Book Logging
Oct. 9th, 2014 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCastle, Jayne. Hot Zone - This was a popcorn book. Jayne Ann Krentz in all her pseudonyms tends to write books that I can just zip through. There aren't generally any surprises. I do find myself wishing a bit, with the Castle books, that there were stories that weren't romance centered-- I'm curious about the exploration of the catacombs that the aliens left behind and about what people are learning about the world where they live. Castle keeps putting in spectacular new discoveries, but the implications of them never get fully played out.
Daisy Kutter: The Last Train - The titular character is a gunslinger in the old west, an old west with lots of robots. At the start of the book, she's retired and trying to make a go of running a store when someone comes in wanting to hire her to rob a train. She refuses, but of course, circumstances change and she takes the job. There wouldn't be much to the book if she didn't.
Knights of the Lunch Table: The Dodgeball Chronicles - Artie King (from Cornwall) discovers that he can open the mysterious and previously impossible to open locker at his new school. The locker gives him things from time to time. Artie makes friends and enemies. Most of the character names are drawn from Authurian stories, but the kids are eleven or twelve, so I don't expect the parallels to go really far in future volumes (particularly as this is humorous). This one was fun and light reading.
Korgi 2 - This is another complete story with hints of bigger, nastier things to come. In this one, something is stealing the Mollies' wings, and Ivy and Sprout set out to find out what.
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. Princesses Behaving Badly - This book consists of short portraits of various princesses and queens throughout history. Each princess gets a few pages to cover her story, and few of them get happy endings. McRobbie's style is engaging, and I found the various princesses interesting. I'd have liked to see more who weren't European, though. There were a few, particularly in the early part of the book, but they were outnumbered by the Europeans.
Owly: Just a Little Blue - Like the first one I read, this one is cute and almost wordless. It was perfect to read right before bed when my brain was too tired to handle The Copernicus Complex.
Scharf, Caleb A. The Copernicus Complex - I'm not sure how much of this I really retained. The scale of billions of years is hard for me to grasp, and I'm not sure that the author ever really answered his central question which was, as far as I understood it, how unique we, as living, thinking beings, are in the universe. He presented arguments in both directions. The title comes from his belief that Copernicus postulated us as incredibly average and not unusual at in the wider universe. The author continues by explaining that our solar system, in terms of our sun's type and the configuration of planets, is atypical. He further states that that doesn't tell us anything about how common life, even sentient life, may be because there are, at least in theory, multiple ways in which a planet could harbor life.
Started but not finished:
AnubisAnkh. Pride of Time - I still want to finish this. It's just that I don't have the wherewithal to dedicate the necessary time to doing it. It's a Harry Potter time travel fic that has fifth year Hermione accidentally sent back to when Harry's parents were at Hogwarts. She has no way to get back to her own time except the long way, and she sets about making a life for herself without giving away what she knows about the future. In the two hundred pages (out of 2000) I read, the changes to the timeline are relatively minor and mostly center on Hermione forming friendships with other characters, most notably Severus Snape. I think Hermione is assuming that she can't change anything, that time is set. I don't know that that's true. So far, the story has covered about two years. I'm assuming, given the length, that it will cover many years.
Arruda, Suzanne. Mark of the Lion - GoodReads recommended this to me, but I'm not comfortable with Colonial era (just post-WWI) Africa. Colonial era anything either depresses me or enrages me. I can't have fun with it. Once upon a time, I could but not now.
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites - This graphic novel is a series of short stories about a bunch of dogs (and one cat). It went too far into horror territory for my taste, so I gave up on it. Too much gore. In the four stories I read, there was a ghost, witches, zombies, and a werewolf.
Hartman, Rachel. Seraphina - I barely started this. I'd renew it and keep going, but there's a waitlist, so I can't. The few pages I read intrigued me, so I'll put it back on my wishlist and try it some other time.
Howard, Philip K. The Rule of Nobody - Howard has some valid points, but I don't entirely agree with him on what's wrong and what needs fixing. The constitutional amendments he proposed at the end of the book (I looked at the end. I couldn't face going through the whole thing) intrigue me, but I'm afraid of what his policies would do. It's all very well and good to advocate for individual discretion, but abuses of power are real and incredibly common even under our current system. I'm not sure that Howard's proposals take into account things like racism and sexism and poverty.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History - I was looking forward to this collection of short stories, but I couldn't get myself to pick it up for the longest time. When I did, I discovered that the first few stories left me feeling down. They weren't badly written or anything, quite the opposite. I feel like I should push through and read the rest anyway because what this anthology is doing is extremely important and deserves a wide audience, but there's a waitlist at the library, and I also feel like I should pass the book on to someone who'll appreciate it properly.
The Professor's Daughter - My suspension of disbelief feel apart on this one. It wasn't the central premise of having a mummy up and walking around and holding conversations (and having a romance) that did it. It was the fact that nobody seemed interested in asking the mummy questions about his past. I'd expect scholars to be all over him. I can't see them passing up the opportunity to learn everything he knew.
Daisy Kutter: The Last Train - The titular character is a gunslinger in the old west, an old west with lots of robots. At the start of the book, she's retired and trying to make a go of running a store when someone comes in wanting to hire her to rob a train. She refuses, but of course, circumstances change and she takes the job. There wouldn't be much to the book if she didn't.
Knights of the Lunch Table: The Dodgeball Chronicles - Artie King (from Cornwall) discovers that he can open the mysterious and previously impossible to open locker at his new school. The locker gives him things from time to time. Artie makes friends and enemies. Most of the character names are drawn from Authurian stories, but the kids are eleven or twelve, so I don't expect the parallels to go really far in future volumes (particularly as this is humorous). This one was fun and light reading.
Korgi 2 - This is another complete story with hints of bigger, nastier things to come. In this one, something is stealing the Mollies' wings, and Ivy and Sprout set out to find out what.
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. Princesses Behaving Badly - This book consists of short portraits of various princesses and queens throughout history. Each princess gets a few pages to cover her story, and few of them get happy endings. McRobbie's style is engaging, and I found the various princesses interesting. I'd have liked to see more who weren't European, though. There were a few, particularly in the early part of the book, but they were outnumbered by the Europeans.
Owly: Just a Little Blue - Like the first one I read, this one is cute and almost wordless. It was perfect to read right before bed when my brain was too tired to handle The Copernicus Complex.
Scharf, Caleb A. The Copernicus Complex - I'm not sure how much of this I really retained. The scale of billions of years is hard for me to grasp, and I'm not sure that the author ever really answered his central question which was, as far as I understood it, how unique we, as living, thinking beings, are in the universe. He presented arguments in both directions. The title comes from his belief that Copernicus postulated us as incredibly average and not unusual at in the wider universe. The author continues by explaining that our solar system, in terms of our sun's type and the configuration of planets, is atypical. He further states that that doesn't tell us anything about how common life, even sentient life, may be because there are, at least in theory, multiple ways in which a planet could harbor life.
Started but not finished:
AnubisAnkh. Pride of Time - I still want to finish this. It's just that I don't have the wherewithal to dedicate the necessary time to doing it. It's a Harry Potter time travel fic that has fifth year Hermione accidentally sent back to when Harry's parents were at Hogwarts. She has no way to get back to her own time except the long way, and she sets about making a life for herself without giving away what she knows about the future. In the two hundred pages (out of 2000) I read, the changes to the timeline are relatively minor and mostly center on Hermione forming friendships with other characters, most notably Severus Snape. I think Hermione is assuming that she can't change anything, that time is set. I don't know that that's true. So far, the story has covered about two years. I'm assuming, given the length, that it will cover many years.
Arruda, Suzanne. Mark of the Lion - GoodReads recommended this to me, but I'm not comfortable with Colonial era (just post-WWI) Africa. Colonial era anything either depresses me or enrages me. I can't have fun with it. Once upon a time, I could but not now.
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites - This graphic novel is a series of short stories about a bunch of dogs (and one cat). It went too far into horror territory for my taste, so I gave up on it. Too much gore. In the four stories I read, there was a ghost, witches, zombies, and a werewolf.
Hartman, Rachel. Seraphina - I barely started this. I'd renew it and keep going, but there's a waitlist, so I can't. The few pages I read intrigued me, so I'll put it back on my wishlist and try it some other time.
Howard, Philip K. The Rule of Nobody - Howard has some valid points, but I don't entirely agree with him on what's wrong and what needs fixing. The constitutional amendments he proposed at the end of the book (I looked at the end. I couldn't face going through the whole thing) intrigue me, but I'm afraid of what his policies would do. It's all very well and good to advocate for individual discretion, but abuses of power are real and incredibly common even under our current system. I'm not sure that Howard's proposals take into account things like racism and sexism and poverty.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History - I was looking forward to this collection of short stories, but I couldn't get myself to pick it up for the longest time. When I did, I discovered that the first few stories left me feeling down. They weren't badly written or anything, quite the opposite. I feel like I should push through and read the rest anyway because what this anthology is doing is extremely important and deserves a wide audience, but there's a waitlist at the library, and I also feel like I should pass the book on to someone who'll appreciate it properly.
The Professor's Daughter - My suspension of disbelief feel apart on this one. It wasn't the central premise of having a mummy up and walking around and holding conversations (and having a romance) that did it. It was the fact that nobody seemed interested in asking the mummy questions about his past. I'd expect scholars to be all over him. I can't see them passing up the opportunity to learn everything he knew.
