Book Logging
Dec. 31st, 2018 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAndrews, Donna. Lark! The Herald Angels Sing - The latest installment in the Meg Langslow series starts with an abandoned baby at a Nativity play rehearsal. I don't think it's necessarily the place to start the series, but most of the supporting characters don't have story arcs, so I'm not sure that knowing/not knowing prior books matters. The whole series is pretty fluffy.
Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity and the King’s Ransom - Charming as is usual for books in the series. I’m still not at all sure why these books get marketed as mysteries, but I also can’t think of any either genre that would quite work. This time, Lori gets caught on the road by a flood and ends up staying at a haunted inn. She explores the place and meets a lot of interesting people while trying to find out why the inn is called the King’s Ransom. She does some of her usual jumping to conclusions and then finding out she’s wrong.
Gaiman, Neil. Art Matters - I considered listing this as a graphic novel as the illustrations by Chris Riddell are integral and the text isn’t dense. It’s more like a picture book, just one consisting of essays aimed at teenagers and adults. It’s all discussion of things that make creative work hard and easy and worthwhile either way.
Vernon, Ursula. Little Red Rodent Hood - Scott and Cordelia gave me this one for Christmas. I think Scott was a little disappointed by how fast I read it. I pointed out that I loved it and will reread it. There's a reason I'm thrilled about having gotten three fics for the Hamster Princess series this Yuletide (2 in the main collection and 1 in Madness).
Vernon, Ursula. Whiskerella - I decided I needed a treat, so I bought this after our family vacation in August. It was exactly what I wanted. Comfortable and funny and with its own internal logic.
Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol - I need to get myself copies of this whole series because I'd like to reread it without the long gaps between parts. I hit a couple of points in this book that had references to things that happened in the first book, and it took me forever to realize why I couldn't remember those events occurring. At any rate, don't start with this one. It's much more chapter four than it is a stand-alone story. I enjoyed the book as much as I'd expected I would.
Yang, JY. The Descent of Monsters - Reading this felt a lot like looking at a couple of shards of pottery and extrapolating what the whole vessel must have looked like. I don’t think this novella would be even remotely comprehensible without the context of the other two novellas. The world building is still excellent, but I felt like this book was all set up for things that will happen later. There wasn’t anything complete in it, not even to the extent that there were in the previous books. I will keep reading if the author puts out more in the setting, but this one frustrated me.
Started but didn’t finish:
Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn. The Antiquities Hunter - This one fell victim to my poor attention span. It had a waitlist at the library, so I couldn’t renew it. I enjoyed what I read of it. There seemed to be a lot of interesting details in it about archaeology, Mayan ruins, and trying to fight the trade in looted artifacts. I think it’s a thing that other people might enjoy. The protagonist is Gina Miyoko, a mixed race PI.
LeGuin, Ursula K. Cheek by Jowl - If my reaction to a book of essays is a combination of admiration for the prose, interest in the topic, and profound irritation at the assumptions even when I agree with the conclusions, is it worth my time to continue? In this case, I decided against. I was interested in the essay on animal books and children, but I stopped in the middle of it because the underlying assumptions about universals denied my lived experience.
Magaziner, Lauren. Pilfer Academy - I bounced off of this early. The prose was not to my taste. It’s a book about kids at a boarding school for thieves, so I’d hoped I’d enjoy it, but I really didn’t.
Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict - I simply lacked sufficient mental energy to finish this. As I wasn’t sure how long having that return might take, I returned it to the library unfinished. This is a collection of essays that uses examples from Star Wars to make points about the modern military, specifically the US military. The essays I read looked at things like nation building (restoring Endor should be a high priority) and the relationship between civilians and military structures (focusing on the problems of lack of mechanisms for civilian oversight of the Jedi Order with warnings about the current US military) and the question of appropriate levels of force (discussing Tarkin’s decision to use the Death Star against Alderaan). The prefatory material, written by the editor, explained that he realized that he could use Star Wars to spark interest in cadets about otherwise dry topics and to provide common referents when discussing long term strategy while he was serving in South Korea. He specifically mentions being inspired by Randall Munroe’s discussion of getting students enthusiastic about physics by asking them to calculate how much small-f force Yoda needed for lifting Luke’s x-wing out of the swamp. The essays come from multiple authors, so I expect that the whole book is a mixed bag.
Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity and the King’s Ransom - Charming as is usual for books in the series. I’m still not at all sure why these books get marketed as mysteries, but I also can’t think of any either genre that would quite work. This time, Lori gets caught on the road by a flood and ends up staying at a haunted inn. She explores the place and meets a lot of interesting people while trying to find out why the inn is called the King’s Ransom. She does some of her usual jumping to conclusions and then finding out she’s wrong.
Gaiman, Neil. Art Matters - I considered listing this as a graphic novel as the illustrations by Chris Riddell are integral and the text isn’t dense. It’s more like a picture book, just one consisting of essays aimed at teenagers and adults. It’s all discussion of things that make creative work hard and easy and worthwhile either way.
Vernon, Ursula. Little Red Rodent Hood - Scott and Cordelia gave me this one for Christmas. I think Scott was a little disappointed by how fast I read it. I pointed out that I loved it and will reread it. There's a reason I'm thrilled about having gotten three fics for the Hamster Princess series this Yuletide (2 in the main collection and 1 in Madness).
Vernon, Ursula. Whiskerella - I decided I needed a treat, so I bought this after our family vacation in August. It was exactly what I wanted. Comfortable and funny and with its own internal logic.
Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol - I need to get myself copies of this whole series because I'd like to reread it without the long gaps between parts. I hit a couple of points in this book that had references to things that happened in the first book, and it took me forever to realize why I couldn't remember those events occurring. At any rate, don't start with this one. It's much more chapter four than it is a stand-alone story. I enjoyed the book as much as I'd expected I would.
Yang, JY. The Descent of Monsters - Reading this felt a lot like looking at a couple of shards of pottery and extrapolating what the whole vessel must have looked like. I don’t think this novella would be even remotely comprehensible without the context of the other two novellas. The world building is still excellent, but I felt like this book was all set up for things that will happen later. There wasn’t anything complete in it, not even to the extent that there were in the previous books. I will keep reading if the author puts out more in the setting, but this one frustrated me.
Started but didn’t finish:
Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn. The Antiquities Hunter - This one fell victim to my poor attention span. It had a waitlist at the library, so I couldn’t renew it. I enjoyed what I read of it. There seemed to be a lot of interesting details in it about archaeology, Mayan ruins, and trying to fight the trade in looted artifacts. I think it’s a thing that other people might enjoy. The protagonist is Gina Miyoko, a mixed race PI.
LeGuin, Ursula K. Cheek by Jowl - If my reaction to a book of essays is a combination of admiration for the prose, interest in the topic, and profound irritation at the assumptions even when I agree with the conclusions, is it worth my time to continue? In this case, I decided against. I was interested in the essay on animal books and children, but I stopped in the middle of it because the underlying assumptions about universals denied my lived experience.
Magaziner, Lauren. Pilfer Academy - I bounced off of this early. The prose was not to my taste. It’s a book about kids at a boarding school for thieves, so I’d hoped I’d enjoy it, but I really didn’t.
Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict - I simply lacked sufficient mental energy to finish this. As I wasn’t sure how long having that return might take, I returned it to the library unfinished. This is a collection of essays that uses examples from Star Wars to make points about the modern military, specifically the US military. The essays I read looked at things like nation building (restoring Endor should be a high priority) and the relationship between civilians and military structures (focusing on the problems of lack of mechanisms for civilian oversight of the Jedi Order with warnings about the current US military) and the question of appropriate levels of force (discussing Tarkin’s decision to use the Death Star against Alderaan). The prefatory material, written by the editor, explained that he realized that he could use Star Wars to spark interest in cadets about otherwise dry topics and to provide common referents when discussing long term strategy while he was serving in South Korea. He specifically mentions being inspired by Randall Munroe’s discussion of getting students enthusiastic about physics by asking them to calculate how much small-f force Yoda needed for lifting Luke’s x-wing out of the swamp. The essays come from multiple authors, so I expect that the whole book is a mixed bag.
