ladyofastolat: (Default)
Two months on the same series!

I first gave this series a try over a dozen years ago, when several people appeared to share my reading tastes were raving about it. I was so confident I'd like the books that I bought 4 compilation editions straight off, this being in pre-Kindle times when American imports took ages to arrive, so later volumes needed to be secured in advance. I read two books – the first Miles book and the first Cordelia one – and while I don't remember disliking them, I remember being disappointed by my failure to love them. I don't think I consciously gave up on the series, just never felt inspired to read on.

Much more recently, though, I read and loved many other books by the same author (Lois McMaster Bujold), so I thought I'd try the Vorkosigan books again. It still took me several books before I went from a mild "this is okay, I suppose, and I'm determined not to give up so quickly this time" to a realisation that I was hooked. But I did end up loving them, and have spent the last two months reading my way through the whole series.

Series overview for people who haven't read them )

My reactions to invididual titles, with spoilers )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
Yes, yes, I know I said I'd try to write something every day in November (except when I was away) but then A Certain Someone remembered that he needed 75 hand-sewn favours to be produced within a week, so I've been spending much of my evenings sewing instead. They only take about 10 to 15 minutes each, but that does add up. But, assuming the pack of crescent moon charms turns up tomorrow (it was due today), I'm now confident that I'll finish them in time, so am taking an hour or two off sewing for book write-ups.

Between mid-August and a couple of weeks ago, I was reading my way through the entire Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. I'll put that in a separate post, but here are the books I've read since then.

Books read )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
Since I'm running late with this, I won't say much about each book.

Books read in December )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
I'd intended just to do monthly book posts this year, but with 6 books read (not all of them finished) so far this month, I thought I'd write them up now. I've also suddenly remembered another book that I read a few months ago and forgot about.

Ghosts, thieves, swamp monsters and plagues )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
A YA historical romp, a dull fantasy trilogy, some Philip Pullman (including the new one), a literate gorilla and lots of table etiquette.

Books read in October )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
Quite a lot this months, it seems - poetic language on the moon, five books of spirits and thieves, two very silly children's books, a man who lives for (almost) forever, monsters in a dark city, and a history of the census.

Books read in October )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
Fewer books than normal this month, due to being on holiday last week, during which I spent much of my reading time reading guidebooks and maps and obsessively checking the weather forecast.

Books read in July )
ladyofastolat: (Default)
After I finished my Thief series re-read, the month was dominated by Jasper Fforde, pausing only for some undone Victorians and an angry chef"

Books read in June )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
Posted one day early, since I'm going away tomorrow and won't have finished my current book before then. Quite a lot of books this month, but a lot of them were short, quick children’s books.

Books read in March )
ladyofastolat: (scribe)
I enjoyed writing reviews of everything I read in 2016, but the reviews had become too long and arduous. I've decided to keep up with the reviewing in 2017, but keep the reviews much shorter. That's the intention, anyway. We'll see how it turns out.

Books read in January )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
122 books. Quite a lot, given that the vast majority of my reading takes place in bed in the morning before getting up for work.

I've bolded those titles that I particularly liked.

All books read in 2016 )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
Nearing the end of 2016. This whole "write a review of every book I read in 2016" thing fell apart rather in the summer, although I think I managed to track down all the titles retrospectively and write at least a few lines about them. I do quite like having the record to look back on, so might continue this in 2017, although I'll probably write less about each book. Or try to. I'm not good at being succinct.

Anyway...

Books in mid December )

Sagas

Dec. 4th, 2016 11:59 am
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
Earlier this year, I inherited responsibilities relating to the purchase of adult stock. Instead of just considering hamster fairies and snot monsters, the usual subject matter of my book-purchasing decisions, I have had to learn all about crime and sagas, the two most popular genres. (Crime generates FAR more issues, but there are far more crime books around. In terms of issues per item, sagas are ahead.)

Sagas interest me. Supposedly they're "family sagas," a name that suggests lengthy epics following the same family over generations. Most of them aren't like that, but they are instantly recognisable at a glance. At 20 paces in twilight with your eyes half closed, you could tell a saga and never be wrong.

On sagas and downtrodden women in shawls )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
Let's see if I can get this reviewing thing back up and running.

A Regency romance and two fantasies )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
For the last few weeks, I have been reading The Chronicles of St Mary’s by Jodi Taylor, which has seven novels published so far, with more to come, and around the same number of short stories.

Adventures through time )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
Oh dear. I have completely, utterly failed in my attempt to record everything I read for a year. Here I will attempt to recreate the list of Books Read Since I Failed So Utterly.

Many, many, many books )
ladyofastolat: (Misty Glastonbury)
Despite the important role that Arthurian legend has played in my life, I haven't actually read all that many Arthurian novels. Does anyone have any recommendations, especially for books that have appeared on the scene after the early 90s, when most of my previous reading took place? (However, feel free to recommend earlier stuff. I've definitely missed many must-reads. I'm currently 50 pages into my first ever reading of Sword at Sunset, for example - a book I really should have read decades ago. I'm not sure why I didn't, given that I read The Lantern Bearers several times. Anyway...)

I'm open to recommendations for pretty much anything with an Arthurian element, from Arthur the Romano-British warlord to Arthur the high king of an medieval romantic castle; from modern-set fantasies that draw on Arthurian legends (like The Dark is Rising), to the Matter of Britain transposed to space; from retellings of the well-known stories, to stories about original characters who live on the fringes of Arthur's world, observing from the outside. (I always love outsider viewpoints.)

The only things I'm not that keen on are:
- Macho military battle stories, with endless battles waged by paper-thin characters. A few battles are fine, but I want emotions and characters, too.
- Books full of New Age mysticism, although some magic is fine.

I'm also dubious about books that try to convince us that Mordred was just misunderstood. I read one once, and it was okay. I could grudgingly accept it for the duration of the book, but that was all. Having recently had my heart broken all over again by Gillian Bradshaw, I am not currently receptive to this idea.

June books

Jul. 8th, 2016 12:56 pm
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
I've failed badly in my resolution to write reviews of everything I read in 2016. Blame holidays, which got me out of the habit.

For several weeks, from late May to the middle of June, I was reading through Dorothy L Sayers' Peter Wimsey novels. I did so in a fairly random order, the first book (Murder Must Advertise) being chosen for me out of thousands of possibles by a series of die rolls. From a random beginning, it seemed fitting to carry on in a random order, so I went to Strong Poison, which I liked, and Gaudy Night, which I liked a lot. I'd read one or two of the series some years ago, but I found them too lacking in emotion for my taste at the time. I don't know why I reacted better to them this time. Perhaps I was just in a different mood. Perhaps it was because Gaudy Night gave me an emotional way in, being a lot more focused on such things than some of the other books. I do often struggle to warm to a main character until I've seen them through other people's eyes, which is why I often find first person narration unengaging. But, anyway, whatever the reason, I read my way - in a fairly eccentric order - through most of the novels, and then went on holiday to Wales, where I got waylaid by King Arthur, so moved on without quite completing my reading of the series.

At some point during my reading of that series, I paused to read The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon - a brief YA retelling of Norse mythology, from before the building of Asgard all the way through the Ragnarok and beyond, all told in the first person by Hel. The voice is that of a modern teenage girl, informal, colloquial and very angry. It's had some rave reviews, but I just found it grim, depressing and unengaging.

I also read Ferguson's Gang: The Remarkable Story of the National Trust Gangsters, by Polly Bagnall and Sally Beck. Ferguson's Gang were a mysterious group of people who raised money for the National Trust in the 1930s, and presented it masked, in a variety of dramatic and headline-grabbing ways. This was in the early days of the National Trust's involvement in preserving buildings, and Ferguson's Gang arranged and funded their purchase of several small buildings across the country, including Newtown Town Hall on the Isle of Wight. I spent ages one day in Newtown Town Hall reading the facsimile of "The Boo," their minute book. All the members took on assumed names and personas, and The Boo is full of jokes, jollity and japes; it reminded me quite a lot of the minute book of various student societies I was involved in, full of digressions and in-jokes. All the members were women graduates in their 20s, from a variety of backgrounds, so it fitted in quite nicely with my reading of Gaudy Night. One of the authors of the book is the granddaughter of "The Arthichoke," the gang's tame architect, who raised his family in one of the buildings the Gang preserved. The book tells the story of the Gang and of the real people behind the pseudonyms, many of whom had colourful lives, and I found it extremely interesting and readable.

While in Wales, I read the Four Branches of the Mabinogion (Penguin Classics edition) and meant to carry on, but reached the bit when Culhwch spends 6 pages listing every single one of Arthur's warriors, and laid it down for a while, weary. I misaimed on picking it up again, so ended up dipping in and out of Gerald of Wales instead, both his tour of Wales and his description of Wales. I do like Gerald, with his shameless bias towards his own birthplace and family's lands, his ability to go off on long tangents about the habits of beavers, and the way he misses no opportunity to plug his latest book or have a dig at Geoffrey of Monmouth. (Must reread him, too.)

I tried to read the Maginogion sequence of novels by Evangeline Walton, but really didn't take to them at all, so gave up very early.

Since getting back from Wales, I've been obsessing on Arthurian legend, but I did take a brief break from it to read Binny Bewitched by Hilary McKay - one of the few children's book authors who gets me to read out of my usual favourite genres. I particularly love her Exiles series - humorous mini-misadventures of a family of four book-obsessed sisters - but I'm enjoying this current series, too, of which this is the third. Set in a small Cornish village, it deals with 12 year old Binnie, her family and her various nemeses - she always seems to have a nemesis. There are no massive dramas and no heavy-handed Issues. It's just the small dramas of daily life, with nice characters, lots of humour and some lovely turns of phrase.
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
Oops. I've got very behind with my write-up of the books of 2016. I finished Farthing, the first book in the Small Change trilogy by Jo Walton, exactly 4 weeks ago, while waiting for Pellinor to pick me up from the ferry terminal in Southampton before heading off to Cornwall. I read the next two during the first half of our roleplaying week. Since so long has gone by, I don't feel like writing a proper review, but I want to at least record the fact that I read them, for future reference.

Small Change series )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
I'm getting out of order here, since I have a couple of book reviews on my work computer, written over several lunch breaks, but forgot to email them to myself before the weekend. Since I've got this review on my home computer, I might as well post it now.

Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness )
ladyofastolat: (sneezing lion)
What on earth is the sense in having a Kindle edition of books 1, 3 and 4 in a series, but not of book 2?

It's a particularly light-hearted, fluffy series. Book one had a proper ending, without cliffhangers or dangling plot threads. I hadn't even firmly decided whether I was going to read on or not, and, if I was, whether I was going to do so immediately, or leave it until next time I felt like a lighthearted short fluffy read. However, that ending was followed by a preview of book 2, and I ended up reading it. Thanks to the preview, book 2 is officially The Novel I Am Currently Reading. Thanks to the lack of a Kindle edition, I now have a secondhand paperback of book 2 winging its way to me, due to arrive tomorrow. Both of these facts means that book 2 is now officially The Book I Am Currently Reading, and thanks to the way that my mind works - I find it impossible to have two fiction books on the go at the same time - this means that No Other Book Will Do until I've read it. This is particularly annoying today, since I've got a 90 minute period in the early evening in which, for Reasons, which can only usefully be filled with reading.

And, yes, I know that most of these difficulties are of my own making, but I repeat my original question. What on earth is the sense in having a Kindle edition of books 1, 3 and 4 in a series, but not of book 2?

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