(Wednesday) Reads - 21 October 2014

I've let this drop a little, in part because I felt like I was only reading sci-fi: and I'm reading so many things and taking so long to finish them, that my lists were getting monotonous.

But this week I've got two new genres (one of which I don't entirely know how to classify) in my "in the middle of": queer action-adventure/thriller/romance, and something vaguely girlsowny.

The Honor series by Radclyffe
This is not the Honor Harrington series by David Weber.  That one is military sci-fi and although I'm getting close to the point where there's going to be a marriage between three people, I'm not entirely sure that Weber can cope with queerness all that well.  (If I'm wrong, I apologise.)

This is the long (looong) running series starting with Above All, Honor starring Blair Powell, daughter of the US President, and Cameron Roberts, Secret Service agent.  In the last two weeks I've reread books two and three, and purchased and read books four and five and started book six.  I've also got book seven already, and am planning to buy the final book in the series as well as the First Responsders series, which contains a crossover in the third book.

So: my recent reads from this series are

• Honor Bound
• Love and Honor
• Honor Guards
• Honor Reclaimed
• Honor Under Siege - currently reading.

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (Audio, read by Jenny Agutter)
For my trip down to Melbourne, I - not realising that the e-version of Dowager Empress Cixi by Jung Chang was only available as an e-Audio, not as an e-Book, I'll get into this later - borrowed the CD book of I Capture the Castle, mostly because it was read by Jenny Agutter, who I adore.

I've never previously gotten past the first chapter, and since I read A Brief History of Montmaray I've not entirely wanted to go back to it, simply because I adore Montmaray and am a little uncomfortable with just how similar it feels at the beginning to Castle.  But the name "Jenny Agutter" on the cover was enough to get that set of CDs in my hand.

I got through the first three CDs on the drive down.  I will admit that I'm not entirely sure when I'll get to listen to the rest, necessarily, but I do own the book (the film tie-in cover, and given that Henry Cavill is in the film, I'm pretty sure we'll be watching it fairly soon, as M is a massive fan of Cavill.  But I am really enjoying it, far more than I expected, even though The Starlight Barking is a dear and favourite book.  I love the way Smith writes, and I do love a lot of the characters already.

I know I have a few friends for whom this book is a favourite, and I'm looking forward to finishing it and being able to discuss.

A note: this book is not a historical, because it is set in the 1930s and published in 1949.

Sunday Reads - 5 October 2014

I'm still working my way through Kaleidoscope - it's finally on my Kobo, yay! - and I've also been working on Freedom Climbers, and have now finished everything but the Appendices and have marked the book as finished.

The rest of the week has been dystopias and sci-fi.

 On Thursday I finished reading Frozen, book 1 in the "Heart of Dread" series by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnson.  It worked so well, right up until the end, when it was high action, but conceptually a little disappointing.  I adored the drip-feed of world building, so very slow burn, just little bits and pieces that slowly put the world together.  But in all that world building, the drakon just wasn't there.  Sure the voice was there, but the idea seemed to me to come out of nowhere.  And so the last few chapters just didn't work the way I wanted them to.  I wanted to believe the buildup, and I just couldn't.  It was good, but I had such high expectations that had been built up through the book.

I loved Sean Williams' story in Kaleidoscope - "The Legend Trap" - and I was thrilled to find out that it was a short story from a universe that he's written in a LOT.  So I've started the first of Williams' "Twinmaker" series, Jump.  I seriously love the concept of d-mat and what Williams seems to be doing with it - at least in "The Legend Trap", and I assume it will be just as awesome in Jump.

I've also finally begun to read Gemma Malley's The Killables, although it almost broke me in the first few pages with the religious fundamentalist imagery.  This book may kill me.  I'm just warning you.

Sunday Reads: 28 September

I have read so much less than usual this week.

I think this is because the GF is home on school holidays, and so the routine is different.  I did finish The Princeling (post to come), but there were a lot more blog posts and reading-on-the-internet than reading books.

However:

 Freedom Climbers by Bernadette McDonald - After a few tries, I managed to move from the preview on my Kobo app to the full version, and I'm now pretty much half way through.  This is about Polish mountaineers, including Wanda Rutkiewicz and Jerzy Kukucza, and the extra barriers faced by Polish climbers until the fall of the 'Iron Curtain'.  Technically this is a book of history, but I'm counting it as a non-history read for the purposes of this post or I'd really have nothing else to write about.






I've got Gemma Malley's second dystopian trilogy from the library (it starts with The Killables).  It's unrelated to her Declarationverse, and I'm looking forward to it - once I get it out of my bag.

And I really need to move Kaleidoscope onto my Kobo instead of just having it on my computer, because I want to read all the other stories (and to see if anyone has answered my "same sex couples in dystopias" question - it really is frustrating that Veronica Roth is such a conservative Christian and wouldn't even consider such things.)

Sunday reads - 21st September

So this week, I finished The Jewel, read Ally Condie's Matched in less than 24 hours, and began Kaleidoscope.

Matched, by Ally Condie, is the first of a dystopian trilogy. On the back cover, one of the blurbs (from Family Circle) is something along the lines of "For those of you who like romance with your totalitarian government". Which is ... interesting.

I'll probably pick the next one up when it comes through returns at work, but I don't know that I'll seek it out.

As a result of reading this book, I did begin to formulate a theory of reality TV and YA dystopias: I posted  my initial thoughts here earlier this week.

A question I've been pondering this week: why are there no queer couples in these YA dystopias?  Does no one ever Match with another girl or another boy?  And how would you write something like that without it basically happening in one of those pre-existing universes and being fic.  Part of me hopes that question will be answered in the other book I've just started reading...

Kaleidoscope, from Twelfth Planet Press and edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein, is an anthology of YA sci-fi and fantasy with diverse lead characters.  So far I've only read Tansy Rayner Roberts' "Cookie Cutter Superhero", the first story in the collection.  It was so brilliant I had to put down the book and walk away to let it sink in.  Even though the very next story is by Ken Liu, and I've heard amazing things about his work, I couldn't just go straight on to his story after reading Tansy's.  I think this is going to be the book of the year for me.

(Also, "Cookie Cutter Superhero" puts an awesome turn on my abovementioned reality TV theory of dystopias.)

Sunday Reads - 14 September

I know I used to do Wednesday Reads, but this is a bit of a change-up to accommodate the change in direction of the blog, and a bit of a pun, as well.  And with this I'm thinking of Sunday Reed, owner of "Heide", a house (and now gallery) in the Melbourne suburbs with a grand historical art connection.

So: non historicals that I've been reading include:

• The Jewel, by Amy Ewing.  Part of my current attraction to craptacular dystopias seemingly based on contemporary reality TV.  Like Kiera Cass' "The Selection" series, this is part of the "based on The Bachelor" subgenere of dystopia - although this one has definite links to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as well.  Which just makes me think I need to write posts about my first reading of Handmaid's Tale as well as her historical Alias Grace as well.

• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.  This year's Hugo winner for best novel.  The Galactic Suburbia girls were so pleased that this book was nominated, and so was John Scalzi, that I put it on hold the day the Hugo win was announced.  I will definitely be reviewing this on Goodreads once I finish it, and linking it to a Sunday Reads post.