Book Logging
Jun. 21st, 2017 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThis batch of 'book' logging includes several long fics that I enjoyed (I won't log fics I don't finish or didn't enjoy).
Afalstein. Connecting the Dots - WIP. Crosses Naruto with the DC animated universe. Some chapters are Illustrated. There's more plot to this than I thought there would be when I finished the first chapter or three. At that point, I thought it was just an excuse for a lot of fight scenes that show how cool Batman and Robin are. 25 chapters are posted out of an expected 33. Here on AO3.
Ariel_Sojourner. Back From the Future: Episode VI The Clone Wars - This is a time travel fix-it that has Luke and Vader hurled back in time during the window between Luke and company rescuing Han from Jabba and Luke returning to Dagobah. The how of it is rather handwaved and wasn’t something either character intended. They decide to change everything to make sure that their timeline never happens. The whole thing is pretty fluffy and has a pleasant sense of family and sense of humor. The story very much needs a proofreader to catch things like using ‘dotted’ instead of ‘doted’ or ‘canon’ instead of ‘cannon’ and for omitted words. That wasn’t a deal breaker for me, but I know it is for some people. Here on AO3.
Blackkat. Backslide - Naruto time travel fix-it. Kind of fluffy but definitely not boring. It was just what I needed. Here on AO3. I’ve enjoyed other stories by the same author when I needed something to make me feel good.
Brennan, Marie. Lightning in the Blood - I realized early in this that there had to be a previous book. I finished this one anyway and had no trouble following the story. The shorter length worked, and I didn't feel as if things that needed to be there weren't. Interesting fantasy world.
Case Closed 37-39 - I’m liking this series better now that there’s a bit more arc plot involved. I don’t need that all of the time, but it’s nice to have some.
holdmybeer. Sum of Their Parts - Harry Potter fic, 138000 words in eleven chapters. I really enjoyed this. It’s a Dark Lord Harry Potter story, but it has a plausible set up and actual consequences. After the end of the war, Harry concludes that nothing at all has changed and that the only way for the people he loves to be safe is for him to become a Dark Lord, and he asks Ron and Hermione to be his failsafes in case he goes too far. I believed the character motivation and development, and I enjoyed the prose. Harry does, in fact, become a scary and not at all nice person, but he doesn’t lose sight of his goals. The author knows that this Harry isn’t a good guy, isn’t a hero, and has chosen not to be. Here on AO3.
Jedipati. You Shall Become (Me) - Star Wars divergent AU crackfic. Part of the blurb says “How to accidentally join the Sith without really trying.” This was a bit of silliness right when I needed it. It’s set during the Clone Wars era and starts from the idea that a person becomes a Sith automatically when they kill a Sith. Here on AO3.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 7 - Still enjoying the series. I'm wondering if I'm seeing hints of story arc now.
Pratchett, Terry. The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner - The thing sticking in my head, half an hour after finishing this short story collection, is irritation over the worker ant being male. Stylistically, these reminded me of Joan Aiken but without quite the same darkness.
Prince of Tennis 26 - The library was missing this volume for years. I no longer remember the characters or the teams, but I’m not willing to reread the previous volumes (I’m not sure the library has all of them now even if I wanted to go back).
Quick, Amanda. The Girl Who Knew Too Much - In spite of many references that ought to anchor this story in time, I had a lot of trouble feeling like I was reading something set in California in the 1930s. The story wasn’t unpleasant (or unpredictable). It just didn’t feel even remotely solid. I couldn’t believe some of the heroine’s choices made sense, and I had trouble getting a sense of the hero as anything but Quick’s generic template. I can’t tell how much is the book and how much is me.
Stevenson, D.E. Anna and Her Daughters - This is told first person by one of the daughters, and Anna doesn't get all that much page space. I felt that the non-POV sisters were kind of cardboard, but I could possibly put that down to the narrator not having much view of them otherwise. I liked the book enough to finish it. Everything was very low-key so that even things that should have been hard to read weren't.
The Time Museum - A group of kids from various points in time compete for an internship at the Time Museum. There is, of course, time travel. Aimed middle grade with humor. I want the next one now.
Unshelved: Book Club - Library centric humor. I kept wanting to share various strips and realizing that no one else in the house would get the joke.
Unshelved: Read Responsibly - I think I have now read everything our library has in this series. Maybe ILL?
Wells, Martha. All Systems Red - I out and out loved this. I forget from time to time how readable I find Wells’ books. Murderbot was an enjoyable narrator, and their reasoning and actions made sense. There was humor to leaven the action and suspense. I can see why people say they want more, but I also think that this doesn't require follow up. I'll be thrilled to read more when there is more.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 5-6 - The library was missing volume 5 for a while. I don’t know if they replaced it or if someone returned it or what. Fortunately, the gap between reading the volumes didn’t lead to me forgetting much. I still couldn’t remember the characters’ names, but that’s pretty typical for me. I’m still enjoying the slice of life stuff and mostly skimming over the cooking in order to catch any character bits involved.
Yeats, W.B. The Wild Swans at Coole - These poems were okay. I don't remember much, and I didn't fall in love with the flow of the words, but I finished the book which is rare when it comes to poetry. I'll likely try more Yeats at some point, but I don't expect I'll buy any.
Not finished:
Addison, Katherine. The Goblin Emperor - I got about halfway through this before I had to return it. The library only owns one copy, and someone else wanted it. I’m seriously considering buying it because I enjoyed what I read that much.
Ashley, Kristen. The Deep End - I enjoyed the parts of this that I read, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to read the rest. I had to return it because there was a hold on it, and I don’t know that I’ll check it out again. It’s femdom het BDSM erotic romance and does that well enough for me. Maybe I’ll try some of the author’s other books.
Evins, Karlen. I Didn’t Know That - This is a rather small paperback that gives origins for a very few of the odd phrases to be found in English. I found the format off-putting, and the book really doesn’t source any of its claims. Something like this shouldn’t be a slog, and it was.
Nealon, Tom. Food Fights & Culture Wars - I didn’t really enjoy the prose here enough to keep reading.
Poston, Ashley. Geekerella - I just couldn’t get through this. I wouldn’t say that it’s a bad book, just a not for me book. This is a romance, a Cinderella story centered on cosplay and a science fiction show reboot and a vegan foodtruck. There was a good amount of humor in the bits I read, and the character voices were clear.
Randall, Lisa. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs - Audiobook read by Carrington MacDuffie. I had trouble making myself pay attention to this. The words were clear but utterly flat, and I kept zoning out. I suppose it’s a challenge to make the formation and expansion of the universe dramatic reading material. I got to the end of the second CD, and the dinosaurs hadn’t come into it yet, so I have no idea where that was going.
Sauer, Julia. Fog Magic - I remember seeing this book when I was in elementary school in the 1970s. I’m not sure why I never picked it up (and maybe I did, and it just didn’t make an impression). I didn’t quite connect with this book, mostly because it wasn’t what I wanted right then. It’s very gentle with magical time travel.
Terrorist: Gavrilo Princip, the Assassin Who Ignited WWI - Sadly, trying to read this made my eyes hurt. There was enough that involved white text on a black background that I just couldn’t. I read enough to see that it was tracing the threads of both Princip’s life and that of his victims. It looks like it was probably interesting.
Tremontaine - I only gave this about fifty pages. I kind of suspected that I wouldn’t like it because I never liked Swordspoint or its sequels. I just wanted to give it a chance in case the setting and such appealed more with different writers. Sadly, not so much. Maybe I’d have pushed through if I didn’t have hundreds of books on my lists of things I want to try from the library. Maybe not.
Vande Velde, Vivian. A Well-Timed Enchantment - I thought I was prepared to accept the necessary suspension of disbelief for the premise of this, but I hit the point when the problem was being explained to the heroine, and I just couldn’t. The idea is that the main character accidentally drops her Mickey Mouse watch down a well and through a temporal portal and has to go back in time to retrieve it before Bad Things happen. I ran aground on the predictions of disaster because, while I could believe that things might change and that butterfly wings in eleventh century France might alter the late twentieth century, but the specific changes cited made Absolutely No Sense.
Afalstein. Connecting the Dots - WIP. Crosses Naruto with the DC animated universe. Some chapters are Illustrated. There's more plot to this than I thought there would be when I finished the first chapter or three. At that point, I thought it was just an excuse for a lot of fight scenes that show how cool Batman and Robin are. 25 chapters are posted out of an expected 33. Here on AO3.
Ariel_Sojourner. Back From the Future: Episode VI The Clone Wars - This is a time travel fix-it that has Luke and Vader hurled back in time during the window between Luke and company rescuing Han from Jabba and Luke returning to Dagobah. The how of it is rather handwaved and wasn’t something either character intended. They decide to change everything to make sure that their timeline never happens. The whole thing is pretty fluffy and has a pleasant sense of family and sense of humor. The story very much needs a proofreader to catch things like using ‘dotted’ instead of ‘doted’ or ‘canon’ instead of ‘cannon’ and for omitted words. That wasn’t a deal breaker for me, but I know it is for some people. Here on AO3.
Blackkat. Backslide - Naruto time travel fix-it. Kind of fluffy but definitely not boring. It was just what I needed. Here on AO3. I’ve enjoyed other stories by the same author when I needed something to make me feel good.
Brennan, Marie. Lightning in the Blood - I realized early in this that there had to be a previous book. I finished this one anyway and had no trouble following the story. The shorter length worked, and I didn't feel as if things that needed to be there weren't. Interesting fantasy world.
Case Closed 37-39 - I’m liking this series better now that there’s a bit more arc plot involved. I don’t need that all of the time, but it’s nice to have some.
holdmybeer. Sum of Their Parts - Harry Potter fic, 138000 words in eleven chapters. I really enjoyed this. It’s a Dark Lord Harry Potter story, but it has a plausible set up and actual consequences. After the end of the war, Harry concludes that nothing at all has changed and that the only way for the people he loves to be safe is for him to become a Dark Lord, and he asks Ron and Hermione to be his failsafes in case he goes too far. I believed the character motivation and development, and I enjoyed the prose. Harry does, in fact, become a scary and not at all nice person, but he doesn’t lose sight of his goals. The author knows that this Harry isn’t a good guy, isn’t a hero, and has chosen not to be. Here on AO3.
Jedipati. You Shall Become (Me) - Star Wars divergent AU crackfic. Part of the blurb says “How to accidentally join the Sith without really trying.” This was a bit of silliness right when I needed it. It’s set during the Clone Wars era and starts from the idea that a person becomes a Sith automatically when they kill a Sith. Here on AO3.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 7 - Still enjoying the series. I'm wondering if I'm seeing hints of story arc now.
Pratchett, Terry. The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner - The thing sticking in my head, half an hour after finishing this short story collection, is irritation over the worker ant being male. Stylistically, these reminded me of Joan Aiken but without quite the same darkness.
Prince of Tennis 26 - The library was missing this volume for years. I no longer remember the characters or the teams, but I’m not willing to reread the previous volumes (I’m not sure the library has all of them now even if I wanted to go back).
Quick, Amanda. The Girl Who Knew Too Much - In spite of many references that ought to anchor this story in time, I had a lot of trouble feeling like I was reading something set in California in the 1930s. The story wasn’t unpleasant (or unpredictable). It just didn’t feel even remotely solid. I couldn’t believe some of the heroine’s choices made sense, and I had trouble getting a sense of the hero as anything but Quick’s generic template. I can’t tell how much is the book and how much is me.
Stevenson, D.E. Anna and Her Daughters - This is told first person by one of the daughters, and Anna doesn't get all that much page space. I felt that the non-POV sisters were kind of cardboard, but I could possibly put that down to the narrator not having much view of them otherwise. I liked the book enough to finish it. Everything was very low-key so that even things that should have been hard to read weren't.
The Time Museum - A group of kids from various points in time compete for an internship at the Time Museum. There is, of course, time travel. Aimed middle grade with humor. I want the next one now.
Unshelved: Book Club - Library centric humor. I kept wanting to share various strips and realizing that no one else in the house would get the joke.
Unshelved: Read Responsibly - I think I have now read everything our library has in this series. Maybe ILL?
Wells, Martha. All Systems Red - I out and out loved this. I forget from time to time how readable I find Wells’ books. Murderbot was an enjoyable narrator, and their reasoning and actions made sense. There was humor to leaven the action and suspense. I can see why people say they want more, but I also think that this doesn't require follow up. I'll be thrilled to read more when there is more.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 5-6 - The library was missing volume 5 for a while. I don’t know if they replaced it or if someone returned it or what. Fortunately, the gap between reading the volumes didn’t lead to me forgetting much. I still couldn’t remember the characters’ names, but that’s pretty typical for me. I’m still enjoying the slice of life stuff and mostly skimming over the cooking in order to catch any character bits involved.
Yeats, W.B. The Wild Swans at Coole - These poems were okay. I don't remember much, and I didn't fall in love with the flow of the words, but I finished the book which is rare when it comes to poetry. I'll likely try more Yeats at some point, but I don't expect I'll buy any.
Not finished:
Addison, Katherine. The Goblin Emperor - I got about halfway through this before I had to return it. The library only owns one copy, and someone else wanted it. I’m seriously considering buying it because I enjoyed what I read that much.
Ashley, Kristen. The Deep End - I enjoyed the parts of this that I read, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to read the rest. I had to return it because there was a hold on it, and I don’t know that I’ll check it out again. It’s femdom het BDSM erotic romance and does that well enough for me. Maybe I’ll try some of the author’s other books.
Evins, Karlen. I Didn’t Know That - This is a rather small paperback that gives origins for a very few of the odd phrases to be found in English. I found the format off-putting, and the book really doesn’t source any of its claims. Something like this shouldn’t be a slog, and it was.
Nealon, Tom. Food Fights & Culture Wars - I didn’t really enjoy the prose here enough to keep reading.
Poston, Ashley. Geekerella - I just couldn’t get through this. I wouldn’t say that it’s a bad book, just a not for me book. This is a romance, a Cinderella story centered on cosplay and a science fiction show reboot and a vegan foodtruck. There was a good amount of humor in the bits I read, and the character voices were clear.
Randall, Lisa. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs - Audiobook read by Carrington MacDuffie. I had trouble making myself pay attention to this. The words were clear but utterly flat, and I kept zoning out. I suppose it’s a challenge to make the formation and expansion of the universe dramatic reading material. I got to the end of the second CD, and the dinosaurs hadn’t come into it yet, so I have no idea where that was going.
Sauer, Julia. Fog Magic - I remember seeing this book when I was in elementary school in the 1970s. I’m not sure why I never picked it up (and maybe I did, and it just didn’t make an impression). I didn’t quite connect with this book, mostly because it wasn’t what I wanted right then. It’s very gentle with magical time travel.
Terrorist: Gavrilo Princip, the Assassin Who Ignited WWI - Sadly, trying to read this made my eyes hurt. There was enough that involved white text on a black background that I just couldn’t. I read enough to see that it was tracing the threads of both Princip’s life and that of his victims. It looks like it was probably interesting.
Tremontaine - I only gave this about fifty pages. I kind of suspected that I wouldn’t like it because I never liked Swordspoint or its sequels. I just wanted to give it a chance in case the setting and such appealed more with different writers. Sadly, not so much. Maybe I’d have pushed through if I didn’t have hundreds of books on my lists of things I want to try from the library. Maybe not.
Vande Velde, Vivian. A Well-Timed Enchantment - I thought I was prepared to accept the necessary suspension of disbelief for the premise of this, but I hit the point when the problem was being explained to the heroine, and I just couldn’t. The idea is that the main character accidentally drops her Mickey Mouse watch down a well and through a temporal portal and has to go back in time to retrieve it before Bad Things happen. I ran aground on the predictions of disaster because, while I could believe that things might change and that butterfly wings in eleventh century France might alter the late twentieth century, but the specific changes cited made Absolutely No Sense.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-22 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-22 03:09 am (UTC)I think the links are fixed now. I suspect a smart quotes problem because deleting and replacing the quotation marks helped.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-22 02:22 pm (UTC)HTML so picky.
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Date: 2017-06-22 06:43 am (UTC)And All Systems Red was a lot of fun! (I'm definitely in the camp that wants to see more, with Murderbot coming back to the scientists after adventures of its own.)
no subject
Date: 2017-06-23 12:42 am (UTC)So I'll probably end up buying it at some point. Not just now because finances are tighter than I thought they were (there are lot of Cordelia related medical bills that have just started to surface).
I want to see more of Murderbot. I just feel that, if I don't for some reason, the character isn't left at a bad point.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-28 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-28 09:05 pm (UTC)Of course, it looks like the library no longer even has one copy of the book in paper, so if I want to finish it, I'll need interlibrary loan anyway.
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Date: 2017-06-22 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-23 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-22 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-23 12:44 am (UTC)