Bookish Thoughts

Falling Free  is an early novel in the Vorkosigan series. It was written shortly after  Shards of Honor ,  The Warrior's Apprentice , and  Ethan of Athos , when Bujold hadn't quite decided on Miles as the protagonist. It takes place 200 years before any of the other books, back when space exploration was fairly young and Barrayar was in isolation. It tells the story of the quaddies, gentically engineered humans designed for zero-gee work before the invention of artificial gravity. This is not a favorite book in the series, being both an early work and disconnected from all of the main characters I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by home much I liked it. It's not the smoothest or most layered of Bujold's work, and she dives into technical stuff in a slightly distracting way. But the characters are amazing, and the plot, while straight-forward, is fun and interesting. My favorite part is that we get a few points of view from the chief ant...

Snicket continues to play with the formula, resulting in what is my favorite book of the series so far. It's nice when the Baudelaire's get some good mixed in with the bad. It makes the story more interesting. Never-ending misery is ultimately boring (try reading  The Two Towers ). A few bright spots keep the story fresh and interesting. More importantly, they keep hope alive. So the Baudelaires are sent to a married couple. And while the wife is greedy and treacherous, the husband is kind. Even if his good intentions come to nothing due to his weak will and distaste for arguments, at least he tries to treat the orphans well while they're under his care. Additionally, Count Olaf is barely in this book. He sneaks around the edges even more than usual, so the orphans have to be more proactive than usual. They uncover his plot and come close to thwarting it. They find the Quagmire triplets and come close to freeing them. Alas, it's only the sixth book, so nothing can q...

Back in high school, all of my friends took AP English and I didn't. At the time it made sense. Mudd really didn't care about AP English, and since my high school capped us at 3 AP courses, I filled that space with physics and calculus. I don't regret that decision, but I did miss out on some interesting books. So I'm going back to fill in these gaps, and the latest "missed" book is Tess. I can't even really remember how my friends reacted to this book. I'm not entirely sure how I would have reacted to it. Or how it was taught. I doubt I'd have been ready for it when I was 17. But now I shuddered almost immediately when Alec was introduced - ignoring Tess' boundaries from the start and then blaming her for his every transgression. Even Angel, presented as the perfect man, comes across as pretty awful. Really this is a book about how much it sucks to be a woman. Tess is raped. Her child dies before it can be baptized. She falls in love and l...

By this point in The Dresden Files, a lot has changed. The war with the Red Court has ended in their annihilation. Dresden discovered a daughter. He died, spent some time as a ghost, and has now come back to life in the guise of the Winter Knight working for Mab. The first 100 or so pages of the book serve to orient us in the new world, but I had some trouble getting through them. It wasn't until Harry started to reconnect with his old friends and make amends that I became really engaged. Alas, by then, another change had become apparent. Harry has always leered at women in a way that made me uncomfortable. I brushed it aside in favor of the excitement of his adventures. And he seemed to be getting better. As he gathered more female allies around him and forged all sorts of different relationships with women, I really thought he was becoming less misogynistic. But in this book he levels up in a way that has me wondering if Jim Butcher has ever actually interacted with a woman. ...

The tenth book in Jordan's epic  Wheel of Time  series is essentially a catch up book. At the end of the previous book, Rand and Nynaeve removed the taint from saidin. For the first half (or two-thirds, really) of this book, we look at what each of the other main characters was doing when that happened. Then there are some minor baby steps towards the next bits of those characters arcs. But for the most part, this is 820 pages without a plot. I can see giving up at this point in the series. It's frustrating when nothing happens for an entire book. But I had my expectations tempered. I knew this book was the low point of the series. I know the next book is much more action-packed. I know the most frustrating plot lines (well, Perrin's) are about to get tied off so the characters can rejoin the main story. I persevered through this book to get to the end. And that's all there really is to say about it. You always get that episode of television right shortly before the...

Snicket continues to tweak his formula just enough to keep me interested in the Baudelaire orphans. In the fifth book they are sent to a boarding school, rather than to live with another long lost family member. Although things don't really improve for them there (their lives have been getting steadily worse since poor Monty died), they do finally make some friends their own age. I also liked that Count Olaf's plan was a little subtler this time around. Although I could see what he was doing, the poor orphans were completely at a loss. And they still came close to defeating him. As close as they ever do anyway. With hostages to free, a solid clue about why all of this is happening, and a promise of more complicated plots, I'm excited to keep reading. The formula will change up eventually (I think in the seventh book - halfway through). In the meantime, it's fun to watch the orphans grow ever more resourceful.

It's not a stretch to call  Witches Abroad  one of my most influential books. It might very well be my most influential book. It changed the way I look at the world, especially at stories. This book points out tropes and then picks them apart and undermines them, all while playing by the rules of the narrative. After reading it, I started paying much closer attention to everything else I was reading. I developed a feel for stories and began to really understand how they work and why. On it's surface,  Witches Abroad  is a silly book that combines fairy tales and road trips. The witches travel to Genua to defeat an evil fairy godmother, and along the way they encounter any number of "rural myths", from Sleeping Beauty to Dracula to Little Red Riding Hood. It's those encounters, all leading up to the final encounter that add so much hilarity and richness to the book. Moreso than any other Discworld book, and this is a common theme in the series, this book is about...

This was a cute little novella about the days leading up to Miles and Ekaterin's wedding. It's told from the point of view of Armsman Roic, who has fallen slightly out of favor after the events of  A Civil Campaign . Here he's given a chance to redeem himself by discovering and foiling a plot on Ekaterin's life with the help of Sergeant Taura. It was a treat to see Taura again, and especially to see her attempting to fit in to Barrayaran culture. Armsman Roic's growing feelings for her are really sweet, as are his fumbling attempts to get in her good graces. Ultimately she's able to have it all: a week being treated like a fairy tale princess, an opportunity to save the day, and the attraction of a good man. I'm left wondering how long she'll live though. When she was first introduced, she was given a lifespan of maybe 20 years. Thanks to "medical advances" that's now been extended to 26 years, which is great. I love Taura and I certainly...

In  The Miserable Mill , the Baudelaire orphans once again encounter an uncaring guardian, a plot by Count Olaf to get their money, and an almost complete lack of help from the adults around them. Snicket isn't making huge changes to his formula (yet), but he's having a lot of fun playing around with the details. This time around, Count Olaf stays off page for more than half the book. Everyone knows he's going to show up eventually, and waiting for it to happen creates some great tension. And when he finally does arrive, it's even a bit surprising because of his disguise of choice this time around. We also get some more hints at his past. This book introduces and then kills Dr. Orwell, another of Olaf's associates who hadn't yet been introduced. But she is also associated with the eye Olaf has tattooed on his ankle. It appears on the cover of her book and her home/office is designed to look like it. Violet and Klaus are also forced to switch places a bit thi...

With  A Civil Campaign  the Vorkosigan Saga turns its focus away from galactic affairs to focus on the domestic. Emperor Gregor's wedding is coming up soon. Miles is trying to woo Ekaterin without her knowing, to disastrous results. Mark and Kareen are back from a year of university and trying to figure out how they fit back on Barrayar, both independently and as a couple. And a couple of local counts are about to make history. This book is absolutely delightful. The centerpiece is a dinner party that is such a beautiful disaster my reading kept getting interrupted by my laughter. Every possible thing goes wrong, and then some more stuff goes wrong on top of it. Leading up to the dinner, everyone is laying in plans to achieve their own goals. Following the dinner, everyone is struggling to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move forward. There's really a lot to love about this book, which does a brilliant job of calling on the whole history of the series up to this p...

I've been meaning to get around to the Lunar Chronicles for a while now. Then Sarah read and loved them, and that pushed me over the edge. The first book,  Cinder , is a wonderful retelling of Cinderella, set in the distant future. Cinder is a cyborg, property of her stepmother and sole breadwinner for the family. All she really wants is to escape her life. But just as she starts to figure out how to do that, she gets caught up in much larger events . This story is incredibly well constructed. It's a classic fairy-tale, so you'll know many of the basic plot points going in. Cinder has an evil stepmother. There's a ball and a fancy dress and a prince. But there are some fun twists, too. My favorite is that Cinder ends up being her own fairy godmother, repairing an ancient car that she uses to get to the ball. She also loses her entire foot at said ball, rather than just her show, because her foot is robotic and doesn't fit very well besides. The series itself wea...

The first time I picked up  The Martian  I only made it two pages in before I rolled my eyes so hard that I had to put the book down and step away. It took a month before I was ready to try again. The exposition is...clumsy. Straight out of a story I or one of my friends might have written when we were 14 and had just discovered fanfiction.net. I guess that's what you get with self-publishing. The author's voice eventually faded into the character of Mark Watney. It helped that he introduced a bunch of other characters back on Earth around page 50. And while they may have been two-dimensional, they at least distracted from Watney himself and made the story a bit more bearable. But ultimately I didn't like this book. It was fast and readable, so I finished it pretty quickly, but I came out of it feeling angry and condescended to. Andy Weir doesn't seem to trust the reader. He reiterates plot points pages after they've happened, because they're about to be rel...

Another book, another distant relative, another dastardly plot from Count Olaf. I can see how these books could start to feel repetitive. But since they're aimed at a much younger audience, that is probably part of the point. The thing to do is look at the details. The new guardian is not quite as wonderful as Uncle Monty was. She's terrified of everything. She's constantly correcting everyone's grammar, even that of infant Sunny who barely knows real words yet, let alone proper grammar. So even though she sees through Count Olaf's latest disguise as Captain Sham, she fails to do anything to protect the children in her care. She's ultimately eaten by leeches (probably. I wouldn't be too surprised if she showed up again in a later book. There's some good stuff in here about facing your fears and finding courage. And also about how annoying pedantry is. The plot twists and turns in exciting ways, and the orphans once again team up to save the day, desp...

Janet Mock's  Redefining Realness  is part memoir, part Intro to Trans Issues. It's an incredibly accessible primer on the struggles and barriers many trans people face, grounded by Janet's personal experiences.  She was incredibly lucky in some ways and unlucky in others, and she's quick to point out the factors that made her transition easier (a loving supportive family and access to resources at school) and the ways in which she fell through the cracks (a victim of sexual abuse, occasionally homeless). She does a good job of tying her experience in with research about trans people in general, and her story remains incredibly personal while also showing the reader a much wider world. Redefining Realness  tells the story of Janet's childhood and her slow but steady journey to womanhood. She continually references literature and authors she found comfort in over the years, particularly Maya Angelou's work and Zora Neale Hurston's  Their Eyes Were Watching ...