posts interesting only to me

That’s the first month of 2015 done and dusted. Eleven books read, ten more reviewed over at the booklog. Which puts me on track for reading a hundred plus books this year, which would be nice. Four fantasy novels, three science fiction, two history books and one disappointing book on steampunk.

A Natural History of Dragons — Marie Brennan
The first in a series about a natural explorer obsessed by dragons in a mock-Georgian fantasy world. Excellently done.

Half Life — SL Huang
The sequel to Zero Sum Game, in which math savant Cas Russell learns how to fake friendship like a normal human being.

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting — Vijay Prashad
Excellent overview of the history of intersectionality between the South Asian and Black experiences, largely in the context of US history.

A Wizard Abroad — Diane Duane
The YA wizards series goes to Ireland, the country its author also moved to. Coincidence? Luckily not at all as Oirish as you may expect from an American author dabbling in Celtic myths.

The Golem and the Djinni — Helene Wecker
At the American Book Center they compared this to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I can see why. They share the same sensibility and willingness to let the story breathe.

The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe — Adriaan Verhulst
A bit of a misnomer as it only looks at roughly fifteen cities in the southern Netherlands between the Somme and the Meuse. Somewhat more worthy than I’d expected.

Steampunk — Paul Roland
A disappointing overview of the steampunk subculture.

Pandora’s Planet — Christopher Anvil
Light hearted semi-libertarian fun about humans outsmarting alien invaders — written from the point of view of the invaders.

The Lion Game — James H. Schmitz
Fifteen year old psionic wonderkind Telzey Amberdon outsmarts a hidden invasion of the Hub. Fun adventure science fiction.

Spies of the Balkans — Alan Furst
Another of Furst’s usually quite depressing spy thrillers set just before and during World War II, this one has what you might call a happy ending.

Wolfhound Century — Peter Higgins
Epic fantasy set in a sort of steampunk fantasy Soviet Russia.

Ten books read in December brings the total for 2014 up to eightyeight in total, six up from 2013. I’d hoped to have more of an end spurt, but a short illness put paid to that. 2014 has been the most unbalanced reading year since I started keeping count in 2001: seventyfour fiction books, of which fortysix science fiction and twentysix fantasy, against only fourteen non-fiction.

There are a couple of reasons for this of course. Because I went to Worldcon this year I got to read the Hugo Voters Package, meaning July and August were spent reading through that, while I also got interested in Dutch language science fiction again, reading a lot more Dutch sf than I had in a long time. Nevertheless I want to read more non-fiction this year.

Genderwise I’m still trying to fix the balance in my reading, having calculated back in 2010 that less than ten percent of the books I read had been written by women. So of the fortysix science fiction books, thirtyone were by female writers as were eighteen of the twentysix fantasy books. Since the only crime novels I read were by Nicola Griffith, the total for my fiction reading was fiftyone books by female versus twentythree books by male writers. Non-fiction on the other hand was male dominated: four women versus ten men. Something to pay attention to this year.

Though to be honest I’m less bothered by this, then I am with keeping my science fiction and fantasy more balanced and diverse; those are the genres I like the best and read the most of. What I like to do in 2015 is to keep reading more books by women, but also start reading more stories by authors from outside the UK or US. There’s a wide world of fantasy and science fiction outside these two countries and I want to know more about it.

In any case the last books I read in 2014 were the following:

The Violent Century — Lavie Tidhard
What if, only a few years before WWII, one particular quantum physics experiment creates a probability wave that gives some people superpowers?

The Dark Colony — Richard Penn
A self published, hard science fiction police procedural set on an asteroid belt colony.

De Scrypturist — Paul Evanby
A great steampunkesque Dutch fantasy story by what I suspect is one of Holland’s best sf&f writers.

The Nemesis from Terra — Leigh Brackett
Another of Brackett’s tightly plotted Mars adventures.

Meeting the Sculptur — Floris M. Kleijne
A clever little time travel story.

The Martian — Andy Weir
One of the sleeper hits of the year, this hard science fiction novel of an astronaut stranded on Mars and how he’s saved through ingenuity, can do spirit and NASA led teamwork.

Falling Free — Lois McMaster Bujold
The last novel in Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga I hadn’t read yet, set 200 years before the main series and showing how the Quaddies got their freedom in a sort of eighties update of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

The Story of the Stone — Barry Hughart
The second in Hughart’s series of fantasies set in mystical China and the only one I hadn’t read yet.

High Wizardry — Diane Duane
The third in the Young Wizards series: great YA fantasy adventure.

Monument — Lloyd Biggle Jr
A classic anti-colonialist science fiction story.

Nine books read this month, which began strongly but petered out a bit as a couple of tough books slowed me down.

Schitterende Wereld — Mel Hartman
A disappointing collection of sf short stories based on an interesting concept: twelve stories based on the work of six world famous scientists.

Broken Homes — Ben Aaronovitch
Fourth in a series about a hapless London police officer being caught up in its magical underworld.

Styx — Bavo Dhooge
A bent cop in Oostende returns from the death as a zombie to bring a serial killer to justice

Ter Ziele — Esther Scherpenisse
Sometimes Death has pity for a dying person and brings them to its palace….

A History of the Vandals — Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen
A decent introduction to the history of the Vandals, one of the few such actually available in English.

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance — Lois McMaster Bujold
The latest so far in the Vorkosigan saga, now starring Miles cousin, that idiot Ivan.

Furies: War in Europe 1450-1700 — Lauro Martines
A distressing look at warfare in Early Modern Europe.

Who Fears Death — Nnedi Okorafor
Okorafor’s first adult novel, a harrowing coming of age tale & quest story.

Het Laatste Verhaal — Guido Eekhaut
In the near future republic of Flanders, two street outcasts team up with a Japanese woman from an alternate world who has a sword that can cut through time and space…