#cbr4

[loveallthis]

I read thirty books this year. (Comic books count.)

[lapandarouge]

52 Books

So I did the amazing Cannonball Read this year but was a total wastrel at posting reviews.  Some books were a revelation, some were popcorn (could not read the Weather Wardens and Stephanie Plum fast enough, almost as if I was trying to speed to the finish line), some a reminder (I think I'm too old to read Meg Cabot, and that's okay).  

Here, however, is the list of books read (in no real order):

1.      Farenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

2.      Ill Wind (Weather Warden #1) – Rachel Caine

3.      Heat Stroke (Weather Warden #2) –  Rachel Caine

4.      Chill Factor (Weather Warden #3) –  Rachel Caine

5.      Windfall (Weather Warden #4) –  Rachel Caine

6.      Firestorm (Weather Warden #5) –  Rachel Caine

7.      Thin Air (Weather Warden #6) –  Rachel Caine

8.      Gale Force (Weather Warden #7) –  Rachel Caine

9.      The Rose Garden – Susanna Kearsley

10.   Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

11.   Saga (vol. 1) – Brian K Vaughan, Fiona Staples

12.   Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs

13.   The Ruby in the Smoke – Phillip Pullman

14.   The Shadow in the North – Phillip Pullman

15.   The Tiger in the Well – Phillip Pullman

16.   Timeless – Gail Carriger

17.   One for the Money (Stephanie Plum #1) – Janet Evanovich

18.   Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum #2) – Janet Evanovich

19.   Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum #3) – Janet Evanovich

20.   Four to Score (Stephanie Plum #4) – Janet Evanovich

21.   High Five (Stephanie Plum #5) – Janet Evanovich

22.   Hot Six (Stephanie Plum #6) – Janet Evanovich

23.   Seven Up (Stephanie Plum #7) – Janet Evanovich

24.   The Hedgewitch Queen – Lilith Saintcrow

25.   The Bandit King – Lilith Saintcrow

26.   Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

27.   Cinder – Marissa Meyer

28.   Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

29.   The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

30.   Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

31.   Jinx – Meg Cabot

32.   Insatiable – Meg Cabot

33.   Airhead – Meg Cabot

34.   Being Nikki – Meg Cabot

35.   Runaway – Meg Cabot

36.   Heart of Steel – Meljean Brook

37.   Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? – Mindy Kaling

38.   Wolf Brother (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #1) – Michelle Paver

39.   Spirit Walker (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #2) – Michelle Paver

40.   Soul Eater (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #3) – Michelle Paver

41.   Beautiful Ruins – Jess Walter

42.   Matched (Matched #1) – Ally Condie

43.   Crossed (Matched #2) – Ally Condie

44.   Reached (Matched #3) – Ally Condie

45.   The Fallen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #1) – Liz Braswell

46.   The Stolen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #2) – Liz Braswell

47.   The Chosen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #3) – Liz Braswell

48.   How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran

49.   The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkein

50.   1Q84 -  Haruki Murakami (trans. by Philip Gabriel)

51.   Beautiful Creatures – Cami Garcia, Margaret Stohl

52.   Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

Were I to list the top 3 books of my year I’d have to go with Saga, How to be a Woman and 1Q84.  All three were refreshing and thought provoking in their own ways.

That's it.  I'm exhausted just thinking about all these words I've crammed into my brain.   

[lapandarouge]

Saga- Chapters 1-6

Hello there, my name is Mandy and I'm a comic book reader.  

(Hi Mandy)

My love for "funny books" started when I was younger, stealing my brother's Amazing Spiderman and reading them.  But it wasn't really until college and my exposure to books like Transmetropolitan and even the goth girl fantasy, Sandman that I became a true believer. Meeting and consequently marrying a true lifelong devotee to graphic literature sealed the deal. Now the real issue is what can we buy that will fit into our already over-stuffed bookshelves.  Life ain't bad.

Like any true nerd-girl I picked up and devoured the amazing Y: The Last Man years ago and when I saw that the talented Brian K Vaughan was writing a monthly book again I immediately started reading the floppy in-store (the Second issue, the first had already sold out several times, according to my comic guy, Gabe).  It's funny, strange and crazy readable.  

I just finished the first arc of this story and I am an unabashed super fan-girl for it now.  I have a copy of the first chapter on my coffee table that I have been handing to people nearly upon entering my domicile, thus ensuring that they too become hooked (I just give them the taste, and then they can go buy their own subsequent issues, suckers).  

The story follows the whirling catastrophe of two people having a child and escaping from a war zone.  They just both happen to be from the two different sides of said war.  There are bounty hunters, robot princes, ghosts, and a brothel planet called Sextillion (possibly now is a good time to mention this may not be suitable for all ages). The art of Fiona Staples is amazing, incredible, mind blowing, sharp, fierce, exciting, and more adjectives.

Please, if you have any vague interest at all, go to you local comic store and see if you can get a copy of it (the first arc is being released whole cloth next month, so you could wait, I guess, but what's the joy in that?).  This is the sort of thing that should be applauded and bolstered by anyone and everyone that can get behind it.  

[loseyourcred]

Cicely vonZiegesar - Cum Laude

[thefatling]

TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #18: America Pacifica by Anna North

I really wanted to like this one, but unfortunately, author Anna North made that pretty difficult.

Set in a near-future dystopia, the story follows Darcy, a first-generation native of America Pacifica, the island where survivors of a sweeping North American Ice Age have decamped in an attempt to rebuild society.  Unfortunately, their founder's plan to build out the island's square footage with landfill and power creature comforts with an all-purpose fuel called solvent has resulted in staggering, widespread poverty for most of the population.  Darcy and her mother, Sarah, eke out a sad existence in a squalid apartment in a world where even a shower costs two dollars.

Scarred by mysterious events in her past, Sarah has sequestered her daughter in a world not much bigger than their shared home and severely curtailed her relationships.  Sarah is Darcy's whole world, and when Sarah disappears, Darcy sets out on a journey to find her, uncovering America Pacifica's seedy underbelly and her own inner resolve, blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The trappings of a good story appear fleetingly on the page, but they hover near the edges of the terminally dull Darcy's quest.  There is a sense of growing unrest as Darcy moves through the island, but Darcy tendency to cower in her apartment limits the reader's sense of how deeply the revolutionary spirit runs amongst the other restless residents.  Darcy is the protagonist, but she suffers from "Harry Potter" syndrome--despite having few heroic qualities, the other characters tell her constantly that she is Important, that she can make A Difference.  To her credit, Darcy takes a long time to believe them, but when she does embrace her destiny, the payoff feels strained.  The story of founding America Pacifica under the watchful eye of not-so-charismatic leader Tyson probably would have been more compelling on its own, but North simply has a cadre of characters vastly more entertaining than Darcy relay an incomplete version of that tale to Darcy as she bumbles from place to place.

There are some interesting ideas about economic inequality, class warfare, and government corruption underneath North's carefully studied Iowa Writer's Workshop style (no, tell me again which three smells and/or colors characterize this setting! Please, keep cutting people's monologues off just when they become interesting!), but Darcy's single-mindedness in her quest to find her mother and North's obvious inability to truly relate to the horrific living conditions she's created for America Pacifica's underclass cause them to fall flat. Darcy herself just doesn't make much sense.  She seems to be going through her paces, doing whatever the novel requires.  She is North's puppet as the author ticks off dystopian tropes like a kid at a spelling bee--funky names for new products? Check. Menacing police force? Got it.  Sexual assault?  Cut and print!

Without spoiling anything, the novel's ending is frustratingly vague.  A book that ends without offering up easy answers or tying up loose ends to satisfaction can be effective, but a book that purports to be about a young girl looking for answers without actually providing any is a cheat.  The paperback edition I read contains some interviews with North where she namechecks luminaries like Margaret Atwood and David Foster Wallace as her inspiration, which is a disservice to her work.  She appears to be teetering on the shoulders of giants, and in the end, she tumbles down without having distinguished herself.

[loseyourcred]

Suzanne Collins - Mockingjay

I enjoyed this book, but man, did it make me mad.

I threw a book once. I had never read a Jodi Picoult book before and haven’t since, but I threw My Sister’s Keeper across the room and threatened to drop it off a balcony. I didn’t, though. I wanted someone else to read it and share in my rage, because I guess I’m awful. That’s only a fraction of what I felt after finishing Mockingjay, but I did slam the book shut with a “fucking seriously?” once I was done. Thankfully, I was in the room with someone else who’d already read it and could commiserate.

Katniss, by the time of this book, is a shell-shocked, more traumatized version of herself. She is violent and broken by the things she’s seen and done. It makes complete sense for her to be that way but there were times when I just wanted her to buck up, get over it and go fight something. She’s become a symbol of the revolution going on in the districts and Mockingjay centers heavily on her ability to deal with that. The book starts in the middle of what’s going on, travels back to show how things got the way they are, then moves into the present as the action finally begins. I remember feeling like it took forever to get to a place where I cared about what was going on. It wasn’t as much of a page-turner as the previous books were and because of that, I think it was easier to be annoyed by the parts I disliked. Even though I read it in a day, it felt like a slog.

Mockingjay was heavier on politics and the media than in either of the previous books, and that just wasn’t my cup of tea either. In the end, I found it to be a bit unsatisfying, but not totally unrewarding to read. I’d heard about how this book was so bad and the ending was awful, but I didn’t find that to be true. It wasn’t a book-throwing moment for me, but I wouldn’t blame anyone that disagreed.

[loseyourcred]

Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire

Second verse, same as the first!

This book starts out a little slower than the last, but once the action begins again, it’s another fun and quick read. I felt like Catching Fire was less “about” anything than The Hunger Games was. It’s mostly action, adventure and even a bit of mystery. Katniss has to figure out who to trust and how to survive the precarious situations she finds herself in.

I liked Catching Fire just as much, or maybe even a little bit more as I did The Hunger Games. Since it is such a quick read, I feel like I can’t even talk about the quality of the writing. I was just trying to get through it, anxious to see what would happen next. It’s not so disposable that I wouldn’t want to read it again, though. In fact, I plan to read the whole series again once I’m done with this year’s book goal, just to see how well it holds up.

[lapandarouge]

In Which I Read 'Cinder' and Explain Something About Myself

I am really good at reading (for lack of a better term) trash novels.  It may be one of the things that I am best at (and I say this knowing I make a mean fajita and can belt Loveshack like a mutha).  But I read this book along with 4 others over the weekend. The other four being my first foray into the Stephanie Plum series.  

I even got outside to enjoy the lovely weather Seattle was having.  Magic.

But Cinder contributed to the ease with which I read by being a fully readable book.  The re-telling of Cinderella left me constantly on the look out for similarities between the tales.  I am a complete sucker for fairy tale re-tellings.  Whoever did the marketing magic to figure out this would sell was a genius, I watch Once Upon a Time and I bought this book on spec.  

The story itself was possibly a little anemic for me.  I can't tell if that's because Marissa Meyer has big dreams for her world-building trilogy or not.  I felt like there was possibly too much exposition in the attempt to flesh out why things are the way they are leaving less time for us with the characters.

But what a world she built.  A post-apocalyptic society where a fatal plague is striking down the citizenry blindly and very little hope for a cure.  A massive city built on Beijing where towering apartment complexes and markets crowd all the scenery. I think very much about Blade Runner when I'm reading the opening lines.  Who doesn't want to read Cinderella set in Blade Runner?

But truly the greatest bone I have to pick with the story telling is the end (which I will not ruin).  I will just say that, if this novel sounds interesting to you, you might wait to read it until there are more in the series. Since we're given the ol' 'Wait until next time!'

Goodreads tells me that the next story 'Scarlet' won't be out until next year (I'm guessing this one will be about Little Red Riding Hood).