Kobo

Last Friday my trusty Kindle Keyboard died :(.  After talking to Amazon Customer Services, they offered me a Kindle Touch for £47.99, which is a model that is no longer on sale.  I initially accepted this, but later changed my mind and went to buy a Kobo Glo.  Its £10 cheaper than the Kindle Paperwhite (£99.99) and came with a free case and £5.99 gift voucher from WH Smiths.  I also read reviews which said the light on the Kobo was better than the Paperwhite.  The Kobo also reads the open ePub format, which the Kindle does not.  With Calibre this isn't a huge problem to fix, but idealistically it feels better.  The Kobo store isn't as cheap as Amazon, but considering you can buy your ebooks from anywhere, I feel like that's not a huge issue.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

20

I haven't actually read this before, or indeed any Vonnegut, which I suppose might be surprising given how much of a classic SF author he is.  I also didn't know how bad the bombing of Dresden was before I read this, so the book was quite eye-opening.  The time-travel elements were a bit strange, but I do appreciate how it allowed us to see the future memories (of lack of) of Dresden.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

19

Excellent book, and gets very sad towards the end.  Post apocalyptic story about a Man and a Boy trying to survive, but the book is really about the relationship between these two main characters.  I'd recommend this to anyone, its pretty short and an easy read, yet memorable and moving.

Mindstar Rising - Peter F. Hamilton

18

If I remember one thing about this book it will be the endless descriptions of tits and arses.  Just about every female character but one gets literarily undressed for all to read about.  The story is a pretty standard thriller with some sci-fi elements included, but its relatively well written.  Characterisation is done pretty well, although the main character is a bit good-at-everything.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury

17

A weird writing style made this book slightly awkward to read, and the story has definitely aged badly since its release.  Some nice ideas, and I liked the 2 main characters, but an outdated story.

Catching Up...

I've been neglecting this blog for a while now so I thought I'd make a post just to bring it up to the present rather than keep putting off writing blog posts.

12

 13

Books 2 and 3 of the First Law Trilogy.  Both were excellent and the ending was very different from a typical fantasy ending in many ways.  Looking forward to reading the standalone sequels soon.

14

Finale to Hyperion Cantos.  Very good but I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous 3 books.  Seemed to drag on a bit.  The ending was decent but not as good as the ending to Fall of Hyperion.

15

This was a really fun read and very enjoyable.  Will definitely read the sequel(s) at some point.

16

Short novella by one of my favourite authors.  Good story packed into a short book, and would love to read more involving the magic systems introduced in the book.

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

11

Book 1 of a fantasy trilogy by English author Joe Abercrombie.  I listened to this in audiobook format, which for this book I highly recommend.  Steven Pacey is an excellent reader, who gives a lot of life to the characters, and when he starts talking you can tell exactly which character is meant to be speaking.  The book itself is masterfully written, with some of the best characters and dialogue I've ever read.  Glokta's character in particular is extremely well written, and manages to be both funny and genuine all the way through.  I highly recommend this to anyone looking for an audiobook to listen to, but failing that, just read the book because the writing is excellent.

Endymion - Dan Simmons

10

Action-Adventure sequel to Hyperion Cantos.  Raised more questions than it answered, hopefully there's plenty of exposition in the last book!  Pretty good, but I'm not sure what else to say since its a sequel and pretty similar to the last book really, except with more peril.  Onto the last one :).

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

9

Reddit seemed to be going crazy over this book so I decided to give it a try, considering that everyone claimed it was an easy, good read.  In retrospect I can see why reddit loved it so much, its basically a nerd's fantasy.  A world economy dominated by a massive MMORPG which everyone plays, and you can save the world from evil corporations, become rich, powerful and famous, and get the girl, all by playing the game and  knowing lots of trivia about 70s and 80s pop culture, especially video games.  That said the setting was pretty cool, but the dialogue and plot were a bit much for me in most of the book.

The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons

8

The sequel to Hyperion.  This book is a lot more traditional in its style than the last book, but its no worse off for it.  I thought it got a little too hand-wavy towards the end but other than that it was pretty good.  I'm looking forward to reading the last two books which according to the blurb might explain some of the handwaving.

End of January Summary

Its the end of January so I thought I'd just write a quick summary of how I've done so far.

In one month I'm supposed to have read 4 books and I've definitely beaten that.  I've finished 7 books so far and am half way through my eighth.  In terms of pages I've mostly been reading over the odds (I'd consider 300-400 pages a normal length).  My average page count is 491 pages so I've been reading pretty long books.
My total page count is 3439 so far.
If I continue at this rate I will have read 52 books by mid August.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alt2elSb1RLRdC11b3lxdnFWU1Y5YmVCWnVJeVVNcHc#gid=0
This google doc is tracking my progress if anyone wants more detail (why?).

Andy :)

Hyperion - Dan Simmons

7

Enjoyed this one a lot (am now reading the sequel Fall of Hyperion).  Its told in the form of a series of loosely related short stories, with an overarching story going on behind them. This way of storytelling allows for a lot of different genres and emotions within one book: there's a crime mystery story, a hard sci-fi story, a romance, a military action story and others and it keeps the book fresh and interesting all the way through, and if there's a part which you don't find interesting, its easy to push through because it won't be long until the story completely changes again. 

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

6

Really easy to read, I finished it in about 24 hours (I'd say about 8-10 hours solid reading).  A cool dystopian story very similar to Battle Royale (the film).  Enjoyed this quite a bit, I found the pacing to be excellent.

Prince of Thorns - Mark Lawrence

5

I was kinda disappointed with this book, mainly because I'd read some good reviews and comments and so was looking forward to reading it.  The plot was ok, but I found that the characters were unrealistic (just about everyone is super evil to a ridiculous degree), and the world building was lacking quite a bit.  Maybe I'll read the sequel (its reviewed better than this one) but I'm not in a rush to do so.

A Memory of Light - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

4

It was about 10 years ago when I started reading the Wheel of Time, and it feels even longer than that.  Finally the series has been brought to a close and I feel the book was suitably fitting for the end of such a long and epic (in the truest sense of the word) series.  There was not much in the way of build up before the book really got going, that's what the last 13 books were for.  It is pretty much action from start to finish, with a few breaks for everyone to take a breather before plunging right back in.

I don't want to say too much here because I think you really have to have read the past 13 books to understand why this is such a big deal, so I'll just say that I loved it and leave it at that.

Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card

3

Speaker for the dead is the sequel to Ender's Game (which is one of the best and most well regarded Science Fiction books released).  While it is a sequel it is very different in style and subject, being less plot based and a lot more philosophical and analytical.  Its much more slow paced than Ender's Game, and the events from the first book aren't that important to the story.  Apparently it wasn't written as a sequel originally and was converted into one later.  I did find some of the characters a bit unbelievable, like they were being unreasonable just to ensure that there was some plot later in the book.  I didn't like it anywhere near as much as Ender's Game, but I thought it wasn't bad in the grand scheme of things.

Legion - Brandon Sanderson

2

Legion is a very short (less than 100 pages) novella by one of my favourite authors, Brandon Sanderson.  While he normally writes fantasy, this book is a modern day mystery/thriller about a man whose brain is capable of learning new skills extremely quickly and thoroughly, but handles this by personifying each skill as a hallucination of another person who he talks to in order to gain access to the knowledge in his head.  I finished this book in one evening so its not a challenging read, but it was interesting none the less.  Cost less than £2 on Amazon too so I don't mind that it didn't take long to read.

Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson

1

My first book this year (which also ran over from last year) was Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon.  It's the first book of the massive (10 books) Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which is renowned for being one of the most epic fantasy series ever written, with a scope of an entire planet and 100,000 years of history.  Its also renowned for being complicated and difficult, with little exposition other than what occurs naturally through the story.  I tried to read this quite a few years ago but gave up, but managed to finish it this time round.  I'm glad I did, because the ending is very good and based on what I've heard/read the rest of the series has a dramatic improvement in readability and awesomeness.  I didn't find it that hard to read (compared to what I'd come to expect), but it has left me with many questions and I'm not sure I fully understand what is going on, even one whole book in.  I'm keenly looking forward to reading the next book in the series, but I'll be reading something lighter next to give my brain a rest.

52 Books in 52 Weeks

I came across this website today, which inspired me to start this blog and to go ahead and try to read 52 books this year.  I don't intend to keep to precisely 1 book a week since my schedule probably won't allow this, but my aim is to finish at least 52 books by the end of the year.

I've recently been reading fairly long books so I've got the feeling that I might need to read a few shorter titles in order to succeed, but we'll see how that goes :).

I predominantly read Science Fiction and Fantasy so expect most of the books I read to belong in those genres, but I hope to also branch out somewhat.

Anyway, wish me luck!

Andy