Books I’ve read 📚 log(book)

A bit on the nose, but still nice: Sweatheart is a well-written very short story by Abbey Mei Otis that is first sweet and then chilling in the path the story takes – nothing too special either, just a perfectly fine scifi short.

Winnie ille Pu

by A.A. Milne · published 1926 · last read 2022-07-07

This book is, of course, adorable in every way. The dorky bear with his friends in various stages being excitable, exuberant, worried, forgetful, depressed, busy, or superior are delightful and a neat way to keep a child entertained.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller Jr. · published 1959 · read 2022-03-28

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Damn, rating this book is hard! The first part had me thinking that it was just standard (though not standart then, of course!) far-future post-fallout sci-fi where humanity lives in its own ruins. And then the second part was alright, eh. And then the last part was suddenly really fucking intense and painful in a good way.

Beware of Chicken

by CasualFarmer · published 2022 · read 2022-03-25

Must have fallen down a progression fantasy hole somewhere. Not usually quite my genre, but when it's some of the better written free fiction out there (aka no typos, actual sentences, punctuation!), what can you do. It's pretty much Stardew Valley but xianxia. Guy is oblivious but ultra powerful through his connection to the land. He's kinda plopped into the world, but entirely unfazed. All his our-world Western commentary from a nice guy are taken as absolute teachings in a rigid society he's barely aware of.

Open House on Haunted Hill

by John Wiswell · published 2020 · read 2022-03-17

Absolutely adorable. I read this when I was in the mood for wholesome short fic, and this take on a haunted house delivered 100%. It's plain fluff with some attempt at heartstring-tugs. Nothing more – but great at what it does.

Canticle

by R.A. Salvatore · published 1991 · read 2022-03-16

Canticle by R.A. Salvatore is just D&D style fantasy. As you'd expect from the early 90s (no offense, present company excluded): It's pretty generic, with flat characters, badass fights, and a very good vs evil outlook on life.

Dragonflight

by Anne McCaffrey · published 1968 · read 2022-03-13

Okay look. Dragonriders? A whole social group structured around dragons?!! A whole society slowly losing their belief in the ancient threat that made them support and accept the dragon riders? It sounds so, so good. But.

Stuff Matters

by Mark Miodownik · published 2013 · read 2022-03-12

All my notes are lost to a hardware disaster, so the tl;dr is just: material pop-science, fun read, drags on in places. Nice without being great. The chapters on steel and chocolate were great, the one on concrete could have been great but instead was grating. All in all cool info, presented well, if you can stand the voice.

The Star

by Arthur C. Clarke · published 1955 · last read 2022-03-05

A solid scifi short story. I probably shouldn't be surprised at Clarke's knowledge of the Jesuits. At only four pages, it felt well-written (but not quite as moving as it wants to be).

Little Free Library

by Naomi Kritzer · published 2020 · read 2022-03-04

Adorable. Made me feel feelings, but found the ending unsatisfying. But the mysterious exchange by way of one of those free bookshelf libraries people put up outside their houese? Yeah, that was nice.

Metal Like Blood in the Dark

by T. Kingfisher · published 2020 · read 2022-03-03

Brother, Sister and their inventor make a strange group. When their inventor is suddenly forced to leave without them, the giant, powerful beings are on their own – and are forced to learn things like morals, and lies. Beautifully written. The ending was a bit weak, but I can't bring myself to care when the rest was so good.

A Better Way of Saying

by Sarah Pinsker · published 2021 · read 2022-03-02

Magic born in the silent movies, or rather, in the people reading out the dialog cards in movie theatres. Creative, fun, nice commentary on the power of language and editors (did Pinsker write this to appease her own editors? who knows). I'd have rated it higher from other authors, probably, but my standards for Pinsker are unreasonably high. Still a neat thing to read.

Two Truths and a Lie

by Sarah Pinsker · published 2020 · read 2022-03-01

Horror is not my genre, so I feel out of my depth in reviewing this story. It stuck with me, though – I'm writing this review nine months after I read it, and I still remember the story, the characters (the lying protagonist, the creepy Uncle Bob of the even creepier TV show, and, oh dear, the hill).

Watership Down

by Richard Adams · published 1972 · read 2022-02-28

Rabbits. One of those children's books that does also work for adults, but only while you make allowances for it being written for kids. I feel like I want to qualify everything with that sentence.

The Fractal Prince

by Hannu Rajaniemi · published 2012 · read 2022-02-20

The Quantum Thief was amazing. I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about what I should expect – a lot of the charm of The Quantum Thief was all about figuring out how the world works, while also keeping up with the absolute power and momentum of the characters involved – gods, gods who didn't know they were gods, their toys, their toys about to kill some gods, and so on.

The Quantum Thief

by Hannu Rajaniemi · published 2010 · last read 2022-02-18

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Sometimes, a book is just so busy enjoying itself that I have to like it, no matter its faults. The Quantum Thief starts out in the Dilemma Prison, where the virtualised prisoners are forced to go through various versions of philosophical puzzles or game theory scenarios. If you win enough games, some poor sod in a surrounding cell gets deleted and replaced with a copy of you. If this doesn't sound hilarious or intriguing to you, then this book is safe to skip (despite the fact that the Dilemma Prison only takes up the first ten pages or so).

Talking about Machines

by Julian E. Orr · published 1996 · read 2022-02-17

This is technical anthropology, and it is thorough and much better than you'd expect from a potentially dry dissertation from 1990, described as an “underground classic among ethnographers of work”. The central thesis of the book is that (technical) knowledge is a socially distributed resource that is transported by way of oral culture and that debugging works by constructing a narrative between technician, customer and machine. More details below, but this is both a central insight, well described and documented, and applicable to most areas of (work) life.

The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe · published 1979 · read 2022-02-11

The Right Stuff is what you need to be an absolutely bonkers guy, who thinks that a 23% likelihood of dying in an accident on the job (as a soldier, so excluding any combat deaths) sounds great and fun. It's the story of fighter pilots, and how they became astronauts. Very journalistic in style, which meant both that it's very entertaining, and feels mildly untrustworthy whenever the author likes or dislikes one of the protagonists overly much.

The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction

by Miri Rubin · published 2014 · read 2022-02-08

A disappointing VSI book, this time around: light on substance, but heavy on the condescension. I'll list a couple of things that annoyed me (lest I start thinking I liked the book) and then some things I learnt:

The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized

by ErraticErrata · published 2015 · read 2022-02-06

More of the same, with the novelty worn off a bit. Some new interesting Roles (Bumbling Conjurer, Exiled Prince), and some hints at future escalation into less of the pedestrian wars with soldiers at borders and more of the world/universe crushing stuff. There's a lot of maneuvering against the protagonist's villainous nemesis, which I didn't really care about. But then, I didn't care about the big battles, either – I just hung around for the worldbuilding (which had some really good moments).

So You Want to Be a Villain?

by ErraticErrata · published 2015 · read 2022-02-01

Web-serial that is generally not terrible! Takes place in a world with clear Good and Evil, with the protagonist an orphan in a country that was taken over by an Evil state. She starts her path to become a Villain to help her country, kinda? Complete with a mentor, a short stint at a school, and then some actual war. The morality on any of this is extremely iffy, but if you squint past that, it's decent enough fantasy fast food.

Shield of Thunder

by David Gemmell · published 2006 · read 2022-01-31

Second part of the Troy series, and I'm a bit less impressed (but still happy to read on!). Three new main characters are thrown into the mix (Andromache's lover, plus Kalliades and Banokles), in addition to the already established Helikaon and Odysseus. Through their eyes, we also get more information about Hector and Achilles.

Ein Drei-Tassen-Problem

by Stefan Winges · published 2014 · read 2022-01-27

Sherlock Holmes, just German and in the 1920s. If that sounds exciting to you, uh, here you go? I'm not kidding it's really straight up Sherlock, just in Cologne. There's a Mrs Hudson, the story is told from the point of view of his flatmate, a doctor returned from the army in the colonies, and they live together amid disputes about substance abuse in No 21B. Sherlock is talking incessantly about shoe soles instead of cigarette ashes, and they have to deal with a well-meaning but obviously wrong police officer, who invites them to the case only to not listen to them.

A Symphony of Echoes

by Jodi Taylor · published 2013 · read 2022-01-26

Sadly disappointing: Only the second book in a series that is currently up to eleven books and countless novellas, and it already feels like the series is out of ideas and just mushing things together. There are regular excursions (Jack the Ripper as weird monster hybrid in need of getting shot repeatedly), there are the enemies-in-time, there is the protagonist being temporarily Director of the institute in the future for a bit (!!), there is YET ANOTHER giant huge misunderstanding with her partner due to them not talking about things properly, going to absolutely ridiculous and uncalled-for lengths, then a Dodo hunt, and a bunch more side plots in case you were not feeling sufficiently entertained.

Captive Prince

by C.S. Pacat · published 2013 · read 2022-01-25

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Word to the wise: this is not an "m/m fantasy romance". It's m/m, and it's fantasy, but mostly it's … slavery harem smut? I don't even know. Wouldn't have thought twice if this had been on AO3, but billed as fantasy, the lack of any serious reflection on the horrors or downsides of slavery, rape and oppression is a bit stunning. I'm guessing this is like a small-scale Fifty Shades thing, where people enjoy the horny parts and forget to also use their brain when later recommending the story to people.

The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

by Drew Hayes · published 2014 · read 2022-01-24

Saying that the title has better writing than the rest of the book would be cruel and not quite true (but.) … I had hoped for better. This is basically a short story collection, taped together, which is always tricky because while your short story readers will want a basic recap of who's who and who did what, I really don't want that every 20 pages in a book.

Flight of Magpies

by K.J. Charles · published 2014 · read 2022-01-23

by Michael Crichton · published 1976 · read 2022-01-22

Eaters of the Dead

Surprisingly good: Crichton's version of Beowulf, told from the perspective of an Arab traveller who gets taken along on the famous journey. The book strikes a decent balance among several things: the voice of an old epos and modern pacing; displaying the clash between the two cultures while also being an adventure book; proposing plausible origins for the myth while also making them sound sufficiently magical. Neanderthals as the origin of Grendel were a particularly neat touch.

Creatures of Light and Darkness

by Roger Zelazny · published 1969 · read 2022-01-21

Very Zelazny – I had hoped, after liking Lord of Light a lot, that something similar would work equally well. And it's somewhat similar, superficially. Egypt religion instead of Indian, but regardless, high-powered gods with their own agendas, all that stuff.

Das Paradies der Schwerter

by Tobias O. Meißner · published 2004 · read 2022-01-19

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Well, at least I'll learn to not trust /r/fantasy recommendations blindly. Praised as a really good piece of German Fantasy, where the author increased the tension by letting dice rolls decide the outcome of battles, I was cautiously optimistic.

Das Stunden-Buch

by Rainer Maria Rilke · published 1899 · last read 2022-01-18

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

One of my favourite pieces of poetry. Probably doesn't translate well (to English, to German that isn't steeped in religion, etc).

City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett · published 2016 · read 2022-01-17

City of Stairs was fun, and in a surprising way. To live up to it, the second part needed to be different – and it was, in a way. The narrative structure was a bit (very) close to the last book: civil servant gets shunted off to the continent, figures out that all is not as it seems, and that behind nasty local politics there is some old divinity, thought to be dead, is at work.

Leviathan Falls

by James S.A. Corey · published 2021 · read 2022-01-16

This is how The Expanse ends: not with a bang, not with a whisper, but with an appropriately depressing finale. It all wraps around back to the beginning, and it's just as bad as you'd think, and then some. How well this book will work for you depends pretty much on how much this series has hurt you in the previous books (as in: how much you love the characters). It's not the strongest book in the series, but it's a satisfying ending, and I didn't dare to hope for even that.

Son of a Liche

by J. Zachary Pike · published 2018 · read 2022-01-15

Second part to the series started in Orconomics, this book toned down its predecessor's drawbacks … but also its features. It has lessed forced humour, but also less actually emotional content. It's told at a slight distance, and turns into a mediocre blob instead of Orconomics and its mix of really good and really meh.

Death by Silver

by Melissa Scott, Amy Griswold · published 2013 · read 2022-01-14

MORE gay Victorian (well, Gaslamp) magicians, will it ever stop? This one at least doesn't follow the cookie-cutter for the genre: no nobility, and magic is well-known and accepted, so there's an actual industry and civil services. Magic has actual rules, and a lot of it seems to be grammar-based, and people can, for example, take educated guesses about a magician's schooling (Oxford vs Cambridge styles) – but only guesses, not enough to be actually important clues, which I thought was a nice show of restraint.

Widdershins

by Jordan L. Hawk · published 2012 · read 2022-01-13

Popcorn read: Victorian encounters with the paranormal continue, but this time it's in the US. A timid philologist from a wealthy family (have to do without nobility in the US, after all) meets a Dresden-style magician for hire. They need to solve a mystery that has its solution foreshadowed so strongly, I nearly couldn't see the text under all the shadow.

Salt Magic, Skin Magic

by Lee Welch · published 2018 · read 2022-01-12

More Victorian urban history queer romance with an aristocrat with evil family and a lower-class magician – please somebody tell my why this is such a huge thing. I could do without the repetitiveness and the everything while just enjoying parts of the setting.

Between Copernicus and Galileo

by James M. Lattis · published 1994 · read 2022-01-11

I wanted to learn more about Christoph Clavius, the Jesuit who contributed significantly to the Gregorian calendar reform, which is a standing interest of mine. It turns out that this book intentionally avoids that topic, to talk more about cosmology and how the intellectual state of the art was just before Galileo happened to it.

Four Roads Cross

by Max Gladstone · published 2016 · read 2022-01-10

After reading Three Parts Dead in preparation, it was time to read this book – part five in the series that Three Parts Dead starts, but also the direct follow-up. I hadn't remembered the characters at all: Abelard, the mechanic monk, and Tara, the craftswoman who, in the end, decided to leave the industry and work for the Church of Kos, for little money, because she's needed.

Three Parts Dead

by Max Gladstone · published 2012 · last read 2022-01-09

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone was just straight up enjoyable Fantasy. We get magic, and gods, and … magic lawyers? Dabbling in magic means dabbling in contracts, so our protagonist has clients (or, well, her employer does), and there is a lot of quibbling going on – of the kind that can cost you your mind, or your life. And the God of Fire (and therefore steam) has an engine room and priests that are more techies than anything else – except that their maintenance and debugging cycles include prayers and worship as well as fixing pipes and monitoring heat output. Yessss. Take the phrase "theological engineering" and go read.

This Alien Shore

by C.S. Friedman · published 1998 · read 2022-01-08

Damn, this book could have been so good. But it falls into the trap of having extremely good worldbuilding and then being unable to back it up with an equally good plot. It's a shame, because the premise is so much fun:

Of a Linear Circle - Part IX - Serpent in the Grass

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-07

The rest of this series was so good, but the last part just wasn't. It's backstory, in a way, but more importantly it sees itself as just backstory. Nobody gets any depth, everything is narrated as if this was the Silmarillion, family histories are recited as if we're in competition with the Old Testament … and then, emotionally important moments are skipped and mentioned in passing. Yikes.

Of a Linear Circle - Part VIII - The Second Wizarding War

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-05

Series continues to be good, with a few caveats: Tons of side characters being treated well means massively slower story progress. General competency porn continues, but the Latin somehow got worse (while the complaints about bad Latin, in-text, remained), which is mildly infuriating. Somebody explain to the author what a Vocative is, please.

Of a Linear Circle VI

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-04

More side characters come in to get a role, which is oddly satisfying. The Latin manages to get worse somehow, and for a while, everything looks pretty repetetive, but then we get open war, so I won't complain too much.

Of a Linear Circle - Part VII - Exile

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-04

Novella, filling in some more backstory stuff. I'm not super well-versed in 14th-15th century Spain and France, so I spent half the time on Wikipedia. Generally entertaining, but too much is already known through previous and later story elements; and the author does not share Vonnegut's skill at telling you the ending, then making you care about how you get there. (Unsurprising and completely fair – asking for Vonnegut when reading fanfics is stupid).

Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Gryffindor

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-02

More backstory, more carefully researched historical fiction. Well, some is inaccurate in minor details, but on the level of getting one of the historical lords of Orkney wrong, which seems to be a cruel thing to count against a fanfic. Thanks to checking the story, also need to complain about the list of English (Wessex) kings with creative names such as Æthelred, Æthelstan, Ælfweard, Ælfwynn, Æthelwold, Æthelhelm, Æthelberht, Æthelbald, Æthelwulf …

Of a Linear Circle - Part IV

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-01

Back to the present timeline, this (long) part of the ongoing series proves fun, and dazzles with payoff. Plus, a new (mature, unexcited, beautiful) romance side-story. And then there's the extremely slow-building (4th long ) power gradient involving the British monarchy ffs (Elizabeth turns to Nizar. “Now then. What are your intentions regarding my kingdom, Lord Nizar?”).

Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Ravenclaw

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-01