Bookish Thoughts

Coming off one of my least-favorite Discworld  books, we head straight into my favorite one. I don't necessarily think it's the best book in the series, though it's certainly up there. But it pits the Witches (my favorite main characters) against a family of vampires (my favorite villain). So of course I'm going to love it. And there's a lot to love here. Magrat has just had a baby is trying to figure out how to be a queen and a witch while taking care of a newborn. Granny Weatherwax makes her biggest sacrifice yet in an attempt to defeat the vampires, and there's legitimate concern that her methods may cause her to join them instead. Agnes is still trying to figure out where she ends and Perdita begins, all while fighting off the unwelcome romantic attentions of one of the vampires. And an Omnian priest with serious doubts finds himself on an adventure he never asked for. One of my favorite things about this book is the interactions between Agnes and Vlad, ...

Unlike the other stories so far in the Penric series, which take place years apart, this one is a direct sequel to the previous one. It picks up hours after Penric, Nikys, and Adelis narrowly escaped their pursuers and follows the rest of their journey to safety in Orbas. They stop briefly in a brothel to recover and get their bearings, where Penric gets the idea to disguise himself as a wealthy, semi-retired courtesan, with the aid of one of Desdemona's previous hosts. This disguise, of course, leads to shenanigans and makes for a fun farce. It also complicates the developing relationship between Penric and Nikys. What had been a slow-burn, seemingly inevitable romance between the two is thrown off. This being a Bujold story, I was expecting a happy ending. I was pleasantly surprised to discover something much more ambiguous. It was refreshing to get a story from her that wasn't all wide-eyed optimism and love-conquers-all. I love those stories, of course. The great comfor...

Ship Breaker  was my Christmas present from Kevin this year - the random book with a cool cover that he saw at the deep-discount store. As this tradition goes, it was better than most. Though the awards on the cover indicated that it might be. This is dystopian YA from the height of the dystopian YA phenomenon. When it seemed like everyone had something to contribute to that particular genre and it all started to blend together. So I was pleasantly surprised that this stood out from the pack. First because it posits a world that I could actually see coming to pass (unlike the Hunger Games, which are a bit too far removed from reality, though they serve as an apt allegory). And second because it doesn't slot white characters into the oppressed group. After global warming melted the poles and we ran out of oil, the rich kept getting richer and the poor kept getting poorer. Out protagonist, Nailer, works stripping copper wire from old ships and oil tankers that now dot the coast o...

Holes  is one of the first books I can remember everyone making a big deal about when it first came out. It was an instant classic, and though I was on the older end of the intended audience, I can remember getting caught up in the excitement around this new book, reading it, and loving it. I even say that movie when it came out a few years later, though I was definitely too old for it then and not quite old enough to circle back around to appreciating it. I'm glad I took the time to revisit it now, though I'm finding myself questioning my motives for doing so. See, I spent about a decade carefully curating a library for a hypothetical daughter. I'd scoop up the classics whenever I found them, populating the shelves with the heroines of my youth and seeking out the ones I'd missed the first time around. Then I found out I was having a son, and I found myself shifting gears. Holes  was the first book I bought with my actual son, rather than a hypothetical child in mind...

Bujold's Penric  series, her "retirement project" has been a nice way to continue to get new fiction from her, even though she's not planning to write any more books. Instead she's been releasing this series of novellas as e-books. And as much as I prefer physical books, the electronic format isn't so bad for these shorter installments, which I can often read in one or two sessions. The third installment jumps forward in time. Penric and Desdemona have been together for over a decade now, and they have a seamless partnership, with a deep knowledge of and respect for each other. It also throws the reader right into the action, with Penric getting kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon in the first chapter. Structurally, this story is a lot like Cryoburn, with kidnappers, shady governments, and shaky partnerships. Adding to the comparison is the fact that Penric is acting more and more like Miles with each passing story. This can probably be chalked up to the c...

I knew going in that The Twelve  was not as well-received as The Passage . This is often the case with the second installment in a series. Too often they serve as mere bridges from the intriguing beginning to the thrilling conclusion, with little meat of their own. This wasn't entirely the case with The Twelve , which I though was similar in style and scope to its prequel. It meandered a lot, but the so did the first book. There was an enormous cast of characters, spread over multiple locations. But I ultimately found it just as heart-rending and entertaining as the first book. One thing that frustrated me early on was Cronin's decision to return to the immediate aftermath of the viral outbreak. Most of the characters I cared about live 100 years after this point, and it seemed weird to focus on a group of people who were definitely going to die, one way or another, before the main focus of the book. But as the story progressed and the threads came together, this return to ...

I picked up Infomocracy  because it seemed like an interesting concept. Especially in light of the recent election. It takes place in the not-too-distant future, where access to the internet has revolutionized elections and the way we're governed. The world has been split into districts known as centenals. Each contains 100,000 people, or they did when they were first drawn up. It wasn't clear how that evolves over time. Regardless, each centenal votes on its own government, with elections held every 10 years. The borders have been opened worldwide, making it trivial to travel from one centenel to the next. This is especially important in big cities, which might contain dozens of competing governments. Some of these governments are remnants of those that exist today, emphasizing heritage and tradition. Others have naturally grown out of corporations like Coca-cola and Sony. And there are new, smaller ones, trying to gain footholds. It's a fascinating system and one that...