The beginning of a new month brings with it the opportunity to look back
at the month gone by and to give one last glance at what I most
recently read. The below listed books are what I read during the month
of August.
1. Soulless, by Gail Carriger
2. Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson
3. The Red: First Light, by Linda Nagata
4. Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffrey
5. Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear
6. Nova, by Margaret Fortune
7. Fool's Assassin, by Robin Hobb
Best Book of the Month: I am giving Seveneves a small bump over Nagata's First Light, but both are excellent and I highly recommend either book. This was my first Stephenson.
Disappointment of the Month: The closest thing I have to a disappointment is Nova, which is less that it is a disappointment and more than most everything else I read this month was simply excellent. Nova was...less so. I had higher anticipation, but given that the novel features a teenager who is essentially a walking bomb - I was waiting for the bomb to go off very early in the book. This may say more about my tastes in fiction than it does about the story Fortune was telling.
Discovery of the Month: Gail Carriger's Soulless was delightful. I am as susceptible to cover art as the next person, and the cover art was selling me a book that was more of a Jane Austen / Victorian era book, presumably of manners. And while I appreciate Mary Robinette Kowal's fiction, I am a difficult sell on books set in that era. I did not want to put Soulless down. Naturally. This is how it works.
Worth Noting: I've begun the new Fitz and the Fool trilogy from Robin Hobb, but in doing so I have skipped over the Rain Wilds Chronicles, the four book series set between The Tawny Man and Fitz & the Fool. This is the first time I've skipped any of Hobb's fiction, which was more done because I recently finished The Tawny Man after years of not reading it for no particular reason given how good it was and how much I like Hobb. I'm still slightly conflicted about the jump because it isn't so much that I'm focused on just reading about Fitz; Hobb's Liveship Traders was gloriously excellent I would highly recommend it. I just felt the need to be caught up with what she's publishing now. I'll eventually make it back to the Rain Wilds Chronicles.
Gender Breakdown: I read fewer books in August than any other month this year, but this time all but one of the books I read were written by a woman. This brings my yearly total to 56 out of 93 books and moves my percentage to 60.21%, which is the first time my percentage has been over 60% since April. I am very much on track to hit my goal of reading more books written by women than those written by men in 2015.
Previous Months:
January
February
March
April
May
June
July