He/Him. In the USA... for now. Mastodon
I only track books that I read for pleasure, mostly SF/Fantasy. I've fallen out of the habit of actually writing reviews beyond giving a star rating. It would be nice to get back into that habit.
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Orlando (1995, Wordsworth)
In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the …
I really enjoyed both the language and the ideas. I'll have to re-read this to get a better sense for how it fits together.
First edition in Polish.
Well, one of the stray threads got resolved, and another got to a critical point. Overall a fairly depressing installment. These books are feeling more and more like chapters, and less like complete works.
Huh. Well, the stray plotline from the last book totally didn't get resolved in this one.
Treason's Harbour is the ninth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick …
This felt like half of a book. One of the major plotlines doesn't resolve at all. I'm sure it's covered in the next book of the series, but I was annoyed.
The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.
An audacious revision of …
Excellent. The Devil pays a visit to 1930s Moscow. All hell breaks lose. I wish I'd found the translator's endnotes before I read the novel, because they explained the jokes embedded in the Russian character names, which would have made keeping them straight easier.
The Ionian Mission is the eighth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, …
A solid book, but not as much fun as the previous few.
When Gravity Fails is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by American writer George Alec Effinger, …
Cyberpunk set in Cairo. I didn't end up liking it much. Many of the books I read are thinly-veiled gazetteers, showing off interesting places that the author has invented. This book did the same with people. Unfortunately, I didn't find most of the people to be compelling, and the protagonist in particular didn't feel like he held together as a character.
The Surgeon's Mate is the seventh historical novel in the Aubrey–Maturin series written by Patrick …
Fun. O'Brian is still finding ways to keep it fresh.
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, published in October 2006 by Bloomsbury, is …
Somewhat disappointing. Whereas Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell built up a world, layering on references and citations until the reader began to believe in it, these are too short to do that. What's left is fine, but not amazing fairy tales.
The next Aubrey/Maturin. Quite good. A balance of action and intrigue. A few places where it felt contrived though. Do ships just burst into flame? HMS Pinto?
This is a book club book from before I joined. It took a long time to get through it, partly because it's dense, and partly because it changes gears a lot. Initially, I wasn't convinced that it was really a "novel", rather than a collection of short stories. In the end, I'd probably admit that it was. It's a close thing, though. It's a puzzle book that's not really hiding anything. Clever fun.
A unique coming of age story. While the main character in this novel is dealing …
Book Club. A bit too focused on "relationships" for my taste, but lots of interesting history and solid characters.
It's no longer safe for Harry at Hogwarts, so he and his best friends, Ron …
A fairly satisfying ending.
The Collector Collector is the third novel by British author Tibor Fischer first published in …
Fun. Fischer does a great job of writing an obnoxious, ancient pot.
Altered Carbon is a 2002 cyberpunk novel by the English writer Richard K. Morgan. Set …
Very good. Dense, noirish sci-fi. Almost too dense, but not quite. Towards the end, I felt almost like I should have been keeping a list of who all the minor characters were, since loose ends kept being tied up that I had lost track of. That person the protagonist met for a page wasn't a throwaway? Nope, she was there for a reason, and it was...
