a cliffhanger. BUT. Then in the acknowledgements at the end she apologises for it. So I guess I’m okay.
By V. E. Schwab
33. The Alchemist
I read this one a loooong time ago, but liked the 25th anniversary cover so picked it up. I’m not much into the spiritual journey stuff, but it is a good story regardless. Something I especially liked is this quote from the forward:
“When I read about clashes around the world - political clashes, economic clashes, cultural clashes - I am reminded that it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed. Even if my neighbour doesn’t understand my religion or understand my politics, he can understand my story.”
By Paulo Coelho
The cover was done by Jim Tierney who is one of my favourite cover artists.
34. Worldsoul
Took a minute to get into this book because just SO MUCH was going on. But I liked it. Enough with the trilogies though.
By Liz Williams
35. Diary of a Witchcraft Shop
I’ve read quite a few Liz Williams books now, and had been pretty blown away by both the sheer amount of imagination and the fact that a British woman could write in so many different cultural traditions. I did a bit of research on her before picking up this one and found out she’s actually a witch who runs some occult supply stores in Glastonbury and writes in her spare time. This book was basically just a years worth of journal entires about her day to day life. Pretty interesting.
My favourite anecdote was about visiting a conference and noticing how all the Raelians were extremely beautiful.
By Liz Williams
36. All The Birds In The Sky
Lent to me by Josh, rightly assuming I’d like it.
By Charlie Jane Anders
37. Romeo And/Or Juliet
Haha omg. This book is great.
↠ http://www.romeoandorjuliet.com
By Ryan North
38. The Bad Boy Billionaire
Someone gave me this as I guess a joke trying to test my resolve in reading anything people gift me. Jokes on them, though. I love this shit. Anyway, I was extremely hungover and it was the first thing I picked up and a trashy romance seemed like a good distraction from the results of a 3am karaoke night.
This book is like borderline meta genius territory. Maya Rodale wrote a series of books called Wallflower awhile back, which are like Victorian era bodice rippers. This book is set in the present but has the exact same plot and the main character writes those books in this book (complete with excerpts) based on her experiences - under the pen name Maya Rodale. Is this book non-fiction?! Is Maya Rodale actually a 28 year old librarian married to a billionaire?!
By Maya Rodale
39. Disrupted
This book gave me terrible flashbacks to when I used to work in the start-up industry.
By Dan Lyons
40. World War Z
Several years late on this train I guess. I was watching that Honest Trailers youtube account and the one for this movie had a list of all the cool things from the book they should have added. One was “zombie hunting weiner dogs”. I bought the book immediately.
I really liked this book and now I’m super disappointed in the Walking Dead because this would make a far better tv series.
By Max Brooks
41. Infinity Net
Yeah this was great. What an interesting life.
By Yayoi Kusama
42. The Atrocity Archives
Not bad. Supernatural spy thriller about fighting multi-dimensional Nazis. The main character was extremely unlikable which was further exasperated by writing him in 1st person.
By Charles Stross
43. After The Quake
Read this a long time ago. Needed something easy for a plane ride. Still good.
By Haruki Murakami
44. X’s for Eyes
This was fun. Too short I think. Every line was so intense.
By Laird Barron
45. Wicked as They Come
Not bad. Interesting world building - kind of a steampunk sort of vampire thing going on. Lame main character though.
By Delilah S. Dawson
46. Annihilation
I quite liked this one. Very atmospheric and weird.
By Jeff VanderMeer
47. China Rich Girlfriend
Might as well be non-fiction.
By Kevin Kwan
48. Entangled
I had the flu so read a YA novel about witches.
By Nikki Jefford
49. Screwdrivered
I liked this one. Kind of a silly romance, I actually think this is a perfect contemporary romance novel. The characters were excellent, there’s a great plot, appropriate amount of drama and misdirection and it’s funny.
By Alice Clapton
50. Date Me Baby One More Time
Not bad. There were some really ridiculous parts, in a good way.
By Stephanie Rowe
51. Heroes Are My Weakness
Eh. Alright. The main character was a ventriloquist and no one was weirded out once. Super unrealistic!
By Susan Elizabeth Phillips
52. The Accidental Alchemist
I liked the idea of this book, and that it had a Chinese American love interest. But GD the main character was so freaking annoying and half the book was her making kale smoothies.
53. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You Not to Stay
Nice book. About an Iranian journalist who moves to Tehran for a year with his American wife and new baby.
By Hooman Majd
54. A Discovery of Witches
I liked this one, but there were a lot of issues. Harkness is an academic and teaches history and I really appreciated vastness and incredible detail of the setting in this book. Having an actual historian write a character that’s a 2000 year vampire is awesome, but the whole love story just felt extremely trite and unbelievable. Also the book is like 500 pages too long. 500 pages of describing the smells of wine. But I will read the next one.
I just wish the editors did a better job.
By Deborah Harkness
55. The Last of Hanako / Photo Shop Murder
I’ll count these as 1 as they’re short. Two books I picked up in Seoul that are part of The Portable Library of Korean Literature - short modern works translated into English.
Photo Shop Murder by Kim Young-Ha - Not good. Sort of sexist. Generic.
The Last of Hanako by Ch'oi Yun - This one I really really liked. Two interesting, and beautiful written multilayer stories on the theme of how women are marginalised in Korean society. Unfortunately I can only find 3 additional short stories translated into english by this author but I would LOVE to read more (or all) of her work.
56. The Gravity Between Us
Okay.
By Kristen Zimmer
57. The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin
Ahhh lesbian pirate adventure. Good fun.
By Colette Moody
58. The Vegetarian
Not my usual style, but I really liked the translation. She did a really great job and it was beautiful to read.
By Han Kang
59. How to Not Write Bad
Very good and useful.
By Ben Yagoda
60. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
I feel horrible saying this, but I actually liked the TV adaptation better :(
By Douglas Adams
60 - 63. Meg 1,2 and 4
Lol I was on holiday.
By Steve Alten
—————
This year wasn’t as high count-wise as last year, but I did do a lot of writing and traveling.
Total: 63
By gender: Men - 31 / Women - 32
By country: America - 37 / UK - 12 / Korea - 3 / Japan - 2 / Singapore, Iran, Pakistan, Brazil, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Wales - 1
By genre: Sci/Fi&Fantasy - 20 / NonFiction: 10 / Romance: 8 / YA: 7 / Horror: 7 / ShortStory&General Fiction: 5 / Action&Adventure: 4
1. The Paris Wife
A fictionalized account of the years Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris in the early 1920s from the point of view of his first wife, Hadley. Read for research, but I really enjoyed the parts about skiing in Austria. The author surmises that with no access to lifts, and instead having to hike to the top of hills to ski down, it gives skiers stronger legs to avoid injuries. I think there’s some truth in that.
By Paula McLain.
2. A Moveable Feast
Just wanted to hear the same story from Hemingway’s point of view. Very funny and I like the writing style.
A part I highlighted: “Is Ezra a gentleman?” I asked. “Of course not,” Ford said. “He’s American.”
By Ernest Hemingway
3. Songs of Love and Death
Surprisingly good collection of short stories all based around love. But also all fantasy or science fiction themed.
By various authors. Edited by George R.R. Martin.
4. Hall of Small Mammals
Awesome collection of short stories. There’s a great one in the middle that’s a series of vignettes that all have to do with falling, but are interconnected by random elements. Very clever. Very entertaining. I also liked the story about the miniature wooly mammoth.
By Thomas Pierce
5. Safari
A pulpy murder mystery set on a safari in Africa. Not sure why I read this one.
By Parnell Hall.
6. The Perfume Collector
An interesting read set in the 1950’s, telling the story of a women trying to discover why a stranger from Paris has left her an inheritance. The story jumps around through different decades and cities all over Europe.
By Kathleen Tessaro
7. Losing It
Have you ever tried to critically read a romance novel? I don’t recommend it.
By Cara Carmack
8. The Ghost Bride
I loved this book. It’s sort of a coming-of-age story with heavy elements of Chinese and Malay folklore. Very well written and interesting. And romantic.
By Yangsze Choo
9. King Solomon’s Mines
Allan Quartermain is the literary character Indiana Jones is based on. Awesome book.
By R. Rider Haggard
10. A Highly Unlikely Scenario
A fun little sci-fi book about a dystopian future where fast food restaurants control the philosophy of society. I though the set up for the book was great and super interesting, but didn’t really like the turn into Jewish mysticism. The ending felt rushed.
By Rachel Cantor
11. Allan Quartermain #2
There’s 10 Allan Quartermain books. I’ll probably read them all.
By H. Rider Haggard
12. Arranged
Read for research. Meh.
By Catherine McKenzie
14. Breathe
Dumb.
By Kate Bishop
15. You
I liked this one. Kind of a fantasy drama about people making video games in the 90s. I wish the games were real as I want to play them.
By Austin Grossman
16. Vanity Fare
Research. Really surprisingly well written for a book in this genre. I wish she would write more books.
By Megan Caldwell
17. Wallbanger
This book was almost TOO sassy. But I liked it. Especially the last chapter which was written from the point of view of the main characters cat.
By Alice Clapton
18. Ten Days: Benjamin Franklin
Research.
“With no fact to report, people imagine all sorts of things. Franklin will use mirrors to aim the sun at British ships and set them on fire; Franklin will send a bolt of electricity over the water of the English Channel to shock the whole country; Franklin is building a machine to create earthquakes with electricity and storms at sea.”
By David Colbert
19. Must Love Breeches
I know the author. No regrets.
By Angela Quarles
20. Seducing Mr. Knightly
I wanted to hate this book. But it was so good.
By Maya Rodale
21. The Big Time
Yes.
“You can’t time travel through the time you time travel in when you time travel.”
By Fritz Leiber
22. Ghost Canoe
Found this one by accident while looking for a book on something else. I’ve always had a thing for flying canoes since first hearing the Chasse-galerie story about a group of French Canadian fur transporters who make a deal with the devil so their canoe can fly them to a New Years Eve party.
This book, sadly, was not about that. And it was set near where I grew up and made me homesick.
By Will Hobbs
23. The Wicked Wallflower
Ugh. So bad, but so good.
By Maya Rodale
24. The Anubis Gates
This is probably one of the best books I’ve ever read. Time travel, ancient Egyptian mythology, an evil clown, a brainwashed Lord Byron, evil sorcerers. Holy cow.
By Tim Powers
25. A Sound of Thunder
I love Ray Bradbury, and realize this one was written in the 60s, but I was a little sad to find the note in the middle dedicating the stories to little boys everywhere. F that. I’m a girl and love stories about space and dinosaurs and time travel.
By Ray Bradbury
26. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
Pretty good.
By Lauren Willig
27. Natural Born Charmer
Not bad. But the characters were so unbelievable.
By Susan Elizabeth Phillips
28. The Masque of the Black Tulip
I discovered a genre of books written for people whose favourite author is Jane Austen.
By Lauren Willig.
29. Benjamin Franklin
I read the Quicklets outline of this book first, and made a list of the chapters relevant to my research because this book is loooooong. Then read almost the whole thing because Walter Isaacson is such a good writer.
By Walter Isaacson
30. The Bestseller
This book was great. I was slightly disappointed at the ending as it was happy. Which I secretly wanted. But was still disappointed to get.
“Unhappy endings in books are better than happy ones because readers believe life is sad and feel less manipulated that way.” - Maureen Egen
By Olivia Goldsmith
31. The Accidental Time Machine
I really liked this one.
By Joe Haldeman
32. The Reality Dysfunction
Great book. So long.
By Peter F. Hamilton
33. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Not bad. I thought there was a lot of cruel and unusual death though.
By Gabrielle Zevin
34. The Island
Terrible.
By Jill Jones
35. City of Bones
Couldn’t really figure out why the main character wasn’t freaked out at all after finding out the boy she kissed was actually her brother.
By Cassandra Clare
36. On Writing
Awesome.
By Stephen King
37. After Dark
I thought I hadn’t read this one, but after starting it, realized I had. I think it might be the early musings that lead to IQ84.
By Haruki Murakami
38. The Dreamer
Nice little Y/A story. I liked the world building.
By E.J. Mellow
39. Voodoo In New Orleans
I liked this book. It was like a typical academic history, only the author legitimately believed voodoo was real and magical.
By Robert Tallant
40. Under The Mountain
A much loved children’s book from New Zealand. Still great as an adult.
By Maurice Gee
41. Getting Over Jesse Franklin
Pretty good first novel. I thought the middle was a bit long though.
By Stephie Chapman
42. The Time Hunters
This book was so fun! Nice easy read.
By Carl Ashmore
43. The Princess Bride
I somehow missed reading this one when I was younger. Great book!
By William Goldman
44. We Should All Be Feminists
Last year I pretty much only read non-fiction. I started to find myself in this rut where I still loved reading, but was only picking up books on topics I wanted to learn about, or needed to do research on. This was good, but I was missing the emotional education and joy of a good story. This year I decided to lighten up and stick to fiction and genres I hadn’t really gotten into before.
But, I picked this one up as a gift for a friend and couldn’t resist reading it first. Great little piece for someone looking for a more high level introduction to the subject. I love her writing a lot.
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
45. The Vorrh
It’s nice to read something in the fantasy genre that doesn’t involve elves or dwarves or epic quests. It channels Tim Powers with the referencing to actual historical events, but not as well. While I was really into the magical forest, I really could have done without the graphic cyclops sex and zombie babies.
This book was also nearly tortuous to read. There are no nouns that aren’t modified at least three times.
By Brian Catling
46. Howl’s Moving Castle
Bet you didn’t know this was a book by a British woman, and not invented by Miyazaki. The book is just as magical and amazing. And there’s 3 of them!
By Diana Wynne Jones
47. Castle in the Air
The least good of the three Howl books, but also the shortest.
By Diana Wynne Jones
48. House of Many Ways
Now I am done all three :’(
By Diana Wynne Jones
49. Chasing Harry Winston
Ugh. I hate books where the most interesting characters (sassy gay hairdresser, Balinese green card wife, gruff book editor) are only mentioned in flashbacks to explain holes in the plot.
By Lauren Weisberger
50. Nimona
Lovely. It’s a graphic novel, but I’ll count it.
By Noelle Stevenson
51. Books v. Cigarettes
I wasn’t aware George Orwell wrote anything besides books on high school reading lists, but this was very good. A short collection of essays written in the 30s and 40s about working in publishing, freedom of press and what patriotism means.
By George Orwell
52. A Tale For The Time Being
Sometimes you get lucky and pick up a book that’s perfectly relevant to where you are at that particular time. I don’t want to get all cliche and say this book was written for me, but I’m sure you know the feeling. Great read, really poignant, funny at some points.
“Sometimes, if a person has been treated really badly, she can even become an ikisudama, and her soul leaves her sleeping body and wanders around the city doing tatari. That was my goal for the summer vacation. To become a living ghost.”
By Ruth Ozeki
53. Ruby Red
This kept coming up on Oyster so I decided to give it a try. A nice, easy read. I think it’s YA? I suspect it is based on the lame romance scenes.
By Kerstin Gier
54. The Ghost Bride
Re-read this on vacation. Still good.
By Yangsze Choo
55. Our Tragic Universe
I don’t know about this one. I hated all the characters except Andrew, the good-natured barkeep in the seaside town who believed in ghosts. Everyone else was depressed in a read too much Victorian literature and thought they were smarter than everyone else kind of way. Maybe the book should have been about Andrew.
By Scarlett Thomas
56. How to Sharpen Pencils
Lol what was this even though?
By David Rees
57. Good Omens
What a great book.
By Neil Gaimen & Terry Pratchet
58. Northern Lights
Total mom book, but I liked it.
By Nora Roberts
59. Alif The Unseen
Love me some magical realism, and this was a good one. It’s set in an unnamed Middle East country during the Arab Spring and focuses on hackers, but also jinn and magic. As well as entertaining, there’s some really solid observations about the nature of religion in the modern world, Islam, and being a foreigner abroad.
By G. Willow Wilson
60. Wind/Pinball
Well, that wasn’t what I had expected at all.
The worst part of this book was the introduction where he talks about how he found a wounded pigeon in the bushes (gross) and while carrying it to the police station (what are the police going to do with a pigeon?) has a premonition that he will become a world class author. Probably one of those stories you tell countless times over the years, exaggerating each time till you eventually believe your own lie. That combined with the steady increase in the amount of weird and creepy sex scenes over the years has maybe put me off Murakami for awhile.
By Haruki Murakami
61. Smoke and Mirrors
Some pretty fucked up shit in this book.
By Neil Gaimen
62. The Short Stories of HP Lovecraft
I’ve read all these before, but it’s been awhile. I’m always surprised when discussing books with other frequent readers and it comes up they haven’t read Lovecraft. So good. So scary.
My favourite HP Lovecraft stories:
1. At the Mountains of Madness
2. Call of Cthulhu.
3. The Shadow of Innsmouth.
63. Shadows Over Baker Street
I had a Lovecraft weekend. This is a book of short stories by various authors about Sherlock Holmes, but set in the HP Lovecraft universe. Extremely good if you’re into both these worlds.
64. The Creative Habit
A nice little dive into the process of choreographer Twyla Tharp. I’m not big into the whole ‘rise at 5:30am while the world is quiet’ school of creative thinking and I thought the book had maybe just a bit too much name dropping, but I did make a few notes:
• When Twyla Tharp is stressing about something, she visualises her fears as wild pigs and boars and has them jump off a metaphoric cliff, crushing them to death on the rocks below.
• Twyla Tharp suggests picking a person at random each day and spending a good amount of time describing their face in your chosen medium.
• Twyla Tharp thinks we want artists to take the mundane materials of our lives, run it through their imaginations and surprise us.
By Twyla Tharp
65. Night Watch
Another solid suggestion from Oyster - which I’m pretty gutted is shutting down in January.
This book came out awhile ago, and I remember seeing it in a store, but the English cover at that time was so horrible - like a super terrible vampire romance novel. At some point they updated it with some super nice Victorian Russian constructivism type stuff and I was like yeah, this looks cool now. The book was pretty good. It’s not, in fact a vampire romance novel, but a neat secret government society type story with magic and a lot of drunken debate over the war between good and evil. The writing style was very nice also, probably due to originally being written in Russian. I’ll likely read the rest of the series.
By Sergei Lukyanenko
66. Black Amazon of Mars
I picked up some nice 50s Sci/Fi pulp and man, so good. Leigh Brackett is basically considered the queen of pulp space opera and best know for writing the screenplay for The Empire Strikes back.
I like picking up the older pulp stuff occasionally. There’s very little ‘philosophy’ going on in these stories. Just good old fashion evil aliens, handsome barbarians from Venus and kickass women warlords on Mars.
By Leigh Brackett
67. Rendezvous With Rama
I suspect this might be the most perfect sci/fi book ever written? I can’t think of anything wrong with it.
Also I like that all sci/fi authors seem to have come to an independent agreement that people from Mercury will be weird and crazy in the future.
By Arthur C. Clarke
68. Errantry
I started and stopped several books this week but finally finished this one. A collection of short stories, kind of fairy tale magical realism. I liked a few but overall there were too many themes of loss (widowers, dead parents, dying friends) for me to really go yeah!
My favourite story from the bunch, Hungerford Bridge, is available online ↠ http://www.conjunctions.com/archives/c52-eh.htm
By Elizabeth Hand
69. Kabu Kabu
A collection of short stories with heavy Naijamerican influences. I really liked it. My favourite was about an illegal, magical Nigerian cab driver who takes an unsuspecting Chicago lawyer on an insane ride on a monster highway. I also really liked that every main character was a woman.
By Nnedi Okorafor
70. The Strange Library
I had such high hopes. They weren’t met.
By Haruki Murakami
—————-
This was the important one for me this year. I really tried to branch out from the predominantly non-fiction I had been reading in previous years and think I did a pretty good job. It was good to get back into sci/fi and magic, which I’ll continue on with next year.
Top 5 books I read this year:
The Ghost Bride - By Yangtze Choo
Rendezvous With Rama - By Arthur C. Clarke
Howl’s Moving Castle - By Diana Wynne Jones
The Anubis Gates - By Tim Powers
King Solomon’s Mines - By R. Rider Haggard