Monday, May 04, 2015

Books Read: April 2015

The beginning of a new month brings with it the opportunity to look back at the month gone bye and to give one last glance at what I most recently read. The below listed books are what I read during the month of April, and the lone link is to the one review I wrote last month. 

1. Dept of Speculation. By Jenny Offill
2. Coming Home, by Jack McDevitt
3. Fool's Fate, by Robin Hobb
4. The Fire Sermon, by Francesca Haig (unfinished)
5. Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold
6. 1632, by Eric Flint
7. God Stalk, by P. C. Hodgell (unfinished)
8. Prayers for the Stolen, by Jennifer Clement
9. Ready Player One, by Ernst Cline
10. Persona, by Genevieve Valentine

Best Book of the Month: It is difficult to beat a Robin Hobb novel when it comes to pure quality. Fool's Fate closes out the Tawny Man trilogy, sets up the next stage of Fitz's life and I wish I didn't know there was another set of novels dealing with Fitz and the Fool, because this was a perfect of a place to leave them as we could hope to find. Which is why it cannot possibly last.

Disappointment of the Month: This month's disappointment has to be God Stalk, a novel which for which I received numerous twitter recommendations, but which left me cold, disinterested, and confused as to what was actually happening in the novel. I gave it a fair shake, and now I'm out.

Discovery of the Month: If not for all of the fracas over the Hugo Awards, I may never have read Eric Flint's 1632, which was a fairly enjoyable romp taking a group of twentieth century Americans back into seventeenth century Europe. I already have the next book, Ring of Fire, coming in from the library.

Worth Noting: Ready Player One is 80% my thing, what with all of the older video game nerdery and the overarching online game and the 1980's imagery. That percentage could absolutely increase had the novel been more of a 90's NES / SNES era conversation, but overall, I liked the nerd novel. Not perfect, but entertaining.

Gender Breakdown: For the second month in a row, seven out of the ten books I read were written by women.  Now, it is worth noting that two of them were works that I did not finish, but since I track those books as I do any other, they are being included here in my overall count for the month.  This brings me to 28 out of 44 so far for the year, or 63.64%.  So far I have been doing a great job at sticking with my goal of reading more books written by women than those written by men during this calendar year.


Previous Months:
January
February
March

2 comments:

John Adkins said...

Nice update. Ready Player One, Shards of Honor and 1632 are all among my favorite books.

As to the next 1632 book, I would read 1633. Ring of Fire is, if I remember correctly, an anthology of stories set in the 1632 universe. There are a large number of great books in the series not to mention a literal ton of short stories published in ebook format by Baen. Enjoy!

Joe said...

Thanks, John. I'm following Eric Flint's recommended reading order for the 1632 series, which is incomplete, but will get me through at least 10-15 books before I catch up to his list. Maybe he'll have another update by then.

His main reason for that order is that he strongly recommends reading both Ring of Fire and 1633 before moving on with the rest of the series, but 1633 has a very strongly tied sequel that he thinks readers are better off reading back to back.