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Other People's Books

End of May 2018 ebook roundup

Whoops, I missed a couple of Kobo receipts that should have been in my last roundup! And I have a few others to add to those, too.

These are all Kobo books, and in all cases, I nabbed ’em because they were on sale for low prices. I buy most of my ebooks on sale these days, in fact. Mostly out of general disgruntlement about ebook prices getting jacked up! Though I’ll also very specifically buy certain titles due out this year. (Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars, I am looking straight at YOU.)

By Greg Bear:

The Forge of God. Which I already owned in paperback, but I haven’t read it yet. Nabbing an on-sale ebook copy raises the chances I’ll actually read it before the decade is out!

By Max Gladstone:

The Ruin of Angels, Four Roads Cross, Last First Snow, and Full Fathom Five, all part of his Craft Sequence series.

By Becky Chambers:

A Closed and Common Orbit, book 2 of her Wayfarers series, which began with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I really rather love her titles. And when I’m in the right mood for it, I also rather like her heavily character-driven fiction.

By Anne Fortier:

Juliet. I am unsure whether this qualifies as a mystery, fiction with a historical tie-in, or both. It’s been on my To Read list for ages as a library read. Went ahead and bought it since it was on sale, as mentioned above.

(Sidebar: this is yet another novel with “A Novel” included as part of its title. I suppose it’s nice of them to clear that up, but I swear, every time I see “A Novel” as part of a book’s official title, I keep wanting to ask “As opposed to what? A ham sandwich?”)

And by Georgette Heyer:

Cotillion. Nabbed this one because Heyer’s name keeps getting spoken of reverently in romance circles, and this title in particular keeps getting mentioned as one worth checking out.

Lastly, I should also mention that since I’m on Tor.com’s mailing list for their ebook club, I nabbed Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning. I’ve already read it, but it was nice to get my own copy!

31 for the year.

Books

Super quick ebook roundup

I have finally concluded a massive reorganization of my ebook library, all in the name of getting it onto my new Kindle Oasis. So of course I’ve got a couple more books that I have to add to the library now!

Picked up from Kobo:

The Girl With Ghost Eyes, by M.H. Boroson. Urban fantasy, but historical urban fantasy, featuring a Chinese immigrant protagonist. Snagged this while it was on sale for $1.99.

Picked up from Amazon:

Pro Git, by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub. Yeah, I know I said I normally don’t get things from Amazon unless they’re confirmed DRM-free, but I made an exception in this case. Mention of this went around at work as a free download. So I went ahead and leapt on it because a) we use Git at work, and b) hey, I like free!

Also, this particular text isn’t on Kobo. And while it is on Barnes and Noble, the free price isn’t in effect there. As of this writing (March 18th), it is still in effect on Amazon. So if a free ebook textbook about how to use Git sounds relevant to your interests, you can snag the Kindle edition here.

That makes 19 ebooks acquired for the year.

Other People's Books

Gorgeous French romance covers ebook roundup

La Gouvernante insoumise

La Gouvernante insoumise

Time for another ebook roundup post! Courtney Milan is one of the authors in the narrow band of “historical romance authors I enjoy reading”. And Goodreads has helpfully informed me that she has a giveaway going on their site for the French edition of her book The Duchess War, which is called Le Secret de la duchess! I already have the English edition of this in ebook form, but as soon as I laid eyes on the cover, I jumped on this giveaway, because:

  • Always up for an opportunity to amuse myself with practicing my French
  • Courtney Milan is an awesome writer, and
  • Gadzooks, the covers on the French editions of this series’ books are eye-poppingly gorgeous.

The English edition ones are pretty as well, don’t get me wrong. As romance novel covers go, I like the ones that have vividly colored gowns on the heroines. But oh goodness the French editions. Lovely.

You should, I think, be able to see them here on Kobo’s site!

Also worthy of note: the novella that opens this series, which is The Governess Affair in English and La Gouvernante insoumise in French, is available for free. If you’re a romance reader who likes to read in languages other than English, note as well that she has other translations available for this same book. I saw German, Spanish, and Dutch editions of this available on her Smashwords page. (Note, however, that only the German and Spanish editions as of this writing are free.)

Anyhow: I scarfed the French edition of the novella for important Gorgeous Cover and Language Nerdery reasons. Which also reminded me that I needed to do an ebook update in general, as my inbox is teetering! So here you go.

Acquired from Kobo

  • La Gouvernante insoumise, by Courtney Milan. French translation of her novella The Governess Affair, which is book 0 of her The Brothers Sinister series. (Or, in French, Les frères ténébreux.)
  • Taste of Marrow, by Sarah Gailey. SF (of the alternate history variety). Book 2 of her River of Teeth books. Liked book 1 quite a bit, so had to get this one too!
  • All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. SF. Book 1 of her Murderbot Diaries series, which I am getting on the general grounds of being highly amused at her protagonist being an android calling itself Murderbot. ;D
  • Bloodline, by Claudia Gray. I’ve already read this; it’s the Star Wars novel Gray wrote to give some lead-in to the story in The Force Awakens. Snapped this up when it went on sale for a good price, because I quite enjoyed this story, and all the mileage of Leia being badass.
  • Wake of Vultures, by Lila Bowen. Book 1 of her Shadow series. This was another one I nabbed because it went on sale for a low price in digital format. Had my eye on this one due to a genderfluid protagonist!
  • Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire. Book 2 of the Wayward Children series, another of the Tor.com sales I jumped on a couple weeks ago. Read this pretty much as soon as I got it, because I was looking forward to reading the story about Jack and Jill and their door!

Acquired from Barnes and Noble

Grabbed these two books after meeting their authors in passing at Orycon this year, and being deeply amused that they were billing themselves as the gayest table in the dealers’ room. I had to reward that kind of promotional spirit!

Also, I had to spend some of the credit I still have at B&N.

Those books, both of which are put out by NineStar Press, are:

  • Ardulum: First Don, by J.S. Fields. SF. Lesbian protagonist! She’s a smuggler confronted with a slave girl who resembles one of the deities from her homeworld.
  • Trans Liberty Riot Brigade, by L.M. Pierce. SF. Intersex protagonist! And I gotta say I love the title.

8 total for this post, and 58 for the year.

Other People's Books

Clearing the inbox before I go to Quebec book roundup post

Snarfed off the Tor.com ebook club:

  • Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey. Fantasy, rather renowned, and it’s been on my To Read shelf for a stupidly long time. Grabbed the ebook to up the chances I might actually eventually read this thing. ;D

And meanwhile my author friend userinfommegaera‘s got a lot of medical challenges she’s got to deal with right now, and selling books is hard enough when you’re NOT dealing with medical challenges. (She said, from experience.) So I grabbed everything of hers on Smashwords that I didn’t have yet, to wit:

  • Sojourn, Book 1 of her Tales of the Unearthly Northwest. Cop crashes his car and winds up in a ghost town–and his version of Brigadoon is not a carefree musical.
  • Much Ado in Montana. Contemporary romance. Which, I might add, has been previously featured on Boosting the Signal!
  • Cross-Country: Adventures Alone Across America and Back. Non-fiction. An account of the author’s travels across the country! If you like travelogues, you might want to check this out.
  • Homesick: A Time in Yellowstone Story. This is a novella, Book 4 of her Time in Yellowstone series.
  • New Year’s Eve in Conconully, another Tales of the Unearthly Northwest book.
  • Reunion, the third Tales book.

24 for the year.

Books, Other People's Books

Post-VCON book roundup post

The Tropic of Serpents

The Tropic of Serpents

Acquired at VCON as freebies in my and Dara’s swag bags:

  • Far Arena and Avim’s Oath, by Lynda Williams. SF. These happen to be books 5 and 6 of her Okal Rel Saga, so there’s some question as to whether I could read these without having read books 1-4. I went and found the author’s website, where I learned that this saga is apparently a shared world effort. So I pinged the relevant Twitter address and am informed that I should be able to read these, though I may miss some backstory as a result. We’ll see what happens.

Acquired as a freebie from Audible:

  • The Dispatcher, by John Scalzi. SF. This is Mr. Scalzi’s latest novella release, and as he describes in this post on his blog, it’s currently available as a free audio download from Audible. (A print and ebook edition will be coming later.) I heard him do a reading of part of this at Westercon this past summer, and found it quite entertaining, definitely enough to get me interested in hearing the whole story. Plus, I want to hear how Zachary Quinto handles audiobook narration!

And, acquired as ebooks from Kobo:

  • The Tropic of Serpents, The Voyage of the Basilisk, and “From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review”, all by Marie Brennan, all part of her Memoirs of Lady Trent series. I have already plowed through Tropic of Serpents, and have enjoyed it immensely. 😀 Basilisk is Book 3, and chances are high I will be acquiring this in print ASAP. The last title of these three is a Tor.com short, and takes place right after Book 3. I went ahead and snagged it to support the author, even though it can be read on Tor.com here.

50 for the year.

ETA: Whoops, forgot this month’s Tor.com ebook freebie: Range of Ghosts, by Elizabeth Bear. Make that 51 for the year.

Books

Book roundup post for September

A Natural History of Dragons

A Natural History of Dragons

Picked up from Kobo electronically:

  • The Gate to Futures Past, by Julie E. Czerneda. Book 2 of her Reunification series. Picked up on general “Because I Love Julie Czerneda’s Work” principles!
  • “The High Lonesome Frontier”, by Rebecca Campbell. This is an SF short story that I read over on Tor.com, and which I found quite delightful thanks to it being about something as simple as tracking the history of a song across about a hundred and fifty years. You can read it for free on Tor.com here, but since I liked it so much, I wanted to buy a copy to support the author.
  • A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. This is book 1 of her Memoirs of Lady Trent series, which I’ve had my eye on for a while and which I’ve finally begun delving into. I very much enjoyed this book and have reviewed it here.
  • The Family Plot, by Cherie Priest. Because new Southern Gothic-flavored novel by Cherie Priest? Why yes I WILL have some.

Picked up digitally from Project Gutenberg:

  • The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, by Margaret Cavendish. Grabbing this because Tor.com had a post up about it here, and as a result, I’m quite intrigued by the notion of reading a very early forerunner of the SF genre. Particularly given that this was written by a woman!

And, picked up in print from Third Place:

  • A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents, books 1 and 2 of the aforementioned Lady Trent novels. Because I liked book 1 well enough that I need them in print as well as in digital. 😀

44 for the year. (Counting A Natural History of Dragons twice since I bought it in both forms!)

Books

Quick ebook roundup

Magic & Manners

Magic & Manners

Picked up from Kobo:

  • Magic & Manners, by C.E. Murphy. Fantasy. This is userinfomizkit‘s first release in two years, her take on what Pride & Prejudice would have been like with magic. Naturally I had to check this out! Because I mean honestly, there was no way I was NOT reading this. 😀
  • Forest of Memory, by Mary Robinette Kowal. SF. And speaking of Austen-esque authors, this is a new novella by Kowal, and naturally I had to read this too.
  • The Wild One, by Danelle Harmon. Historical romance. Grabbed this because Dear Author had a review up for Book 5 of this series, which sounded like fun. But I don’t like to start a series that far in, so I went to find this one instead. And it’s actually available for free right now, so bonus!

10 for the year.