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Books

Books with a couple of reviews roundup!

Bought from Kobo Books:

  • The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe. Contemporary fantasy. Grabbed this one because of a heavy emphasis on music in the plot description, and because I’d read a sample of it on tor.com. And because Kobo had it for sale at $2.99, at least for a while!
  • Sold for Endless Rue, by Madeleine E. Robins. Historical fantasy. This is a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale, and as soon as I saw the Big Idea post about it on John Scalzi’s site, I was pretty much sold. Also, wow that cover is gorgeous.
  • Beneath the Shadows, by Sara Foster. Contemporary Gothic. This one got well-reviewed on the Smart Bitches Trashy Books site. I AM a sucker for a Gothic-style story, as witnessed by my love for Barbara Michaels, so I pretty much had to queue this one up to read.
  • Enchanted, by Alethea Kontis. YA fantasy. This was also reviewed well on the Bitchery, and since I’d had it on the queue to check out from the library, I escalated it up to an actual purchase. I don’t do YA often but this one sounds like fun. And I AM a sucker for an amnesia plot. It’s TRUE!
  • The Shambling Guide to New York City, by Mur Lafferty. Urban fantasy. Grabbed this one because I’m familiar with Mur Lafferty due to her podcasting work and because she’s done some guest writing for the most excellent Leviathan Chronicles. Plus, it’s been blurbed by Seanan McGuire, and while I have been slacking off hugely on reading urban fantasy these days, I’ll make exceptions if there’s humor involved. Which there promises to be, here!

This’ll pull me up to 80 for the year.

June 1, 2013 by
Books

Multi-national and multi-lingual book roundup!

Picked up in print in Victoria this past weekend, when Dara and I kept having fun ducking into small used bookstores and going “So! Do you have any books in French?”:

  • La communauté de l’Anneau, Les deux tours, and Le retour du roi. J.R.R. Tolkien. These are, of course, the French translations of the three books of The Lord of the Rings.
  • Harry Potter à l’École des Sorciers, Harry Potter et La Chambre des Secrets, and Harry Potter et Le Prisonnier d’Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling. The French translations of the first three Harry Potter books.

Grabbed from Kobo:

  • Bitter Seeds, by Ian Tregillis. Alternate history of the “WWII but with magic” school. Noticed this a while back as potentially interesting, grabbed now because Kobo had the price down to 2.99.
  • Wide Open, by Deborah Coates. Contemporary fantasy, by which I mean, fantasy set in the real world, but in a more rural setting rather than an urban one. Sounded interesting, about a woman coming back from a stint in Iraq and having to deal with her sister’s ghost.
  • Cold Magic, by Kate Elliott. Steampunk. Saw this one come out a while back, thought it sounded interesting, finally buying a copy.

And grabbed from Angry Robot directly, because they decided they wanted to celebrate SF written by women after the recent flaps over the Hugos and the Clarkes this year, to wit, go Angry Robot!:

  • vN, by Madeline Ashby. SF. Liked the concept of a heroine who’s an intelligent, self-replicating robot–a synthetic humanoid.
  • The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, by Cassandra Rose Clarke. SF, and again, oddly enough, about intelligent humanoid robots! In this case, a love story involving one.
  • Walking the Tree, by Kaaron Warren. Fantasy. This sounded like it had an interesting worldbuilding concept, about an island civilization dominated by a giant tree and a woman who’s charged to walk the circumference of the island.

75 for the year.

April 11, 2013 by
Books

Post-Norwescon book roundup post

Picked up in print at Norwescon:

  • Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein. SF, of course. This was actually a freebie in the swag bag, but it’s a book acquisition, so it counts!
  • Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed. Fantasy. Grabbed this one because I’ve been hearing good things about it for ages, and it turns out it’s one of these year’s Hugo nominees anyway, so hey!
  • The Sail Weaver, by Muffy Morrigan. This is really kind of science fantasy, from the sound of it, rather than SF or F. This was being sold by the author in the dealer’s room at the con, and she sold me on it when she pitched it as “tall ships and dragons IN SPACE”.
  • The Wicked Instead, by Vivien Weaver and and No Deadly Thing, by Tiger Gray. Urban fantasy. Again, being sold by the authors in the dealer’s room. Picked these up after I had a lovely conversation with both authors about their covers, and once I told them I was an author myself and mentioned Carina, they piped out with the name of my editor–Deb Nemeth! So after that awesome conversation, I pretty much HAD to buy both books.

Picked up electronically directly from the authors and/or publishers:

  • 7th Son: Deceit and 7th Son: Destruction, by J.C. Hutchins. These are books 2 and 3 of his 7th Son trilogy, the first book of which had been traditionally published but didn’t sell well enough for his publisher to continue the trilogy. He’s self-pubbed the remaining two as ebooks. I quite enjoyed the first one so was very happy to scarf up the other two.
  • The aforementioned The Wicked Instead and No Deadly Thing, also bought digitally because the trade paperback copies I bought are large and I’m reluctant to damage them by carrying them around on my commute. Also bought because woo, supporting Seattle-area SF/F authors!

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Dawn, by Octavia Butler. Book 1 of her Xenogenesis trilogy. Picked up because I’d tried to start reading this before in print, but the omnibus edition I have is HUGE and not really friendly to being carried around on my commute. And they’ve finally been made available in ebook form!
  • Poison, by Bridget Zinn. YA fantasy. Picked up pretty much because of reasons described here.

63 for the year.

April 1, 2013 by
Books

50th anniversary Doctor Who book roundup

Picked up in print from Barnes and Noble, because I DO buy Kit in both formats:

  • Mountain Echoes, by C.E. Murphy. Book Eight of the Walker Papers.

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Avis de tempête and Sturmnacht, by Jim Butcher. These are the French and German translations of Storm Front, which is of course Book 1 of the Dresden Files.
  • Dhampir, Thief of Lives, and Sister of the Dead, by Barb and J.C. Hendee. These are the first three books of the Hendees’ Noble Dead series, one of the few fantasy series doing a treatment of vampires that I’d ever read anything of. I liked the first couple of them. This is me re-buying them in ebook form.

Also picked up from Kobo, but calling these out in a separate list as they’re all the ebook releases of the special 50th Anniversary editions of selected Doctor Who novels, one for each Doctor!

  • Ten Little Aliens, by Stephen Cole
  • Dreams of Empire, by Justin Richards
  • Last of the Gaderene, by Mark Gatiss
  • Festival of Death, by Jonathan Morris
  • Fear of the Dark, by Trevor Baxendale
  • Players, by Terrance Dicks
  • Remembrance of the Daleks, by Ben Aaronovitch
  • Earthworld, by Jacqueline Rayner
  • Only Human, by Gareth Roberts
  • Beautiful Chaos, by Gary Russell
  • The Silent Stars Go By, by Dan Abnett

52 for the year.

March 24, 2013 by
Trilingual Hobbit Reread

Tri-lingual Hobbit re-read: Chapter 10 (German notes)

And now, last but not least, the notes for Chapter 10 of the German edition of The Hobbit!

Which are rather shorter than the French notes, but then, my grasp of German is still rather shorter than my grasp of French is these days, and I’m still not having those a-ha moments where I get chunks of German starting to make sense. But I HAVE started studying German in SuperMemo, so we’ll see what happens after I’ve done that for a while!

Continue Reading

March 21, 2013 by