Steve's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 17 Sep 2024 05:49:03 -0700 60 Steve's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)]]> 15810910
Captain Marcus d’Ivoire, commander of one of the Vordanai empire’s colonial garrisons, was resigned to serving out his days in a sleepy, remote outpost. But that was before a rebellion upended his life. And once the powder smoke settled, he was left in charge of a demoralized force clinging tenuously to a small fortress at the edge of the desert.

To flee from her past, Winter Ihernglass masqueraded as a man and enlisted as a ranker in the Vordanai Colonials, hoping only to avoid notice. But when chance sees her promoted to command, she must win the hearts of her men and lead them into battle against impossible odds.

The fates of both these soldiers and all the men they lead depend on the newly arrived Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich, who has been sent by the ailing king to restore order. His military genius seems to know no bounds, and under his command, Marcus and Winter can feel the tide turning. But their allegiance will be tested as they begin to suspect that the enigmatic Janus’s ambitions extend beyond the battlefield and into the realm of the supernatural—a realm with the power to ignite a meteoric rise, reshape the known world, and change the lives of everyone in its path.]]> 513 Django Wexler 0451465105 Steve 0 to-read 4.03 2013 The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)
author: Django Wexler
name: Steve
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Steve 4
This book is a nice reminder of how hard it was to get around even in the relatively recent past, and a less nice reminder that Trump's explicit racism used to be a lot less controversial than it is today.]]> 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Steve
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/05
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:
If you've never read this book, at least one of the things that you think you know about it is not actually true.

This book is a nice reminder of how hard it was to get around even in the relatively recent past, and a less nice reminder that Trump's explicit racism used to be a lot less controversial than it is today.
]]> <![CDATA[The Metamorphosis and Other Stories]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. �The Judgment,� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and �The Stoker,� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with �The Metamorphosis,� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are �In the Penal Colony,� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and �A Hunger Artist,� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]> 224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 Steve 0 to-read-someday 4.08 1915 The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: Steve
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read-someday
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)]]> 55401
Set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic, Deadhouse Gates is a novel of war, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Eirkson as a storyteller of breathtaking skill, imagination and originality--a new master of epic fantasy.]]> 604 Steven Erikson 0765310023 Steve 4
At this point, I'm not sure I do either :)

In any case, Erikson makes what I would consider a very brave choice right at the start of this book (and several more throughout, though they'd be spoiler-y). This book takes place entirely on a continent we only hear about in the first book. There are only bout 6 recurring characters from the first book, which sounds like a lot, but Erikson is fairly Dickensian in his character count, so it's really not. Consider that he also left all (ok, most of) those other characters from the first book in a pretty precarious spot on the other continent, and he drops minor hints as to their situation at a few spots, and you see part of why I think this was a brave choice. Spending several hundred pages getting us attached to characters, only to ditch most of them and bring in a whole new lot in the second book... pretty brave.

Fortunately, the characters introduced in this volume are interesting. I could do one of those lists where I describe a few, but I think I'd rather just profile one in a bit of detail:

Iskaral Pust. Iskaral Pust is a high priest of Shadow, worshipping the God Shadowthrone (who as you might suspect, is a fairly devious god). Several of the characters end up stopping at his temple for shelter during a sandstorm, seemingly at random. Iskaral Pust is a strange guy. He randomly breaks out into dance. He sends two characters on a quest to find his broom (which he lost somewhere in his own temple). Most endearingly, Iskaral Pust has a habit of saying the quiet part loud. You know how Gollum talks to himself a lot? Be he does it internally or quietly to the side? Iskaral Pust does that loudly, and directly at his audience, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are very aware of it. Here's an example:

Icarium: "Why not give them an answer Iskaral Pust? Put them at ease."
Pust: "Put them at ease? What value that? I must think. At ease. Relaxed. Unmindful of restraint. Careless. Yes, of course! Excellent idea!"
Pust: "Everything's fine, my friends, be calm. [here spoilery stuff removed:] ...gives cause for secret concern--No, better keep that thought unspoken! Cultured conversation has been rediscovered and used with guile and grace. Look upon them Iskaral Pust, they are won over one and all."

Well, I'm not sure if they were Iskaral Pust, but I sure was.]]> 4.27 2000 Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)
author: Steven Erikson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/09
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves:
review:
For some reason, the second _______ in a series (where the blank can be any form of media you want to choose), seems to always be somehow... special. I'm not sure I can describe how exactly,without going into spoilers for a bunch of unrelated series (not to mention the specialness manifests itself differently each time), but think back to some of your favorites, and see if you can see what I mean.

At this point, I'm not sure I do either :)

In any case, Erikson makes what I would consider a very brave choice right at the start of this book (and several more throughout, though they'd be spoiler-y). This book takes place entirely on a continent we only hear about in the first book. There are only bout 6 recurring characters from the first book, which sounds like a lot, but Erikson is fairly Dickensian in his character count, so it's really not. Consider that he also left all (ok, most of) those other characters from the first book in a pretty precarious spot on the other continent, and he drops minor hints as to their situation at a few spots, and you see part of why I think this was a brave choice. Spending several hundred pages getting us attached to characters, only to ditch most of them and bring in a whole new lot in the second book... pretty brave.

Fortunately, the characters introduced in this volume are interesting. I could do one of those lists where I describe a few, but I think I'd rather just profile one in a bit of detail:

Iskaral Pust. Iskaral Pust is a high priest of Shadow, worshipping the God Shadowthrone (who as you might suspect, is a fairly devious god). Several of the characters end up stopping at his temple for shelter during a sandstorm, seemingly at random. Iskaral Pust is a strange guy. He randomly breaks out into dance. He sends two characters on a quest to find his broom (which he lost somewhere in his own temple). Most endearingly, Iskaral Pust has a habit of saying the quiet part loud. You know how Gollum talks to himself a lot? Be he does it internally or quietly to the side? Iskaral Pust does that loudly, and directly at his audience, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are very aware of it. Here's an example:

Icarium: "Why not give them an answer Iskaral Pust? Put them at ease."
Pust: "Put them at ease? What value that? I must think. At ease. Relaxed. Unmindful of restraint. Careless. Yes, of course! Excellent idea!"
Pust: "Everything's fine, my friends, be calm. [here spoilery stuff removed:] ...gives cause for secret concern--No, better keep that thought unspoken! Cultured conversation has been rediscovered and used with guile and grace. Look upon them Iskaral Pust, they are won over one and all."

Well, I'm not sure if they were Iskaral Pust, but I sure was.
]]> A Christmas Story 5319 A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox. The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid�? The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.]]> 144 Jean Shepherd 0767916220 Steve 4 4.04 1983 A Christmas Story
author: Jean Shepherd
name: Steve
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/07/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Romance of the Three Kingdoms (2 Volumes Set)]]> 158772 1261 Luo Guanzhong 0893469262 Steve 5 4.62 1522 Romance of the Three Kingdoms (2 Volumes Set)
author: Luo Guanzhong
name: Steve
average rating: 4.62
book published: 1522
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 88 Names 44148558 The critically acclaimed author of Lovecraft Country returns with a thrilling and immersive virtual reality epic—part cyberthriller, part twisted romantic comedy—that transports you to a world where identity is fluid and nothing can be taken at face value.

John Chu is a “sherpa”—a paid guide to online role-playing games like the popular Call to Wizardry. For a fee, he and his crew will provide you with a top-flight character equipped with the best weapons and armor, and take you dragon-slaying in the Realms of Asgarth, hunting rogue starships in the Alpha Sector, or battling hordes of undead in the zombie apocalypse.

Chu’s new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy, famous person� with powerful enemies, and he’s offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual-reality gaming. For Chu, this is a dream assignment, but as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, whose interest in VR gaming has more to do with power than entertainment. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, Chu also has to worry about “Ms. Pang,� who may or may not be an agent of the People’s Republic of China, and his angry ex-girlfriend, Darla Jean Covington, who isn’t the type to let an international intrigue get in the way of her own plans for revenge.

What begins as a whirlwind online adventure soon spills over into the real world. Now Chu must use every trick and resource at his disposal to stay one step ahead—because in real life, there is no reset button.

]]> 320 Matt Ruff 0062854690 Steve 0 to-read 3.62 2020 88 Names
author: Matt Ruff
name: Steve
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Traitor's Blade (Greatcoats, #1)]]> 20887238
Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission.

But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…]]> 325 Sebastien de Castell Steve 0 to-read 4.02 2014 Traitor's Blade (Greatcoats, #1)
author: Sebastien de Castell
name: Steve
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)]]> 30841984
Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.

It's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld.]]> 502 Nicholas Eames 0316362476 Steve 0 to-read 4.26 2017 Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)
author: Nicholas Eames
name: Steve
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined]]> 13543093 New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.]]> 806 Steven Pinker 0143122010 Steve 0 to-read 4.12 2010 The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
author: Steven Pinker
name: Steve
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Future of Another Timeline]]> 43263807 From Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, comes a story of time travel, murder, and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love.

1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too.

2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost.

Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline--a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person’s actions to echo throughout the timeline?]]> 272 Annalee Newitz 0765392127 Steve 0 to-read 3.76 2019 The Future of Another Timeline
author: Annalee Newitz
name: Steve
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Magic for Liars 34594037 New York Times bestselling author

Sharp, mainstream fantasy meets compelling thrills of investigative noir in this fantasy debut by rising star Sarah Gailey.

Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magic. She is perfectly happy with her life life—she has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It's a great life and she doesn't wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha.

But when Ivy is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of a faculty member at Tabitha’s private academy, the stalwart detective starts to lose herself in the case, the life she could have had, and the answer to the mystery that seems just out of her reach.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 336 Sarah Gailey 1250174600 Steve 0 to-read 3.63 2019 Magic for Liars
author: Sarah Gailey
name: Steve
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lent 41554680 From Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning Jo Walton comes Lent, a magical re-imagining of the man who remade fifteenth-century Florence—in all its astonishing strangeness

Young Girolamo’s life is a series of miracles.

It’s a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It’s a miracle that he’s friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It’s a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,� the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It’s a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It’s a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It’s a miracle that, despite the Pope’s determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he’s still on the loose� and, now, running Florence in all but name.

That’s only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who—or what—he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.]]> 382 Jo Walton 0765379066 Steve 0 to-read 3.97 2019 Lent
author: Jo Walton
name: Steve
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/05/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1) 28954189 Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art� of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

An alternate cover edition of ISBN: 9781442472426]]> 435 Neal Shusterman Steve 0 to-read 4.32 2016 Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Steve
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night; Volume 1 of 4]]> 110719 656 Anonymous 0415045398 Steve 0 3.92 The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night; Volume 1 of 4
author: Anonymous
name: Steve
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/03/01
shelves: stopped-reading-part-way-through
review:

]]> The Wall 14971272 The Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a too successful military experiment, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival, but self-renewal. The Wall is at once a simple and moving talk � of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one’s name � and a disturbing meditation on 20th century history.
]]> 244 Marlen Haushofer 1573449067 Steve 0 to-read 4.15 1963 The Wall
author: Marlen Haushofer
name: Steve
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)]]> 37173847
But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.]]> 501 Robert Jackson Bennett 1524760374 Steve 0 to-read 4.16 2018 Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Steve
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Prey of Gods 30129154 From aĚýnew voice in the tradition of Lauren Beukes, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor comes The Prey of Gods,Ěýa fantastic, boundary-challenging tale, set in a South African locale both familiar and yet utterly new, which braids elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark humor.

In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes—the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present

A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country . . .

An emerging AI uprising . . .

And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat (but mostly blood) of every human she encounters.

It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about.

Fun and fantastic, Nicky Drayden takes her brilliance as a short story writer and weaves together an elaborate tale that will capture your heart . . . even as one particular demigoddess threatens to rip it out.]]> 400 Nicky Drayden 0062493043 Steve 0 3.76 2017 The Prey of Gods
author: Nicky Drayden
name: Steve
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/09/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding]]> 17258245 Roleplaying games and fantasy fiction are filled with rich and fascinating worlds: the Forgotten Realms, Glorantha, Narnia, R'lyeh, Middle-Earth, Barsoom, and so many more. It took startling leaps of imagination as well as careful thought and planning to create places like these: places that readers and players want to come back to again and again.
Now, eleven of adventure gaming's top designers come together to share their insights into building worlds that gamers will never forget. Learn the secrets of designing a pantheon, creating a setting that provokes conflict, determining which historical details are necessary, and so much more.
Take that creative leap, and create dazzling worlds of your own!

Essays by Wolfgang Baur, Keith Baker, Monte Cook, Jeff Grubb, Scott Hungerford, David "Zeb" Cook, Chris Pramas, Jonathan Roberts, Michael A. Stackpole, Steve Winter, with an introduction by Ken Scholes.]]> 124 Janna Silverstein 1936781115 Steve 0 to-read 4.00 2012 The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding
author: Janna Silverstein
name: Steve
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bear and the Nightingale (The Winternight Trilogy, #1)]]> 25489134
After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

The Bear and the Nightingale is a magical debut novel from a gifted and gorgeous voice. It spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent.]]> 319 Katherine Arden 1101885939 Steve 0 to-read 4.07 2017 The Bear and the Nightingale (The Winternight Trilogy, #1)
author: Katherine Arden
name: Steve
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/05/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Guys 35018915
When Marci was fifteen, she levitated a paperweight and threw it at a guy she didn't like. The Foundation scooped her up for training too.

"Hippie chick" Susan got well into her Foundation training before they told her about the magic, but she's as powerful as Donovan and Marci now.

They can teleport themselves thousands of miles, conjure shields that will stop bullets, and read information from the remnants of spells cast by others days before.

They all work for the secretive Foundation...for minimum wage.

Which is okay, because the Foundation are the good guys. Aren't they?]]> 320 Steven Brust 0765396378 Steve 0 to-read 3.58 2018 Good Guys
author: Steven Brust
name: Steve
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prince of Thorns (Broken Empire, #1)]]> 9579634
From being a privileged royal child, raised by a loving mother, Jorg Ancrath has become the Prince of Thorns, a charming, immoral boy leading a grim band of outlaws in a series of raids and atrocities. The world is in chaos: violence is rife, nightmares everywhere. Jorg has the ability to master the living and the dead, but there is still one thing that puts a chill in him. Returning to his father's castle Jorg must confront horrors from his childhood and carve himself a future with all hands turned against him.

Mark Lawrence's debut novel tells a tale of blood and treachery, magic and brotherhood and paints a compelling and brutal, and sometimes beautiful, picture of an exceptional boy on his journey toward manhood and the throne.]]> 373 Mark Lawrence 0007423292 Steve 0 to-read 3.83 2011 Prince of Thorns (Broken Empire, #1)
author: Mark Lawrence
name: Steve
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bone Clocks 20819685
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.]]> 624 David Mitchell 1400065674 Steve 0 to-read 3.82 2014 The Bone Clocks
author: David Mitchell
name: Steve
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look At Making the Magic Real]]> 380248 200 The Imagineers 0786883723 Steve 0 to-read 4.11 1996 Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look At Making the Magic Real
author: The Imagineers
name: Steve
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin Steve 0 currently-reading 4.29 2015 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Steve
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin, #1)]]> 8752885
Marcus' hero days are behind him. He knows too well that even the smallest war still means somebody's death. When his men are impressed into a doomed army, staying out of a battle he wants no part of requires some unorthodox steps.

Cithrin is an orphan, ward of a banking house. Her job is to smuggle a nation's wealth across a war zone, hiding the gold from both sides. She knows the secret life of commerce like a second language, but the strategies of trade will not defend her from swords.

Geder, sole scion of a noble house, has more interest in philosophy than in swordplay. A poor excuse for a soldier, he is a pawn in these games. No one can predict what he will become.

Falling pebbles can start a landslide. A spat between the Free Cities and the Severed Throne is spiraling out of control. A new player rises from the depths of history, fanning the flames that will sweep the entire region onto The Dragon's Path-the path to war.
]]> 555 Daniel Abraham 1841498874 Steve 4 Daniel Abraham another go, and boy was that the right call. The opening to this series brings more of his very human writing to a new and fasciniating fantasy world, where flawed characters try to make good choices and generally fail, and the results are incredibly impactful.

EDIT:

After finishing the whole series I wanted to update this review: The whole series is freaking great. This first book starts in a place heavy with fantasy tropes. So heavy, in fact, that I had already written the series off as "not as good as The Long Price Quartet" by the time I finished book one. The tropes were all there, and it seemed a bit more by the book, as it were.

I'm delighted to say, without spoiling things, that the whole situation is not as by the book as it began, and the fact that it began in such a standard way only made the path it took to get where it was going all the better.

It's also worth noting that the author's very human writing continues throughout this series. I found myself understanding why characters were making really poor decisions I disagreed with, and empathizing with those decisions, which I feel is far too rare in fantasy books. I also think that Abaraham is possibly the best in the business at writing fantasy novels in which problems, philosophies, and politics from the present day translate into the fictional world in a way that is engaging, relevant, thought provoking, and heartfelt. ]]> 3.79 2011 The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin, #1)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/09
date added: 2017/11/20
shelves:
review:
After absolutely loving the Long Price quartet, I obviously had to give Daniel Abraham another go, and boy was that the right call. The opening to this series brings more of his very human writing to a new and fasciniating fantasy world, where flawed characters try to make good choices and generally fail, and the results are incredibly impactful.

EDIT:

After finishing the whole series I wanted to update this review: The whole series is freaking great. This first book starts in a place heavy with fantasy tropes. So heavy, in fact, that I had already written the series off as "not as good as The Long Price Quartet" by the time I finished book one. The tropes were all there, and it seemed a bit more by the book, as it were.

I'm delighted to say, without spoiling things, that the whole situation is not as by the book as it began, and the fact that it began in such a standard way only made the path it took to get where it was going all the better.

It's also worth noting that the author's very human writing continues throughout this series. I found myself understanding why characters were making really poor decisions I disagreed with, and empathizing with those decisions, which I feel is far too rare in fantasy books. I also think that Abaraham is possibly the best in the business at writing fantasy novels in which problems, philosophies, and politics from the present day translate into the fictional world in a way that is engaging, relevant, thought provoking, and heartfelt.
]]> <![CDATA[The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin, #5)]]> 20404905 The epic conclusion to The Dagger and The Coin series, perfect for fans of George R.R. Martin.

Lord Regent Geder Palliako's great war has spilled across the world, nation after nation falling before the ancient priesthood and weapon of dragons. But even as conquest follows conquest, the final victory retreats before him like a mirage. Schism and revolt begin to erode the foundations of the empire, and the great conquest threatens to collapse into a permanent war of all against all.

In Carse, with armies on all borders, Cithrin bel Sarcour, Marcus Wester, and Clara Kalliam are faced with the impossible task of bringing a lasting peace to the world. Their tools: traitors high in the imperial army, the last survivor of the dragon empire, and a financial scheme that is either a revolution or the greatest fraud in the history of the world.]]> 492 Daniel Abraham 0316204056 Steve 4 4.07 2016 The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin, #5)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2017/11/20
date added: 2017/11/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst]]> 31170723 Why do we do the things we do?

More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs—whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do ... for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.]]> 790 Robert M. Sapolsky 1594205078 Steve 0 to-read 4.40 2017 Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
author: Robert M. Sapolsky
name: Steve
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Widow's House (The Dagger and the Coin, #4)]]> 18458800
Lord Regent Geder Palliako's war has led his nation and the priests of the spider goddess to victory after victory. No power has withstood him, except for the heart of the one woman he desires. As the violence builds and the cracks in his rule begin to show, he will risk everything to gain her love or else her destruction.

Clara Kalliam, the loyal traitor, is torn between the woman she once was and the woman she has become. With her sons on all sides of the conflict, her house cannot stand, but there is a power in choosing when and how to fall.

And in Porte Oliva, banker Cithrin bel Sarcour and Captain Marcus Wester learn the terrible truth that links this war to the fall of the dragons millennia before, and that to save the world, Cithrin must conquer it.]]> 495 Daniel Abraham 031620398X Steve 5 4.06 2014 The Widow's House (The Dagger and the Coin, #4)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/23
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tyrant's Law (The Dagger and the Coin, #3)]]> 15790816 The great war cannot be stopped.

The tyrant Geder Palliako had led his nation to war, but every victory has called forth another conflict. Now the greater war spreads out before him, and he is bent on bringing peace. No matter how many people he has to kill to do it.

Cithrin bel Sarcour, rogue banker of the Medean Bank, has returned to the fold. Her apprenticeship has placed her in the path of war, but the greater dangers are the ones in her past and in her soul.

Widowed and disgraced at the heart of the Empire, Clara Kalliam has become a loyal traitor, defending her nation against itself. And in the shadows of the world, Captain Marcus Wester tracks an ancient secret that will change the war in ways not even he can forsee.

Return to the critically acclaimed epic by master storyteller Daniel Abraham, The Dagger and the Coin.

The Dagger and the Coin
The Dragon's Path
The King's Blood
The Tyrant's Law
The Widow's House
The Spider's War



Writing as James S. A. Corey (with Ty Franck)

The Expanse (soon to be a major SyFy Channel television series)
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games]]> 497 Daniel Abraham 0316080705 Steve 4 4.06 2013 The Tyrant's Law (The Dagger and the Coin, #3)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/30
date added: 2017/10/03
shelves:
review:
I like fantasy, but the idea of a really thin skinned, spoiled, rich, socially inept tyrant obsessed with his people being loyal to him personally just seems way too far fetched. CLEARLY that would never happen.
]]> Fortune Smiles 23590496
In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. "Nirvana," which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous" - first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology - a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.]]> 304 Adam Johnson 0857522973 Steve 0 to-read 4.00 2015 Fortune Smiles
author: Adam Johnson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Valor's Choice (Confederation, #1)]]> 772606
At first it seemed that all she'd have to contend with was bored troops getting into mischief, and breaking in the new Second Lieutenant who had been given command of her men.

Sure, there'd been rumors of the Others - the sworn enemies of the Confederation - being spotted in this sector of space. But there were always rumors. The key thing was to recruit the Silsviss into the Confederation before the Others either attacked or claimed this lizardlike race of warriors for their own side. And everything seemed to be going perfectly. Maybe too perfectly...]]> 409 Tanya Huff 0886778964 Steve 0 to-read 3.98 2000 Valor's Choice (Confederation, #1)
author: Tanya Huff
name: Steve
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The King's Blood (The Dagger and the Coin, #2)]]> 12759057
War casts its shadow over the lands that the dragons once ruled. Only the courage of a young woman with the mind of a gambler and loyalty to no one stands between hope and universal darkness.

The high and powerful will fall, the despised and broken shall rise up, and everything will be remade. And quietly, almost beneath the notice of anyone, an old, broken-hearted warrior and an apostate priest will begin a terrible journey with an impossible goal: destroy a Goddess before she eats the world.]]> 501 Daniel Abraham 1841498890 Steve 4 4.01 2012 The King's Blood (The Dagger and the Coin, #2)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/20
date added: 2017/09/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion]]> 11324722 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
Ěý
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.]]> 419 Jonathan Haidt Steve 0 to-read 4.18 2012 The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Steve
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently, #2)]]> 357 307 Douglas Adams 0671742515 Steve 4 4.05 1988 The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently, #2)
author: Douglas Adams
name: Steve
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/03
date added: 2017/08/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1)]]> 365
Apparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza � not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge).

To find out more, read this book (better still, buy it, then read it) â€� or contact Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. â€A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy epic.â€� The author]]> 306 Douglas Adams Steve 4 3.98 1987 Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1)
author: Douglas Adams
name: Steve
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/10
date added: 2017/07/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1)]]> 6186355
Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home.

Except that it's no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable...despite his body never being found.

He doesn't have long to mull over his resurrection though, or the changes that have been wrought upon him. His only concern now is vengeance. Vengeance upon his monstrous killer and vengeance upon the one who brought him back.]]> 458 Kate Griffin 0316041254 Steve 0 to-read 3.76 2009 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1)
author: Kate Griffin
name: Steve
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/05/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Six Wakes 28962996
It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently...]]> 361 Mur Lafferty 0316389684 Steve 0 to-read 3.80 2017 Six Wakes
author: Mur Lafferty
name: Steve
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> After Alice 24331115 Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis's Carroll's beloved classic

When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice's disappearance?

In this brilliant new work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings � and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll's enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice's mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late � and tumbles down the rabbit hole herself.

Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Euridyce can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is After Alice.]]> 273 Gregory Maguire 0060548959 Steve 2 2.79 2015 After Alice
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Steve
average rating: 2.79
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2017/01/24
date added: 2017/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Life as a White Trash Zombie (White Trash Zombie, #1)]]> 9640626
Living with her alcoholic deadbeat dad in the swamps of southern Louisiana, she's a high school dropout with a pill habit and a criminal record who's been fired from more crap jobs than she can count. Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.

That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in a horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness, she receives an anonymous letter telling her there's a job waiting for her at the parish morgue—and that it's an offer she doesn't dare refuse.

Before she knows it she's dealing with a huge crush on a certain hunky deputy and a brand new addiction: an overpowering craving for brains. Plus, her morgue is filling up with the victims of a serial killer who decapitates his prey—just when she's hungriest!

Angel's going to have to grow up fast if she wants to keep this job and stay in one piece. Because if she doesn't, she's dead meat.

Literally.]]> 320 Diana Rowland 0756406757 Steve 0 to-read 3.94 2011 My Life as a White Trash Zombie (White Trash Zombie, #1)
author: Diana Rowland
name: Steve
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dungeon Master's Guide (Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition)]]> 2199966
The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.

The Dungeon Master's Guide gives the Dungeon Master helpful tools to build exciting encounters, adventures, and campaigns for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game, as well as advice for running great game sessions, ready-to-use traps and non-player characters, and more. In addition, it presents a fully detailed town that can serve as a starting point for any D&D game.]]> 224 Wizards of the Coast 0786948809 Steve 3
This edition though, the DMG actually has a lot of relatively pertinent information. Explanations of ways to use the new combat rules, and so forth. So It seems much more worthwhile, at least, after a quick read through.]]> 3.54 2008 Dungeon Master's Guide (Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition)
author: Wizards of the Coast
name: Steve
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/06/23
date added: 2016/11/28
shelves:
review:
The DMG has always been the least useful of the core rule books. Even as the main DM, it got a lot less use than the other two, especially for veteran players that don't need the massive amounts of space explaining the function of the DM, and general imagination advice.

This edition though, the DMG actually has a lot of relatively pertinent information. Explanations of ways to use the new combat rules, and so forth. So It seems much more worthwhile, at least, after a quick read through.
]]> <![CDATA[Monkey: The Journey to the West]]> 100237 306 Wu Cheng'en 0802130860 Steve 4
Why regret it when I enjoyed it? I could have enjoyed MORE of it. You see, I found out much later that Monkey is an abridged version of Journey to the West. This is one of the four classic Chinese novels. I've read (and generally loved) the other three: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Dream of Red Mansions. Now I've read an abridged version of the last one, when I would have much preferred to read the full unabridged text. I'll still have to do that at some point.

Still, I can recommend this book pretty enthusiastically to some people at there. Reading the other three books mentioned above, I undoubtedly tried to sell you on them (directly or indirectly). Perhaps you were even a bit interested.

However, I recognize that the other three, thousand+ page monsters can be pretty intimidating, particularly since they feature so many characters with names that are difficult to pronounce and keep straight if you are not particularly familiar with Chinese names. Monkey is only about three hundred pages, and style wise is a much easier read as well. There are fewer important characters, and they have more easily pronounced/remembered names (Monkey and Pigsy being two of the main four characters). This story is also quite a bit more of a folk tale than the others, so it remains noticeably simpler. That said, it retains the very classic style that I haven't seen anywhere besides these Chinese novels. The charmingly formal well that people address one another (even the taunts before battles are formalized in a very unique way). This would be a great book to use as your trial run into classic Chinese literature, and if you enjoy the general style of it, you will enjoy the style of the longer and more difficult books as well.]]> 4.06 1592 Monkey: The Journey to the West
author: Wu Cheng'en
name: Steve
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1592
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/13
date added: 2016/11/28
shelves:
review:
I kind of regret buying this book. I thought it looked like a fun little read when I saw it in the mythology section, so I picked it up (several years ago).

Why regret it when I enjoyed it? I could have enjoyed MORE of it. You see, I found out much later that Monkey is an abridged version of Journey to the West. This is one of the four classic Chinese novels. I've read (and generally loved) the other three: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Dream of Red Mansions. Now I've read an abridged version of the last one, when I would have much preferred to read the full unabridged text. I'll still have to do that at some point.

Still, I can recommend this book pretty enthusiastically to some people at there. Reading the other three books mentioned above, I undoubtedly tried to sell you on them (directly or indirectly). Perhaps you were even a bit interested.

However, I recognize that the other three, thousand+ page monsters can be pretty intimidating, particularly since they feature so many characters with names that are difficult to pronounce and keep straight if you are not particularly familiar with Chinese names. Monkey is only about three hundred pages, and style wise is a much easier read as well. There are fewer important characters, and they have more easily pronounced/remembered names (Monkey and Pigsy being two of the main four characters). This story is also quite a bit more of a folk tale than the others, so it remains noticeably simpler. That said, it retains the very classic style that I haven't seen anywhere besides these Chinese novels. The charmingly formal well that people address one another (even the taunts before battles are formalized in a very unique way). This would be a great book to use as your trial run into classic Chinese literature, and if you enjoy the general style of it, you will enjoy the style of the longer and more difficult books as well.
]]> <![CDATA[Kaijumax Season One: Terror and Respect (1)]]> 26778755 168 Zander Cannon 1620102706 Steve 0 to-read 3.73 2016 Kaijumax Season One: Terror and Respect (1)
author: Zander Cannon
name: Steve
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/11/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge]]> 26067633
College grad Bailey Chen has a few demons: no job, no parental support, and a rocky relationship with Zane, the only friend who’s around when she moves back home. But when Zane introduces Bailey to his cadre of monster-fighting bartenders, her demons get a lot more literal. Like, soul-sucking hell-beast literal. Soon, it’s up to Bailey and the ragtag band of magical mixologists to take on whatever—or whoever—is behind the mysterious rash of gruesome deaths in Chicago, and complete the lost recipes of an ancient tome of cocktail lore.]]> 288 Paul Krueger 1594747598 Steve 0 to-read 3.38 2016 Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge
author: Paul Krueger
name: Steve
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dungeoneers (The Dungeoneers, #1)]]> 25971497
No ruler wants to leave a powerful magical weapon lying about in a dungeon where just any prophesied upstart can stumble across it and use it to overthrow the kingdom. That's where The Dungeoneers come in. Dungeons sacked, artifacts recovered, no job too big or too small. They're not adventurers; they're professionals.

With the discovery that Durham may have arrived with a destiny attached to him the Dungeoneers find themselves in the midst of some history about to happen. Will experience and Dwarven know-how be enough to carry the day?]]> 332 Jeffery Russell 1310266050 Steve 0 to-read 4.01 2015 The Dungeoneers (The Dungeoneers, #1)
author: Jeffery Russell
name: Steve
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]> 480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Steve 3 4.21 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Steve
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2016/09/02
date added: 2016/09/19
shelves:
review:
A mostly feel good adventure story for nostalgia loving 80s nerds, but it relies a little too heavily on the nostalgia.
]]> The Books of Magic 17727 200 Neil Gaiman 1563890828 Steve 3 4.10 1993 The Books of Magic
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Steve
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2016/08/19
date added: 2016/09/19
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review:

]]> Down and Out In Purgatory 30054056
In college, Tom Holbrook worshipped Shasta DiMaio from afar, but she married the arrogant John Atwater—and Atwater eventually murdered her.

All that’s left for Tom is revenge. He has devoted the rest of his life to finding Atwater and killing him—but when he finally finds him, Atwater is in a bag in the Los Angeles County morgue.

How do you kill a man who has already died?]]> 120 Tim Powers Steve 0 to-read 3.63 2016 Down and Out In Purgatory
author: Tim Powers
name: Steve
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/09/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5)]]> 12
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

"Life, the Universe and Everything"

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"

Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.

"Mostly Harmless"

Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

Also includes the short story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe".]]> 815 Douglas Adams 0517226952 Steve 5 4.52 1996 The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5)
author: Douglas Adams
name: Steve
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/09/13
shelves:
review:

]]> A Dream of Red Mansions 243900 Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels, a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world's great civilizations. Chi-chen Wang's translation is skillful and accurate.]]> 2549 Cao Xueqin 7119006436 Steve 4 4.16 1761 A Dream of Red Mansions
author: Cao Xueqin
name: Steve
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1761
rating: 4
read at: 2009/03/09
date added: 2016/08/21
shelves:
review:
Certainly not as action packed as Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Outlaws of the Marsh, but it totally kept my attention. It was actually a lot like the later couple books in the Dumas' Musketeers series. For large swaths of the book, not much happens beyond aristocratic people accidentally offending each other. Similar in tone too, in that the book is sort of overly respectfully condemning of the whole aristocracy thing.
]]> Nightsiders 10825477
A few thousand obstinate and independent souls cling to the city and to the southern towns. Living mostly by night to endure the fierce temperatures, they are creating a new culture in defiance of official expectations. A teenage girl stolen from her family as a child; a troupe of street actors who affect their new culture with memories of the old; a boy born into the wrong body; and a teacher who is pushed into the role of guide tell the story of The Nightside.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Marianne de Pierres

The Painted Girl
Nation of the Night
Paper Dragons
The Schoolteacher’s Tale

Nation of the Night won the 2012 Aurealis Award for Best Yound
Paper Dragons was shortlisted for Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Short Story, 2010]]> 141 Sue Isle 0980827434 Steve 0 to-read 3.83 2011 Nightsiders
author: Sue Isle
name: Steve
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Elephant Vanishes 9555
With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.]]> 327 Haruki Murakami Steve 0 to-read 3.88 1993 The Elephant Vanishes
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Steve
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Steve 0 to-read 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Steve
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Master of Formalities 24602307 434 Scott Meyer 147783091X Steve 0 to-read 3.77 2015 Master of Formalities
author: Scott Meyer
name: Steve
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/07/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Saga, Volume 1 15704307
Collects: Saga #1-6.]]> 160 Brian K. Vaughan 1607066017 Steve 0 to-read 4.16 2012 Saga, Volume 1
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Steve
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood Song (Raven's Shadow, #1)]]> 13569581 “The Sixth Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm.�

Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.]]> 591 Anthony Ryan 1466085665 Steve 0 to-read 4.42 2011 Blood Song (Raven's Shadow, #1)
author: Anthony Ryan
name: Steve
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stand on Zanzibar 41069 U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of 2010, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.

This edition comes with a tipped in collectors' note and an introduction by David Brin.]]> 672 John Brunner 1857988361 Steve 4 3.95 1968 Stand on Zanzibar
author: John Brunner
name: Steve
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2016/05/17
date added: 2016/05/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)]]> 26114545
The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...]]> 432 Ada Palmer 0765378000 Steve 0 to-read 3.81 2016 Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)
author: Ada Palmer
name: Steve
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong]]> 296662 Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.

James W. Loewen, a sociology professor and distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope-and what he discovers will surprise you. In his opinion, every one of these texts fails to make its subject interesting or memorable. Worse still is the proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism and misinformation filling the pages.

From the truth about Christopher Columbus to the harsh reality of the Vietnam War, Loewen picks apart the lies we've been told. This audiobook, narrated by Brian Keeler (The Hurricane, "All My Children") will forever change your view of the past.]]> 383 James W. Loewen 0684818868 Steve 0 to-read 3.96 1995 Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
author: James W. Loewen
name: Steve
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Bellwether 24985
Sandra Foster studies fads - from Barbie dolls to the grunge look - how they start and what they mean. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behavior. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. It's a moment of synchronicity - if not serendipity - which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffé latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless.

Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behavior?)

But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer...]]> 248 Connie Willis 0553562967 Steve 0 to-read 3.92 1996 Bellwether
author: Connie Willis
name: Steve
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Thirteenth Tale 40440
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.]]> 406 Diane Setterfield 0743298020 Steve 0 to-read 3.96 2006 The Thirteenth Tale
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Steve
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wizard in a Witchy World 29483720
Trouble has been brewing in sleepy Leotown, but explodes when Felix witnesses the gruesome murder of Gabriella’s coven leader and ends up number one on a short list of suspects. It's a poor start to their relationship when Gabriella and her coven sisters attack Felix while looking for answers. With her foot literally on his chest, Felix begins to doubt what he felt in his vision - that is - until the werewolves actually show up.

Wizard in a Witchy World is the first book in the Witchy World series � an urban fantasy, paranormal fairy tale.]]> 275 Jamie McFarlane 1943792070 Steve 0 to-read 3.81 Wizard in a Witchy World
author: Jamie McFarlane
name: Steve
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers]]> 23604325
To millions of people, Nick Offerman is America. Both Nick and his character, Ron Swanson, are known for their humor and patriotism in equal measure.

After the great success of his autobiography,Ěý Paddle Your Own Canoe , Offerman now focuses on the lives of those who inspired him. From George Washington to Willie Nelson, he describes twenty-one heroic figures and why they inspire in him such great meaning. He combines both serious history with light-hearted humor—comparing, say, Benjamin Franklin’s abstinence from daytime drinking to his own sage refusal to join his construction crew in getting plastered on the way to work. The subject matter also allows Offerman to expound upon his favorite topics, which readers love to hear—areas such as religion, politics, woodworking and handcrafting, agriculture, creativity, philosophy, fashion, and, of course, meat.]]> 400 Nick Offerman 0525954678 Steve 0 to-read 3.77 2015 Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers
author: Nick Offerman
name: Steve
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gone Girl 19288043 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 Steve 3 4.22 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Steve
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2016/03/25
date added: 2016/03/25
shelves:
review:
This book served as a reminder that some books are just too fucked up for me.
]]> <![CDATA[Shades of Milk and Honey (Glamourist Histories, #1)]]> 7295501 Shades of Milk and Honey is an intimate portrait of Jane Ellsworth, a woman ahead of her time in a version of Regency England where the manipulation of glamour is considered an essential skill for a lady of quality. But despite the prevalence of magic in everyday life, other aspects of Dorchester’s society are not that different: Jane and her sister Melody’s lives still revolve around vying for the attentions of eligible men.

Jane resists this fate, and rightly so: while her skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face, and therefore wins the lion’s share of the attention. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Jane has resigned herself to being invisible forever. But when her family’s honor is threatened, she finds that she must push her skills to the limit in order to set things right–and, in the process, accidentally wanders into a love story of her own.]]> 304 Mary Robinette Kowal 076532556X Steve 0 to-read 3.49 2010 Shades of Milk and Honey (Glamourist Histories, #1)
author: Mary Robinette Kowal
name: Steve
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Red Country 13521459 They stole her brother and sister.
But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into an alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust . . .
RED COUNTRY takes place in the same world as the First Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, and The Heroes. This novel also sees the return of one of Abercrombie's most beloved characters.]]> 469 Joe Abercrombie 0316214442 Steve 3 4.31 2012 Red Country
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Steve
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2016/03/10
date added: 2016/03/14
shelves:
review:
Kind of strange that all of a sudden in the midst of this fantasy series, there's suddenly a Western. Still a fantasy book, but very Western. Kind of cool? Ultimately though, I like the same things I liked about his other books (good internal POVs shedding different light on different events, a cohesive and reasonable-ish but very dark world, and a strong sense of doubt for the greatness of even larger than life characters), and disliked the same things (an over-reliance on action and gore, few characters that aren't frustrating assholes, and perhaps not enough light shed on the mysterious background actors/actions driving events).
]]> The Heroes 9300768 581 Joe Abercrombie 0316123358 Steve 4 4.34 2011 The Heroes
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Steve
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/04
date added: 2016/03/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Best Served Cold 2315892
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell, but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Barbarian who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...

Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.]]> 534 Joe Abercrombie 0575082453 Steve 2 4.24 2009 Best Served Cold
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Steve
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2016/02/20
date added: 2016/02/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 7082 244 Philip K. Dick Steve 5 4.08 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Steve
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2016/02/01
date added: 2016/02/01
shelves:
review:
Being a big fan of the movie Blade Runner, I avoided reading this book for a long time. That sounds kind of crazy in retrospect, and I accept that. In any case, the book very much stands up on its own, telling a slightly different story than the movie, and I am glad I read it.
]]> <![CDATA[Last Argument of Kings (The First Law #3)]]> 944076
Logen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him, but it's going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm, and there's only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend, and his oldest enemy: it's time for the Bloody-Nine to come home.

With too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no-one is safe, and no-one can be trusted. And, as his days with a sword are far behind him, it's fortunate that he's deadly with his remaining weapons: threats, blackmail and torture.

Jezal dan Luthar has decided that winning glory is too painful an undertaking and turned his back on soldiering for a simple life with the woman he loves. But love can be painful too � and glory has a nasty habit of creeping up on a man when he least expects it.

While the King of the Union lies on his deathbead, the peasants revolt and the nobles scramble to steal his crown. No-one believes that the shadow of war is about to fall across the heart of the Union. Only the First of the Magi has a plan to save the world � as he always does � but this time there are risks. There is no risk more terrible, after all, than to break the First Law...]]> 536 Joe Abercrombie 0575077905 Steve 3 4.35 2008 Last Argument of Kings (The First Law #3)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)]]> 902715
Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country. Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory. There is only one problem: he commands the worst-armed, worst-trained and worst-led army in the world.

And Bayaz, the First of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past. The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish boy in the Union make a strange alliance, but a deadly one. They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters. If they didn't hate each other quite so much.

Ancient secrets will be uncovered. Bloody battles will be won and lost. Bitter enemies will be forgiven—but not before they are hanged.]]> 442 Joe Abercrombie 0575077883 Steve 3 4.35 2007 Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)]]> 944073
Nobleman Captain Jezal dan Luthar, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

]]> 515 Joe Abercrombie 0575079797 Steve 3 4.21 2006 The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Steve
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2016/01/25
date added: 2016/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Chimera Vector (The Fifth Column, #1)]]> 15741800
Recruited as a child, Sophia is a deniable operative for the Fifth Column. Like all operatives, Sophia's DNA has been altered to augment her senses and her mind is splintered into programmed subsets.

On a routine mission in Iran something goes catastrophically wrong. Bugs are beginning to appear in Sophia's programming and the mission spins out of control.

High-speed chases, gun fights, helicopter battles, immortal psychopaths, super soldiers and mutant abilities are all in the mix in this edge-of-your-seat action-packed techno-thriller.

Perfect for fans of Matthew Reilly, The Chimera Vector melds sci-fi with sizzling espionage action.]]> 362 Nathan M. Farrugia 1743539541 Steve 0 to-read 3.53 2012 The Chimera Vector (The Fifth Column, #1)
author: Nathan M. Farrugia
name: Steve
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8)]]> 8785374
Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies - and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.

He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, occasionally snookered and out of his mind. But never out of guile. Where there is a crime, there must be a finding, there must be a chase, and there must be a punishment.

They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.

But not quite all...]]> 378 Terry Pratchett Steve 5 4.16 2011 Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Steve
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2015/12/23
date added: 2015/12/31
shelves:
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]]> The Map of Time 9766078
Characters real and imaginary come vividly to life in this whimsical triple play of intertwined plots, in which a skeptical H. G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time travel and to save lives and literary classics, including Dracula and The Time Machine, from being wiped from existence.

What happens if we change history?]]> 613 FĂ©lix J. Palma 1439167397 Steve 0 3.35 2008 The Map of Time
author: FĂ©lix J. Palma
name: Steve
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/12/31
shelves: stopped-reading-part-way-through
review:

]]> Hark! A Vagrant 10767466 Hark! A Vagrant is an uproarious romp through history and literature seen through the sharp, contemporary lens of New Yorker cartoonist and comics-sensation Kate Beaton. No era or tome emerges unscathbed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction. She deftly points out what really happened when Brahms fell asleep listening to Liszt, that the world's first hipsters were obviously the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses from eighteenth-century France, that Susan B. Anthony is, of course, a "Samantha," and that the polite banality of Canadian culture never gets old. Hark! A Vagrant features sexy Batman, the true stories behind classic Nancy Drew covers, and Queen Elizabeth doing the albatross. As the 5600.000 unique monthly visitors to already know, no one turns the ironic absurdities of history and literature into comedic fodder as hilarious as Beaton.]]> 168 Kate Beaton 1770460608 Steve 0 to-read 4.21 2011 Hark! A Vagrant
author: Kate Beaton
name: Steve
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Something Wicked This Way Comes]]> 248596 Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.]]> 293 Ray Bradbury 0380729407 Steve 4 3.92 1962 Something Wicked This Way Comes
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Steve
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2015/12/01
date added: 2015/12/03
shelves:
review:
It took me until I was about 150 pages in before I had really decided if this book was a charming coming of age adventure about some kids with overly active imaginations or a kind of terrifying dark fantasy horror story, and I'm not going to tell you which one I picked.
]]> Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves, #6) 9850375 257 P.G. Wodehouse 0393339785 Steve 4 4.29 1934 Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves, #6)
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Steve
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2015/11/17
date added: 2015/11/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet, #4)]]> 6065889
The emperor of the Khaiem tries to form a marriage alliance between his son and the daughter of a Galtic lord, hoping the Khaiem men and Galtic women will produce a new generation to help create a peaceful future.

But Maati, a poet who has been in hiding for years, driven by guilt over his part in the disastrous end of the war, defies tradition and begins training female poets. With Eiah, the emperor’s daughter, helping him, he intends to create andat, to restore the world as it was before the war.

Vanjit, a woman haunted by her family’s death in the war, creates a new andat. But hope turns to ashes as her creation unleashes a power that cripples all she touches.

As the prospect of peace dims under the lash of Vanjit’s creation, Maati and Eiah try to end her reign of terror. But time is running out for both the Galts and the Khaiem.]]> 352 Daniel Abraham 076531343X Steve 5 4.10 2009 The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet, #4)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2015/11/05
date added: 2015/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Betrayal in Winter (Long Price Quartet, #2)]]> 811161
Tradition dictates that the sons of a dying Khai fall upon each other until only one remains to succeed his father. But something even worse is occurring in Machi. The Galts, an expansive empire, has allied with someone in Machi to bring down the ruling house. Otah is accused, the long-missing brother with an all-too-obvious motive for murder.]]> 320 Daniel Abraham 0765313413 Steve 5 3.90 2007 A Betrayal in Winter (Long Price Quartet, #2)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2015/11/05
date added: 2015/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet, #3)]]> 2443516

Daniel Abraham delighted fantasy readers with his brilliantly original and engaging first novel, and in his second penned a tragedy as darkly personal and violent as Shakespeare's King Lear. Now he has written an epic fantasy of much wider scope and appeal that will thrill his fans and enthrall legions of new readers.

Otah Machi, ruler of the city of Machi, has tried for years to prepare his people for a future in which the magical andat, entities that support their commerce and intimidate all foes, can no longer be safely harnessed. But his efforts are too little, too late. The Galts, an expansionist empire from across the sea, have tired of games of political espionage and low-stakes sabotage. Their general, a ruthless veteran, has found a way to do what was thought impossible: neutralize the andat.

As the Galtic army advances, the Poets who control the andat wage their own battle to save their loved-ones and their nation. Failure seems inevitable, but success would end the Galtic threat.

With wonderful storytelling skill, Abraham has wedded the unique magic, high-stakes betrayal and political intrigue of his previous works with a broad tapestry of action in a spectacular fantasy epic.

]]> 366 Daniel Abraham 0765313421 Steve 5 4.05 2008 An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet, #3)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2015/11/05
date added: 2015/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Shadow in Summer (Long Price Quartet, #1)]]> 208
Saraykeht is poised on the knife-edge of disaster.

At the heart of the city's influence are the poet-sorcerer Heshai and the captive spirit, Seedless, whom he controls. For all his power, Heshai is weak, haunted by memories of shame and humiliation. A man faced with constant reminders of his responsibilities and his failures, he is the linchpin and the most vulnerable point in Saraykeht's greatness.

Far to the west, the armies of Galt have conquered many lands. To take Saraykeht, they must first destroy the trade upon which its prosperity is based. Marchat Wilsin, head of Galt's trading house in the city, is planning a terrible crime against Heshai and Seedless. If he succeeds, Saraykeht will fall.

Amat, House Wilsin's business manager, is a woman who rose from the slums to wield the power that Marchat Wilsin would use to destroy her city. Through accidents of fate and circumstance Amat, her apprentice Liat, and two young men from the farthest reaches of their society stand alone against the dangers that threaten the city.]]> 336 Daniel Abraham 0765313405 Steve 5
There are two things that I didn't like about the series:
1. The culture of a grammar of body language was kind of annoying to read sometimes, though not as annoying as it would be to live.
2. I didn't read it sooner.

So here's the thing. Daniel Abraham is an author that was recommended to me in some sort of context of "hey everyone, if you like George R.R. Martin, here are some other new fantasy authors you should check out". I like Martin, so I kind of made the jerk off motion in the direction of the article, but still added its recommended authors to my to-read list, figuring what have I got to lose?

The Long Price of war is a beautiful series. I know that sounds weird, but it just is. Look, a lot of the books I've read, fantasy or otherwise, have featured horrific and terrible events, characters reacting to them--the loss and the suffering. I can't think of many cases where I actually have been emotionally impacted reading them. Maybe that makes me terrible, or maybe it makes a lot of those books terrible, but this series is not terrible.

Two nations are in a sort of cold war sort of situation at the star of the series. Spoilers happen. The series goes over the course of I dunno 60 years of the fallout of those first spoilers and then more spoilers happen. It is a multigenerational look at the terrible consequences of the strained relations between those nations. As it does this, it covers all kinds of deep, important issues from our real world. Abortion. Arranged marriages. Women's rights. Weapons of mass destruction.

Most importantly though, the book does a fantastic job of portraying the relationships between its characters. It feels sometimes like a classic Greek or Shakespearian tragedy, in that you are watching characters make poor choices, you know they aren't going to end well, and you just feel for them.

I cannot recommend this series enough.]]> 3.62 2006 A Shadow in Summer (Long Price Quartet, #1)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Steve
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2015/11/05
date added: 2015/11/06
shelves:
review:
Since I binge-read this four part series, I'm going to do a group review right here. This is roughly how my opinion of the series evolved over the course of my reading:

There are two things that I didn't like about the series:
1. The culture of a grammar of body language was kind of annoying to read sometimes, though not as annoying as it would be to live.
2. I didn't read it sooner.

So here's the thing. Daniel Abraham is an author that was recommended to me in some sort of context of "hey everyone, if you like George R.R. Martin, here are some other new fantasy authors you should check out". I like Martin, so I kind of made the jerk off motion in the direction of the article, but still added its recommended authors to my to-read list, figuring what have I got to lose?

The Long Price of war is a beautiful series. I know that sounds weird, but it just is. Look, a lot of the books I've read, fantasy or otherwise, have featured horrific and terrible events, characters reacting to them--the loss and the suffering. I can't think of many cases where I actually have been emotionally impacted reading them. Maybe that makes me terrible, or maybe it makes a lot of those books terrible, but this series is not terrible.

Two nations are in a sort of cold war sort of situation at the star of the series. Spoilers happen. The series goes over the course of I dunno 60 years of the fallout of those first spoilers and then more spoilers happen. It is a multigenerational look at the terrible consequences of the strained relations between those nations. As it does this, it covers all kinds of deep, important issues from our real world. Abortion. Arranged marriages. Women's rights. Weapons of mass destruction.

Most importantly though, the book does a fantastic job of portraying the relationships between its characters. It feels sometimes like a classic Greek or Shakespearian tragedy, in that you are watching characters make poor choices, you know they aren't going to end well, and you just feel for them.

I cannot recommend this series enough.
]]> <![CDATA[Made to Kill (Ray Electromatic Mysteries, #1)]]> 23848137 It was just another Tuesday morning when she walked into the office--young, as I suspected they all might be, another dark brunette with some assistance and enough eye black to match up to Cleopatra. And who am I? I'm Ray, the world's last robot, famed and feared in equal measure, which suits me just fine--after all, the last place you'd expect to find a Hollywood's best hit man is in the plain light of day.

Raymond Electromatic is good at his job, as good as he ever was at being a true Private Investigator, the lone employee of the Electromatic Detective Agency--except for Ada, office gal and super-computer, the constant voice in Ray's inner ear. Ray might have taken up a new line of work, but money is money, after all, and he was programmed to make a profit. Besides, with his twenty-four-hour memory-tape limits, he sure can keep a secret.

When a familiar-looking woman arrives at the agency wanting to hire Ray to find a missing movie star, he's inclined to tell her to take a hike. But she had the cold hard cash, a demand for total anonymity, and tendency to vanish on her own.

Plunged into a glittering world of fame, fortune, and secrecy, Ray uncovers a sinister plot that goes much deeper than the silver screen--and this robot is at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Made to Kill is the thrilling new speculative noir from novelist and comic writer Adam Christopher.

]]> 237 Adam Christopher 076537918X Steve 0 to-read 3.33 2015 Made to Kill (Ray Electromatic Mysteries, #1)
author: Adam Christopher
name: Steve
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to Night Vale (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)]]> 23129410 Welcome to Night Vale podcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle to find ourselves...no matter where we live.

Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.

Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "King City" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.

Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.

Diane's search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: "King City". It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures...if they can ever find it.]]> 401 Joseph Fink 0062351427 Steve 0 to-read 3.84 2015 Welcome to Night Vale (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)
author: Joseph Fink
name: Steve
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Great Book of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1-10)]]> 5367 Alternate cover edition can be found here

Roger Zelazny's chronicles of Amber have earned their place as all-time classics of imaginative literature. Now, here are all ten novels, together in one magnificent omnibus volume. Witness the titanic battle for supremacy waged on Earth, in the Courts of Chaos, and on a magical world of mystery, adventure and romance.
--back cover]]> 1258 Roger Zelazny 0380809060 Steve 3 4.31 1999 The Great Book of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1-10)
author: Roger Zelazny
name: Steve
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2015/10/08
date added: 2015/10/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Zeroes (Zeroes #1) 24885636
But these six Californian teens have powers that set them apart. They can do stuff ordinary people can’t.

Take Ethan, a.k.a. Scam. He’s got a voice inside him that’ll say whatever you want to hear, whether it’s true or not. Which is handy, except when it isn’t—like when the voice starts gabbing in the middle of a bank robbery. The only people who can help are the other Zeroes, who aren’t exactly best friends these days.

Enter Nate, a.k.a. Bellwether, the group’s “glorious leader.� After Scam’s SOS, he pulls the scattered Zeroes back together. But when the rescue blows up in their faces, the Zeroes find themselves propelled into whirlwind encounters with ever more dangerous criminals. And at the heart of the chaos they find Kelsie, who can take a crowd in the palm of her hand and tame it or let it loose as she pleases.

Filled with high-stakes action and drama, Zeroes unites three powerhouse authors for the opening installment of a thrilling new series.]]> 546 Scott Westerfeld 1481443364 Steve 0 to-read 3.75 2015 Zeroes (Zeroes #1)
author: Scott Westerfeld
name: Steve
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> New Moon (Luna, #1) 23848027 The scions of a falling house must navigate a world of corporate warfare to maintain their family's status in the Moon's vicious political atmosphere

The Moon wants to kill you.

Maybe it will kill you when the per diem for your allotted food, water, and air runs out, just before you hit paydirt. Maybe it will kill you when you are trapped between the reigning corporations-the Five Dragons-in a foolish gamble against a futuristic feudal society. On the Moon, you must fight for every inch you want to gain. And that is just what Adriana Corta did.

As the leader of the Moon's newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, in the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation-Corta Helio-confronted by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies... and each other.]]> 398 Ian McDonald 0765375516 Steve 0 to-read 3.73 2015 New Moon (Luna, #1)
author: Ian McDonald
name: Steve
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World]]> 9449985 The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

At the end of the seventeenth century—an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London—when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare’s century, when the natural land the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws�-a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history.

The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.]]> 378 Edward Dolnick 006171951X Steve 0 to-read-someday 3.94 2011 The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World
author: Edward Dolnick
name: Steve
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/13
shelves: to-read-someday
review:

]]> Jitterbug Perfume 8682 Jitterbug Perfume is an epic, which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn't conclude until nine o'clock tonight [Paris time]. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle is actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.]]> 342 Tom Robbins 1842430351 Steve 0 to-read 4.24 1984 Jitterbug Perfume
author: Tom Robbins
name: Steve
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy, #1)]]> 153008
Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission... and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair... and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.

Set in a world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess, this is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. Not since Dune has there been an epic on the scale of Kushiel's Dart-a massive tale about the violent death of an old age, and the birth of a new.]]> 1040 Jacqueline Carey 0330493744 Steve 0 to-read 4.01 2001 Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy, #1)
author: Jacqueline Carey
name: Steve
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Inimitable Jeeves (Jeeves, #2)]]> 9515964 225 P.G. Wodehouse 0393339807 Steve 5 4.18 1923 The Inimitable Jeeves (Jeeves, #2)
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Steve
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1923
rating: 5
read at: 2015/08/16
date added: 2015/08/16
shelves:
review:
It turns out that I had read this one before, but it turns out that it was still awesome the second time around, so I didn't care.
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)]]> 9591398 Ěý
With exquisite illustrations by acclaimed artist Ana Juan, Fairyland lives up to the sensation it created when the author first posted it online. For readers of all ages who love the charm of Alice in Wonderland and the soul of The Golden Compass, here is a reading experience unto itself: unforgettable, and so very beautiful.
]]> 247 Catherynne M. Valente 0312649614 Steve 4 3.95 2011 The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Steve
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2015/08/01
date added: 2015/08/05
shelves:
review:
A charming fairy tale of a book wherein a young girl ends up in Fairyland on a grand adventure. Very conscious of many tropes of such tales, and told with delightful winks to readers who are used to such tales, yet still creative and surprisingly touching at times. An easy read you won't regret.
]]> <![CDATA[The Universe Versus Alex Woods]]> 15984268
But when he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count.

So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the front seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing ...

Introducing a bright young voice destined to charm the world, The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a celebration of curious incidents, astronomy and astrology, the works of Kurt Vonnegut and the unexpected connections that form our world.]]> 407 Gavin Extence Steve 0 to-read 4.09 2013 The Universe Versus Alex Woods
author: Gavin Extence
name: Steve
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)]]> 13538873
Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.

A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out� obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.

He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers� behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.]]> 288 Robin Sloan 0374214913 Steve 4 3.71 2012 Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
author: Robin Sloan
name: Steve
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2015/06/27
date added: 2015/06/28
shelves:
review:
This was a fun book with some interesting takes on some classic (mostly fantasy) fiction tropes. The author finds magic in the non magical, joy in discovery, and value in the weird. Since I do as well, this book delighted me nearly constantly. A quick easy read that never quite went where I expected, it nevertheless took me where I wanted to go.
]]> Seveneves 22816087
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.]]> 872 Neal Stephenson Steve 3
In the lead up to, and during the end of the world, the author kept having to remind me how terrible humans are. I mean it makes sense, right, humans are terrible, I get it, but I spent most of that time being a lot more interested in the crazy scramble to try to save some portion of the human race, and the technological hurdles and astrophysical problems they were dealing with, only to get annoyed when some dumb human would make a political power play endangering the mission. It totally makes sense that these sorts of things would happen, I just found it distracting. It's like, sure, the titanic is sinking, but go ahead and kick the captain in the nuts and seize the wheel if you want. Dumb ass.

My other problem with the book is that unlike many of the author's other books, I never really got to know any of the characters. I mean sure, it's the end of the world, and billions of them are going to die anyway (well, billions of people, surely not billions of actual characters), but it was hard to ever feel sad about it because most of the characters were pretty shallow. It's hard to talk about without getting too spoilery, but the book feels like it was written by a guy who has a good understanding of what humans will do under stress and extreme situations, but he doesn't actually justify why, what they were thinking or feeling that made them do these things. They're a bit too robotic. That problem only gets worse later on, too.]]> 4.01 2015 Seveneves
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2015/06/22
date added: 2015/06/23
shelves:
review:
While I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, I didn't find myself actually enjoying it very often. It promises a story about humans trying to deal with the end of the world, and it delivers, but both sections of it annoyed me, for seemingly opposite reasons.

In the lead up to, and during the end of the world, the author kept having to remind me how terrible humans are. I mean it makes sense, right, humans are terrible, I get it, but I spent most of that time being a lot more interested in the crazy scramble to try to save some portion of the human race, and the technological hurdles and astrophysical problems they were dealing with, only to get annoyed when some dumb human would make a political power play endangering the mission. It totally makes sense that these sorts of things would happen, I just found it distracting. It's like, sure, the titanic is sinking, but go ahead and kick the captain in the nuts and seize the wheel if you want. Dumb ass.

My other problem with the book is that unlike many of the author's other books, I never really got to know any of the characters. I mean sure, it's the end of the world, and billions of them are going to die anyway (well, billions of people, surely not billions of actual characters), but it was hard to ever feel sad about it because most of the characters were pretty shallow. It's hard to talk about without getting too spoilery, but the book feels like it was written by a guy who has a good understanding of what humans will do under stress and extreme situations, but he doesn't actually justify why, what they were thinking or feeling that made them do these things. They're a bit too robotic. That problem only gets worse later on, too.
]]> Modern Romance 23453112
Some of our problems are unique to our time.Ěý“Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?”Ěý“Should I go out with this girl even though sheĚýlisted Combos as one of her favorite snack foods?ĚýCombos?!â€� “My girlfriend just got a message fromĚýsome dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did heĚýjust send her a photo of his penis? Should I checkĚýjust to be sure?”Ě�

But the transformation of our romantic livesĚýcan’t be explained by technology alone. In a shortĚýperiod of time, the whole culture of finding loveĚýhas changed dramatically. A few decades ago,Ěýpeople would find a decent person who lived inĚýtheir neighborhood. Their families would meetĚýand, after deciding neither party seemed like aĚýmurderer, they would get married and soon haveĚýa kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today,Ěýpeople marry later than ever and spend years ofĚýtheir lives on a quest to find the perfect person, aĚýsoul mate.

For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming hisĚýcomic insight at modern romance, but for ModernĚýRomance, the book, he decided he needed to takeĚýthings to another level. He teamed up with NYUĚýsociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massiveĚýresearch project, including hundreds of interviewsĚýand focus groups conducted everywhere fromĚýTokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzedĚýbehavioral data and surveys and created their ownĚýonline research forum on Reddit, which drewĚýthousands of messages. They enlisted the world’sĚýleading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, HelenĚýFisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, SherryĚýTurkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike anyĚýsocial science or humor book we’ve seen before.

In Modern Romance, Ansari combines hisĚýirreverent humor with cutting-edge social scienceĚýto give us an unforgettable tour of our newĚýromantic world.]]> 279 Aziz Ansari 1594206279 Steve 0 to-read 3.79 2015 Modern Romance
author: Aziz Ansari
name: Steve
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions]]> 21413662 xkcd comic ask Munroe a lot of strange questions: What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by his signature xkcd comics. (They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.)

In celebration of 10 years of unusual insight, Randall Munroe has revised his classic blockbuster to ask what if? x 10. The result is 10x the adventure of scientific inquiry. Featuring brand-new 2-color annotations and illustrations, this special anniversary edition is far more than a book for geeks, What If? explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much smarter for having read.]]> 303 Randall Munroe 0544272994 Steve 4 4.13 2014 What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
author: Randall Munroe
name: Steve
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/06/07
date added: 2015/06/09
shelves:
review:
If you ever wanted to know what would happen to the batter (and the city around him) if the pitcher threw the ball at about the speed of light, this is the book for you. If you haven't wondered that, what's wrong with you?
]]> Redshirts 13055592 Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that:
(1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces
(2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations
(3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues� understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.]]> 320 John Scalzi 0765316994 Steve 4 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which it is).

I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was a bit more than that. Some of the "bit more" could be explained with some other references to other media, but we'd get a bit spoilery, so I'll avoid that. Suffice to say that the author uses the robust humor and sort of meta analysis of Star Trek, sci-fi, and writing as a whole to get into some nice thought provoking and heart warming territory, all while being a nice and easy read.]]> 3.85 2012 Redshirts
author: John Scalzi
name: Steve
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2015/05/28
date added: 2015/05/28
shelves:
review:
This book could have been the simple comedy book that I was expecting going into it, and I would have probably enjoyed it just fine. I figured a sort of funny look at Star Trek from the perspective of one of the Redshirts going out on an adventure with Kirk or Spock or whoever would be kind of cool, maybe a little bit like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which it is).

I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was a bit more than that. Some of the "bit more" could be explained with some other references to other media, but we'd get a bit spoilery, so I'll avoid that. Suffice to say that the author uses the robust humor and sort of meta analysis of Star Trek, sci-fi, and writing as a whole to get into some nice thought provoking and heart warming territory, all while being a nice and easy read.
]]> <![CDATA[Unremembered (Vault of Heaven, 1)]]> 22238210
In addition to stunning updates to the original text, we're also including an exclusive short story set in the world of Vault of Heaven as well as a sneak preview of the sequel, Trial of Intentions, and a glossary to the universe.

The gods who created this world have abandoned it. In their mercy however, they sealed the rogue god-and the monstrous creatures he created to plague mortal kind-in the vast and inhospitable wasteland of the Bourne. The magical Veil that protected humankind for millennia has become weak and creatures of nightmare have now come through. Those who stand against evil know that only drastic measures will prevent a devastating invasion.

Tahn Junell is a hunter who's unaware of the dark forces that imperil his world, in much the same way his youth is lost to memory. But an imperious man who wears the sigil of the feared Order of Sheason and a beautiful woman of the legendary Far have shared the danger with Tahn. They've asked him, his sister, and his friends to embark with them on a journey that will change their lives . . . and the world . . . forever. And in the process, he'll remember . . .]]> 479 Peter Orullian 0765379872 Steve 0 to-read 3.35 2011 Unremembered (Vault of Heaven, 1)
author: Peter Orullian
name: Steve
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sand (The Sand Chronicles, #1)]]> 20509356 The new novel from the international bestselling author of the Wool trilogy.

The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost.

Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it. His mother, left with nothing but anger, is just trying to forget.

Palmer wants to prove his worth, not only to his family, but to himself. And in the barren, dune-covered landscape of his home, there is only one way to earn respect: sand-diving. Plunging deep below the desert floor in search of relics and scraps of the old world. He is about to embark on the most dangerous dive of his young life, aiming to become the first to discover the rumoured city below.

Deep within the sand lies the key to bringing his family together � and tearing their world apart.]]> 336 Hugh Howey Steve 4
In this world, Howey introduces us to a dysfunctional family. A father, with a sparsely detailed and intriguing past, who has disappeared -- abandoning his wife and her four children to a life of poverty -- creates, through his absence, much conflict for the remaining members of his family. The oldest two siblings make their living as divers... scavenging useful material from the titular sand in order to scrounge up a living. One of them stumbles upon a find that changes the small world, setting into motion all sorts of dramatic events throughout the post apocalyptic world.

All that would probably be interesting enough on its own, but the compellingly damaged relationships between the family members, and the evolution and growth of those relationships throughout the story really made the whole thing work.

I look forward to reading more of Hugh Howey's stories, they haven't let me down so far.]]> 4.01 2014 Sand (The Sand Chronicles, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Steve
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/05/21
date added: 2015/05/21
shelves:
review:
Hugh Howey is really quite adept at world building. While some authors do it with pages upon pages of description and exposition, Howey manages it by essentially writing as if you already know everything about the world, leaving out as much detail as he includes. He does this so well, sneaking in the detail that the reader needs amongst their various imaginings. The result is well realized, depressing, and fascinating.

In this world, Howey introduces us to a dysfunctional family. A father, with a sparsely detailed and intriguing past, who has disappeared -- abandoning his wife and her four children to a life of poverty -- creates, through his absence, much conflict for the remaining members of his family. The oldest two siblings make their living as divers... scavenging useful material from the titular sand in order to scrounge up a living. One of them stumbles upon a find that changes the small world, setting into motion all sorts of dramatic events throughout the post apocalyptic world.

All that would probably be interesting enough on its own, but the compellingly damaged relationships between the family members, and the evolution and growth of those relationships throughout the story really made the whole thing work.

I look forward to reading more of Hugh Howey's stories, they haven't let me down so far.
]]>