posts interesting only to me

Yes, November has almost finished and I still haven’t put up what I read in October. Looking back at my monthly reading roundups you can really see where I started to lose interest and went for watching anime over more literary pursuits. I just haven’t had the energy or concentration to focus on books, since at least July or so. That’s the first time that’s happened since I started my booklog. So this month again there are only two books I remember reading:

Deconstructing the Starships — Gwyneth Jones
a collection of essays and reviews on fantasy and science fiction dating back to the early to mid nineties. Interesting, even if I don’t necessarily agree with Jones’ opinions. Also interesting to read this a decade and a half after publication, with enough time passed to see which burning issues of the day sizzled out and which are still ongoing concerns.

The Rhesus chart — Charlie Stross
A Laundry novel I bought when Charlie came to Amsterdam for a book signing, but I don’t seem to actually have gotten it signed. A scrum team of high end banking IT nerds independently invents vampirism, things get worse from there on out.

Onwards and upwards. Still a way below average month as I’ve not felt much of an urge to read, but at least I managed to finish four books this time:

The Gospel of Loki — Joanne M. Harris
A rewriting of Norse myth from the point of view of the title character. A freebie from Nine Worlds, rather enjoyable.

Two Serpents Rise — Max Gladstone
Californian style water politics imported into fantasyland.

S-F Women A-Z: A Reader’s Guide — Sandra Ulbrich Almazan
A free ebook bundling of blogposts showcasing female SF&F authors. Sometimes I think I should do something similar with a collection of my own blogposts, but this is a good reminder of why that’s most likely a bad idea.

Root of Unity — SL Huang
The third novel in the Russell’s Attic series in which Cas Russell falls apart, in more ways than one.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve done a book loot post, but today I got a lot of books from the local sf club I’d ordered earlier, including the run of Holland SF fanzines I used to read in the library. Apart from that there are three books by Gwyneth Jones: Kairos and Rainbow Bridge and especially interesting, a collection of her criticism, Deconstructing the Starships (which I got incredibly cheap if i can believe the price in the back of it). I also got a proper old skool yellow gollancz edition of Mindplayers, Pat Cadigan’s first novel, a Linda Nagata novel, Deception Well, a Leigh Brackett Erik John Stark book I still needed and finally, Pamela Sargent’s Watchstar and The Shore of Women.

Another disappointing month, to be sure. Only two books read, again because I spent most of my leisure time watching anime rather than reading books. While I tend to multitask when watching Dutch or English language television, subbed anime needs my full attention if I want to follow the plot. To be honest, I don’t think this will change much in September either, because at the moment watching anime entertains me more than reading does.

Blood Pact — Tanya Huff
Fourth in the Victoria Nelson series of supernatural thrillers. A decent, entertaining read but it dragged on a bit in the last third.

The Sleepwalkers — Christopher Clark
A somewhat revisionist history of how Europe got itself into World War I, with more of the blame laid at the Entente (France, Russia, Britain) powers and especially Serbia. Convincing enough while reading it, but not the last word in this eternal debate.

Really? i only read four books this month? Damn, that’s what you get for playing too much Europa Universalis IV and watching too much anime. Not so much that I spent more time watching that than I’d normally spend watching television, just that I can’t multitask while doing so. Dubbed anime is awful, so I need to watch subbed versions, which means I need to keep watching to follow the plot and cannot just listen and come in at the interesting parts like I can with english language shows… that seriously cut into my reading time.

But there was also a bit of Hugo fatigue this month. So much this year has been spent in reading for Hugos, reading about the Hugos, getting upset about all the assholes attempting to crap all over them, took a lot of energy and left little pleasure in reading science fiction for a while. If it takes me over a week to read a simple 200 page novel, I have to worry.

Soldiers of Paradise — Paul Park
An author I started reading because Ian Sales rates him, this reminded me of Gene Wolfe

The City, Not Long After — Pat Murphy
After the end of the world, what’s left of San Francisco hippiedom has to defend itself from invasion by a self proclaimed general wanting to remake America, his way.

Christendom Destroyed — Mark Greengrass
Part of the Penguin History of Europe, this looks at the roughly 150 years in which Christendom was transformed into Europe, as Protestantism established itself.

Lest Darkness Falls — L. Sprague De Camp
A classic time travel/alternate history story as a modern historian travels back to the sixth century and tries to prevent the Dark Ages from happening.