Picking up in the latter part of the year (see Parts One, Two, and Three) and I was moving away from the sci-fi mood that I’d been in. What really drove this portion of the year was one great bookstore trip around my birthday, some efforts to work down my existing pile of to-read books (that was where Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Broken Kingdoms came in — both had been on that pile for years), and a few trips to my local library, which got some really interesting books into its non-fiction section recently.

What Was Amazing And You Need To Read It Now, NOW I Tell You:

• Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

What Was Good, And Should Go On Your Giant, Teetering To-Read Tower:

• Broken Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin
• Starless, by Jacqueline Carey
• Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America, by Catherine Kerrison

Pretty Decent, Worth Reading One Of These Days:

• The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
• The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Simon Baatz

This Was, Indeed, A Book. And One That You Will Likely Complete:

• The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende
• Searching for the Amazons: The Real Warrior Women of the Ancient World, by John Man

I Mean, It Filled Some Time And It’s Not Like It Was Awful

• Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual (for a sexist workplace), by Jessica Bennett

Oh My God, It Was Awful

(nothing this time — yay!)

Honorable Mention:

Good God There Are No Words to Describe The Experience Of Reading This Book, Which Had The Most Amazing And Unbelievable Footnotes Ever, So Many Dropped And Forgotten Plotlines That It Drove Me Crazy, Totally Captures The Feel Of A Book From The Era It Was Set In, Both In Good And Bad Ways, And Left Me With A Decidedly ‘What The Fuck Was That’ Feeling, In Both A Positive And Negative Sense. I Feel Like This Is A Book That Everyone Should Read Once.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Picking up from where we left off (see Part 1 and Part 2), there’s a little bit of a shift, because I was in the mood for some sci-fi. I started with John Scalzi’s sequel to Lock In, then I tore through the first three books of James Corey’s Expanse series. I do like working in at least a few books from the greater classic field that I just never encountered during school, so (having really enjoyed Wives and Daughters last year) I checked out Mary Barton, which can be best described as poverty porn, with a truly ridiculous amount of coincidence thrown in. Elizabeth Gaskell might’ve had the best of intentions with where she was going with this book, but definitely don’t let this be the first way you encounter her as a writer. She was still working through early writing issues, and about 90% of the last half of the book rests entirely on the main character being unable to tell the dude she likes that she shouldn’t have turned down his marriage proposal, and really wants him to ask again so that she can say yes, but cannot, due to her delicate female reticence. Which…. cannot sustain the back half of a book when she is living two doors down from this guy and sees him literally every day. And then there’s a whole wrongful murder accusation, and a lot of swooning. Like, so much swooning. (which I guess was at least a change of pace from the front half of the book, which was all about the tragic deaths of the suffering poor, and let me tell you, it was not a good idea to be a small child in this book — you were going to die.)

Speaking of some learning curves, I also read Cass Morris’s From Unseen Fire, which had some first novel pacing issues, but has a very interesting setting (think pre-Caesar post-Sulla Rome, with magic) and I definitely think is the start of a promising series.

What Was Amazing And You Need To Read It Now, NOW I Tell You:

• Daughters of the Winter Queen, by Nancy Goldstone
• Caliban’s War, by James S. A. Corey

What Was Good, And Should Go On Your Giant, Teetering To-Read Tower:

• Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey
• Head On, by John Scalzi
• From Unseen Fire, by Cass Morris

Pretty Decent, Worth Reading One Of These Days:

• Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Changed The World, by Julia Baird

This Was, Indeed, A Book. And One That You Will Likely Complete:

• Abaddon’s Gate, by James S. A. Corey

I Mean, It Filled Some Time And It’s Not Like It Was Awful

• When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell

Oh My God, It Was Awful

• Sacred Ground, by Mercedes Lackey

The first ten books that I read (and detailed in Part 1), were, to be honest, a bit of a mixed bag. While I loved the Catherine the Great biography, and was very pleased with the latest addition to Anne Bishop’s The Others series, there were several so-so and even outright bad books in the first portion of the year. I hate when that happens — luckily, things improved in this batch, with nothing filling the outright awful category. Huzzah!

Books 11 – 20

What Was Amazing And You Need To Read It Now, NOW I Tell You:

• The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, by Kate Moore

What Was Good, And Should Go On Your Giant, Teetering To-Read Tower:

• Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, by Laura Thompson
• Howard’s End, by E. M. Forster

Pretty Decent, Worth Reading One Of These Days:

• Midnight Crossroad, by Charlaine Harris
• The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, by Diane Ackerman

This Was, Indeed, A Book. And One That You Will Likely Complete:
Winter Palace

• The Winter Palace, by Eve Stachniak

I Mean, It Filled Some Time And It’s Not Like It Was Awful

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See
• The New Countess, by Fay Weldon

Oh My God, It Was Awful

 (nothing in this period – yay!)

Honorable Mentions:

Bless Charlaine Harris, I Can’t Believe She Published This With A Straight Face, But, Hey, No Reason To Be A Hater – If I Had The Kind Of Success With Fort Scott That She Did With Sookie Stackhouse, I’d Do The Same Damn Thing And Laugh All The Way To The Bank

• After Dead, by Charlaine Harris

There’s A Certain Kind Of Biography That You Do When You Are A Celebrity Of Some Kind, And As A Reader I Honestly Don’t Have Many Expectations Beyond The Basic Level of Entertainment Going In – So This Achieved That, But Also Managed To Be Charming, And At The End Actually Raised Some Important Points About The Trashcan Fire That Was GamerGate As Well As The Challenges Of Overworking In The Creative Field, So, Kudos, Felicia Day. Kudos.

• You’re Never Weird On The Internet (almost), by Felicia Day