More 2011 Books Read
Wow, it's apparently been a long time since I updated by books read list. I've got 11 more to throw on the pile, none of which are re-reads. Here's the list.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson.
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson, read by Jennifer Wiltsie
New Spring, by Robert Jordan.
Magician: Apprentice, by Raymond E. Feist.
The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien, read by Rob Inglis
Magician: Master, by Raymond E. Feist.
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
Submarine, by Edward L. Beach. Jr., Captain, USN (Retired)
Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher
A Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
With the Old Breed, by EB Sledge
U is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton
Silverthorn, by Raymond E. Feist
A Darkness at Sethanon, by Raymond E. Feist
The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien, read by Rob Inglis
The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien, read by Rob Inglis
Tongues of Serpents, by Naomi Novik
The Lion, by Nelson DeMille, read by Scott Brick
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, read by Jay O. Sanders
Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson, read by Michael Kramer
Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore
The Hour Game, by David Baldacci
Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Ever Seen, by Christopher McDougall, read by Fred Sanders
Ramona the Brave, by Beverly Cleary
George's Marvelous Medicine, by Roald Dahl
Mistborn: The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson
An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin, read by Campbell Scott
Mistborn: The Hero of Ages, by Brandon Sanderson
Absolute Power, by David Baldacci
I Am Not A Serial Killer, by Dan Wells, read by John Allen Nelson
Mr. Monster, by Dan Wells, read by Kirby Heyborne
I Don't Want to Kill You, by Dan Wells, read by Kirby Heyborne
Kitty and the Midnight Hour, by Carrie Vaughn
Kitty Goes to Washington, by Carrie Vaughn
Kitty Takes a Holiday, by Carrie Vaughn
Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson
Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson, read by James Yaegashi
So Much Closer, by Susane Colasanti
@Mistborn: The Hero of Ages - I like this one. Maybe not quite as much as I liked the first in the series, but it was still really good. The ending was unexpected, and that's always a plus. If you've read the first 2 books in the series, you don't need me to recommend it. If you haven't, you would really need to to understand what's going on and why.
@Absolute Power - David Baldacci's very first book. It was good. Incredibly unrealistic, yet at the same time, seemed like a logical progression. The main climax seemed a little too deus ex machina for me, but overall, it was really good, for what it was. Recommended.
@I Am Not A Serial Killer, @Mr. Monster, @I Don't Want to Kill You - this is the complete John Cleaver trilogy series by Dan Wells. I really liked it. It's a series he wrote as Horror, but got marketed as Young Adult and Horror. The basic premise it on the surface a little similar to Dexter. He's a sociopath, and he's hunting serial killers. The big differences here are that the main character in this is a teenager having to deal with a single mom and high school girls, oh, and also that the serial killers he hunts are demons. It's pretty cool. They are tight, focused books. There was a small section of cruelty to animals in the second book that I could have done without, although was an obvious necessity for the character development, and the climax of the third book was not the one I expected (there was foreshadowing that it would go a different way). But, overall I really really liked these books. That said, I was not so much a fan of the audio narrator of the first one. He emphasized random words, his pacing was unnatural, and it really threw off the book. The second guy was much better. Heartily Recommended.
@Kitty and the Midnight Hour, @Kitty Goes to Washington, @Kitty Takes a Holiday - these are the first three books in Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series. I am so hooked on these books! Kitty is a 20-something late night radio DJ in Denver, hosting a call-in show. Oh yeah and she's a werewolf. The writing is perfectly sparse, the plots and introduced characters are minimal, making the action go very quickly. It's all incredibly enjoyable, and it really takes the idea that werewolves and vampires are real, and plays with how that would play out in modern day society. At least so far. I've seen plot synposes of some of the later books, and it looks like it might get a little more outlandish from here, but I'm going to stick with the series for a while still. Highly Recommended.
@Elantris and @Warbreaker - Oof these books were HARD to get through. I had heard great things about them, but they were painful. They are not related, except that they're written by the same man. With the exception of when he's using someone else's characters (like in the Wheel of Time), or in his Mistborn series, I am not a fan of how Sanderson writes characters. Ugh. And he likes to use big words, incorrectly. It's jarring. I lost count of how many times in Warbreaker he used the word "ostentatious" and it's derivatives. Also, he really likes the word 'paranoid'. It doesn't fit in the settings he writes in, so it is incredibly jarring. The underlying premise of Elantris is cool - basically a prison for zombies, and the general plot of Warbreaker is fairly OK - 2 royal sisters trying to stop a war between their kingdom and it's larger more powerful neighbor, while not knowing who they can and can't trust. But, overall, I can't in good conscience recommend either book to anyone. Also, I listened to Warbreaker, as read by James Yaegashi. He was infinitely better than James Allan Nelson reading "I Am Not A Serial Killer" as described above, but I felt that his portrayal of half of the characters was a little too over the top. Maybe that was direction from the director and producers, maybe it was interpretation of the characters as written. Either way, I feel like it detracted from the listening experience.
@So Much Closer - Another entry from my college friend/acquaintance Susane Colasanti. Fun book about a high school girl who switches schools her senior year to be with a boy she likes. If you like TeenGirlLit, this is a great book for you. Recommended.
So, that's probably going to be the last update of the year. I'm not really in the middle of any other books at the moment. I started Ian Banks' "The Bridge", but I've had it from the library for over a month, I'm still only about 5 pages in and couldn't be bothered to push any further, so I guess that makes this one a non-starter. I have a bunch more audiobooks ready and waiting on my iPod, and I could start any one of them and maybe even finish one before the end of the year, but I don't know how it'll play out.
So, I'll do a final post in a week or 3 for the year, and then we'll proceed with 2012! Year 5 in my book catalog! huzzah! I'm writing to an empty blog on a dead website! whippie!
No worries,
Matt
@Mistborn: The Hero of Ages - I like this one. Maybe not quite as much as I liked the first in the series, but it was still really good. The ending was unexpected, and that's always a plus. If you've read the first 2 books in the series, you don't need me to recommend it. If you haven't, you would really need to to understand what's going on and why.
@Absolute Power - David Baldacci's very first book. It was good. Incredibly unrealistic, yet at the same time, seemed like a logical progression. The main climax seemed a little too deus ex machina for me, but overall, it was really good, for what it was. Recommended.
@I Am Not A Serial Killer, @Mr. Monster, @I Don't Want to Kill You - this is the complete John Cleaver trilogy series by Dan Wells. I really liked it. It's a series he wrote as Horror, but got marketed as Young Adult and Horror. The basic premise it on the surface a little similar to Dexter. He's a sociopath, and he's hunting serial killers. The big differences here are that the main character in this is a teenager having to deal with a single mom and high school girls, oh, and also that the serial killers he hunts are demons. It's pretty cool. They are tight, focused books. There was a small section of cruelty to animals in the second book that I could have done without, although was an obvious necessity for the character development, and the climax of the third book was not the one I expected (there was foreshadowing that it would go a different way). But, overall I really really liked these books. That said, I was not so much a fan of the audio narrator of the first one. He emphasized random words, his pacing was unnatural, and it really threw off the book. The second guy was much better. Heartily Recommended.
@Kitty and the Midnight Hour, @Kitty Goes to Washington, @Kitty Takes a Holiday - these are the first three books in Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series. I am so hooked on these books! Kitty is a 20-something late night radio DJ in Denver, hosting a call-in show. Oh yeah and she's a werewolf. The writing is perfectly sparse, the plots and introduced characters are minimal, making the action go very quickly. It's all incredibly enjoyable, and it really takes the idea that werewolves and vampires are real, and plays with how that would play out in modern day society. At least so far. I've seen plot synposes of some of the later books, and it looks like it might get a little more outlandish from here, but I'm going to stick with the series for a while still. Highly Recommended.
@Elantris and @Warbreaker - Oof these books were HARD to get through. I had heard great things about them, but they were painful. They are not related, except that they're written by the same man. With the exception of when he's using someone else's characters (like in the Wheel of Time), or in his Mistborn series, I am not a fan of how Sanderson writes characters. Ugh. And he likes to use big words, incorrectly. It's jarring. I lost count of how many times in Warbreaker he used the word "ostentatious" and it's derivatives. Also, he really likes the word 'paranoid'. It doesn't fit in the settings he writes in, so it is incredibly jarring. The underlying premise of Elantris is cool - basically a prison for zombies, and the general plot of Warbreaker is fairly OK - 2 royal sisters trying to stop a war between their kingdom and it's larger more powerful neighbor, while not knowing who they can and can't trust. But, overall, I can't in good conscience recommend either book to anyone. Also, I listened to Warbreaker, as read by James Yaegashi. He was infinitely better than James Allan Nelson reading "I Am Not A Serial Killer" as described above, but I felt that his portrayal of half of the characters was a little too over the top. Maybe that was direction from the director and producers, maybe it was interpretation of the characters as written. Either way, I feel like it detracted from the listening experience.
@So Much Closer - Another entry from my college friend/acquaintance Susane Colasanti. Fun book about a high school girl who switches schools her senior year to be with a boy she likes. If you like TeenGirlLit, this is a great book for you. Recommended.
So, that's probably going to be the last update of the year. I'm not really in the middle of any other books at the moment. I started Ian Banks' "The Bridge", but I've had it from the library for over a month, I'm still only about 5 pages in and couldn't be bothered to push any further, so I guess that makes this one a non-starter. I have a bunch more audiobooks ready and waiting on my iPod, and I could start any one of them and maybe even finish one before the end of the year, but I don't know how it'll play out.
So, I'll do a final post in a week or 3 for the year, and then we'll proceed with 2012! Year 5 in my book catalog! huzzah! I'm writing to an empty blog on a dead website! whippie!
No worries,
Matt