Entries tagged with books [Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff]

In chronological order, as recorded in Librarything, the 63 novels and graphic novels I read in 2017. Favourites were Walter Jon Williams' Investments, a bridge between the two Praxis trilogies, both novels in Paul McAuley's near- and far-future Jackaroo series, and Malka Older's political post-cyberpunk Infomocracy.

On to 2018!

About A Dragon	Aiken, G. A.
The Dragon Who Loved Me	Aiken, G. A.
Impulse	Bara, Dave
Linesman	Dunstall, S. K.
Karen Memory	Bear, Elizabeth
Dark Run	Brooks, Mike
Chaos Choreography	McGuire, Seanan
StarBridge	Crispin, A. C.
Only Superhuman	Bennett, Christopher L.
Cibola Burn	Corey, James S. A.
A Closed and Common Orbit	Chambers, Becky
Fields of Fire	Kloos, Marko
The Collapsing Empire	Scalzi, John
Lucky Penny	Hirsh, Ananth	Ota, Yuko
Lovers Quarrel	Busiek, Kurt	Anderson, Brent
Investments	Williams, Walter Jon
Something Coming Through	McAuley, Paul
Into Everywhere	McAuley, Paul
Dark Mind	Douglas, Ian
The Getaway God: A Sandman Slim Novel	Kadrey, Richard
Date Me, Baby, One More Time	Rowe, Stephanie
Kris Longknife:Defiant	Shepherd, Mike
Bookburners	Gladstone, Max
Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies	Adams, John Joseph
A Tyranny of Queens	Meadows, Foz
Luna: Wolf Moon: A Novel	McDonald, Ian
Rise: A Newsflesh Collection	Grant, Mira
Arabella of Mars	Levine, David D.
Injection Burn	Hough, Jason M.
Escape Velocity	Hough, Jason M.
Kris Longknife: Resolute	Shepherd, Mike
The Adventures of Superhero Girl	Hicks, Faith Erin
Aquablue: The Blue Planet	Cailleteau, Thierry	Vatine, Olivier
Kris Longknife: Audacious	Shepherd, Mike
Kris Longknife: Intrepid	Shepherd, Mike
Kris Longknife: Undaunted	Shepherd, Mike
Land of Mist and Snow	Doyle, Debra
The Black Ice	Connelly, Michael
Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition, Vol. 1	Rucka, Greg	Fernandez, Leandro\|Rolston, Steve\|Hurtt, Brian
Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition, Vol. 2	Rucka, Greg	Alexander, Jason\|McNeil, Carla Speed\|Hawthorne, Mike
Sovereign	Sansom, C. J.
Die Like an Eagle	Andrews, Donna
The Fifth Season	Jemisin, N. K.
Revenger	Reynolds, Alastair
Lucifer Vol. 1: Devil in the Gateway	Carey, Mike
Lucifer Vol. 2: Children and Monsters	Carey, Mike
Giant Days, Vol. 3	Allison, John
Steal the Sky	Keefe, Megan E.
Who Wants to be The Prince of Darkness?	Boatman, Michael
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant	Cliff, Tony
The Uploaded	Steinmetz, Ferrett
Skyfarer	Brassey, Joseph
Infomocracy: A Novel	Older, Malka
The High Ground	Snodgrass, Melinda
The Ark	Tomlinson, Patrick S.
Zeroes	Wendig, Chuck
The Wrong Stars	Pratt, Tim
In Evil Times	Snodgrass, Melinda
The Medusa Chronicles	Baxter, Stephen
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen	Bujold, Lois McMaster
Shattered Warrior	Shinn, Sharon	Ostertag, Molly Knox
Raising Caine	Gannon, Charles E
Hunger Makes the Wolf	Wells, Alex

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As a left-of-centre voting European I'm pretty much the Sad/Rabid Puppy definition of a SJW, a definition that owes more to the US Culture Wars than anything else. And yet, looking at the pile of books I brought back from a recent trip to the US, it's clear that my mix of Nutty Nuggets and other cereals (for a balanced diet) make my reading habits a lot closer to the Puppy ideal than they think...

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that the Puppy position is pushing people away from their view of the Hugos. Most of us readers read widely, and read for different reasons. I read some books to be challenged, some to be entertained, some because friends recommend them, some because I liked a review. My recent reads are easy enough to find, and they cover a wide selection of the genre, from milSF to fantasy to humour to crime to, well, the uncategorisable.

You can see a selection of my recent purchases below. There's a lot that there that I'll enjoy, and a lot that I wouldn't consider to be awards quality. Some will be books for the bath, some will be my Hugo voting reading, some will be because it's the latest instalment in a saga I enjoy, and some because, well, just because. And yes, some because the cover caught my attention as I walked through a bookstore

Because I don't read because some shadowy cabal makes me read. I read because I love reading. And dear Puppies, you're not making reading much fun at the moment.

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...bundled up a selection of previously published short SF and fantasy of mine (much of which began as flash fiction on here), and turned them into a Kindle book. NaNoPubMo?

Anyway, here it is Hummingbird Futures: Stories of Magic and Machines. The three stories are the first of my Silicon Valley Magic urban fantasies, and two of my West Country Singularity stories.

You'll find it in the Amazon US store and UK store.

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Via

nwhyte and others, from the recent Locus survey. Bold for read, normal for unread and italic for unfinished.

( click to expand )

Mood::

busy

location: Putney, London

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From our LibraryThing and my one-liner Twitter reviews...

Mills, K.E.	Witches Incorporated K. E. Mills pseudo-Edwardian magical spy capers continue with colliding mysteries in an airship factory.	2009
Crowther, Pete	Postscripts Peter Crowther's anthology series starts off with a mixed bag of the PS publishing usual suspects.	2005
Strahan, Jonathan	Engineering Infinity Jonathan Strahan's collection of modern hard SF hits more than it misses. Stross and Barnes stand out.	2010
Lovegrove, James	The Hope James Lovegrove's first novel wraps dark parable in its horrific eternal ship on an infinite ocean. Powerful.	2002
Harris, Charlaine	Grave Secret Charlaine Harris' mystery finally reveals what happened to Harper's lost sister. Dark family secrets will out.	2010
Boyett, Steven R.	Elegy Beach Steven Boyett's tale of a post-apocalyptic magical California adds rave culture to Earth Abides. Excellent stuff!	2009
Ishida, Tatsuya	Sinfest Volume 1 Tatsuya Ishida's early webcomics collected. Irreverent goodness with a moral core.	2009
Paul, Graham Sharp	The Battle for Commitment Planet Graham Sharp Paul's milsf sets Helfort as guerilla as he tries to rescue his girl. Book 4.	2010
Lovegrove, James	The Age of Odin James Lovegrove delivers Life on Mars on Asgard with squadies and a Bob Calvert soundtrack. Awesome!	2010
Hoyt, Sarah A.	Darkship Thieves Sarah Hoyt's Heinlein-lite SF romance fails to ignite. Mildly competent SF at best, sending in the clones.	2010
Kadrey, Richard	Sandman Slim Richard Kadrey delivers post-Gaiman urban fantasy noir. Punching and snark in LA with the ultimate ex-con.	2010
Briggs, Patricia	Bone Crossed Patricia Briggs pits Mercy Thompson against a renegade vampire in Spokane. A well-written urban fantasy.	2010

Also read (on my phone), thanks to the CD-ROM archive at Fifth Imperium, a couple of Baen ebooks, Into The Looking Glass and Vorpal Blade. By John Ringo and Travis Taylor, they turned out to be rather fun milsf planetary romances. Still, I'm not sure if I'd have read them any other way...

location: Putney, London

Mood::

busy

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Re-reading John Brunner's seminal The Shockwave Rider it occurred to me how much the novel owed the ur-internet of PLATO. The whole veephone interface is straight out of TUTOR, along with the programming model that Nick uses to build his worms - along with the privilege-escalating user ID model behind the novel's ID codes.

That's another tick in the box for one of my favourite novels, a book that seems to orbit the same countercultural gyre that I find myself looping in and out of...

Besides the obvious influence of Toffler's Future Shock so far I've noted that Precipice CA, the home of the Samaritans-like organisation Hearing Aid, is inspired by both the Portola Institute/Point Foundation and the Claremont Colleges (which seem to have lent their name to the town's predecessor organisation Claes College), while the novel's background Disasterville USA monographs seem to come out of CoEvolution Quarterly and the Whole Earth Catalogs.

An always fascinating novel, which unveils new facets on each re-read.

location: Putney, London

Mood::

busy

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Keith Brooke's Lord of Stone is hard to find, but well worth it when you finally get hold of a copy. It's a fantasy that lives in that corner of the fantasy graph rarely colonised, and then only by the bravest writers. The results, like Colin Greenland's The Hour of the Thin Oxand Geoff Ryman's The Unconquered Country, are often wonderful allegorical works, that delve deep into the heart of darkness.

That's the road Brooke takes, giving us a novel that's dark and angry, a tale of civil war, of revolution of madness, and of the gods we make. His Trace is a place where revolution and war are tearing the world apart, lost in the fog of conflict - where millions die and where terror lurks. A foreigner, Bligh, finds himself driven to sign up in an International Brigade, and descends into his own personal hell.

There's an earlier version of the book online.

location: Putney, London

Mood::

busy

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As catalogued on LibraryThing:

Cowl by Neal Asher (link)

The Bogie Man by John Wagner (link)

The Moomins And The Great Flood by Tove Jansson (link)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore (link)

Plague War by Jeff Carlson (link)

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (link)

Debatable Space by Philip Palmer (link)

Red Chrysanthemum: A Thriller by Laura Joh Rowland (link)

Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World by Bryan Lee O'Malley (link)

Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley (link)

Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin (link)

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen (link)

The Third Claw of God by Adam-troy Castro (link)

Dragonfrigate Wizard Halcyon Blithe by James M. Ward (link)

Scott Pilgrim, Vol 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe by Bryan Lee O'Malley (link)

Scott Pilgrim, Vol 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan Lee O'Malley (link)

Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt (link)

The Assassin's Touch by Laura Joh Rowland (link)

The Quiet War by Paul J. McAuley (link)

Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie (link)

Fish Out of Water by MaryJanice Davidson (link)

Trick or Treat by Kerry Greenwood (link)

Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell (link)

The Third Lynx by Timothy Zahn (link)

Wyrmhole by Jay Caselberg (link)

Flash by L. E. Modesitt Jr. (link)

The Ship Avenged by S.M. Stirling (link)

War Surf by M. M. Buckner (link)

Mister Monday by Garth Nix (link)

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher (link)

An Accidental Goddess by Linnea Sinclair (link)

Wren's Quest by Sherwood Smith (link)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (link)

People of Darkness by Tony Hillerman (link)

34 in total in this batch. That's 52 for the year so far.

6 of the books were graphic novels, 4 were YA, 5 were thrillers, 5 were fantasy, 1 was literary fiction, 13 were SF.

Stand outs from this batch:

Hoot, Carl Hiassen writing YA with the same verve and passion as his adult thrillers. The Third Claw of God, Adam-troy Castro doing interesting things with the SF mystery, in a locked space-elevator. Blood Engines, T.A. Pratt offering a decidedly noir take on the modern urban fantasy (and a lovely approach to San Francisco). The Quiet War, Paul McAuley finally filling in the promise of his Quiet War short fiction with a novel full of metaphor and gravitas. Trick or Treat, Kerry Greenwood's baker sleuth deals with rivalry in the world of Melbourne bread and a mystery left over from a forgotten piece of the Holocaust. The Moomins and the Great Flood, Tove Jansson's first Moomin tale, a novella of hope written first on the eve, and then in the aftermath, of war.

(The recent redesign of LibraryThing has added a little too much JavaScript to make working with their table HTML easy, so I'm now using the mobile view as my source for these posts.)

location: Putney, London

Mood::

busy

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Who needs Kindle when you have Book?

"That's because Book is the new wireless platform that never needs to be recharged. It's got an an intuitive touched-based interface we're very proud of. Book works with the shelves you have at home."

Penny Arcade hits it out of the stadium again.

In other Book related news I seem to have scored an early ARC of The Burning Skies. As Mirrored Heavens was one of my favourite books of last year, I'm looking forward to reading it...

location: San Jose, California

Mood::

amused

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The total so far since the start of January is a round 18 novels read. A few were ebooks on the iPhone, and many of the rest were lugged around the south west US on our Arizona/Utah/Nevada/California trek (apart from the few we picked up in BookBuyers!).

	Pohl, Frederik	Starburst
	White, James	Ambulance Ship
	Sterling, Bruce	Visionary in Residence: Stories
	Carlson, Jeff	Plague Year
	Foster, Alan Dean	The Candle of Distant Earth
	Harrison, Kim	Where Demons Dare
	Harrison, Kim	For a Few Demons More
	Wilson, Robert Charles	Axis
	Zakour, John	The Flaxen Femme Fatale
	Sheffield, Charles	The Web Between The Worlds
	Barlowe, Wayne	God's Demon
	McAuley, Paul J.	Cowboy Angels
	Williams, Sean	Earth Ascendant
	Weber, David	Heirs of Empire
	Weber, David	The Armageddon Inheritance
	Weber, David	Mutineer's Moon
	Cooper, Brenda	The Silver Ship and the Sea
	Smith, Sherwood	The Fox