pammab's 2017 challenge

Discussie2017 Category Challenge

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pammab's 2017 challenge

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1pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:28 pm

I'm excited to see so many familiar faces on the Challenge thread, and I hope life has been treating you well. I've had time to read again and I suspect I'll have even more soon, so I'm attempting a come-back. :)

Goal: Read across 5 categories, for calmness and enjoyment, embracing the books that jump off the shelf. Total at least 34 books (34 = 2*17).

Categories:
A. Speculative fiction
B. Religion and philosophy
C. Queer and feminist
D. Empathy
E. Freedom

Ratings:
I rate according to this scale:
1 - Eek! Methinks not.
2 - Meh. I've experienced better.
3 - A-OK.
4 - Yay! I'm a fan.
5 - Woohoo! As good as it gets!

I tend to end up with a bimodal distribution -- one peak around 2, and a larger peak around 4 -- though the hump around 2 tends to go away when I filter what I read more closely.

BINGO:
And including a Bingo card, because I love this idea:

1 - The Book Thief
2 - The Circuit
3 - Marva Collins' Way
4 - Ash
5 - The Book Thief
6 - Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
7 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
8 - Ethan of Athos
9 - Grass
10 - Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
11 - Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
12 - Grass
13 - Grass
14 - Redshirts
15 - Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
16 - Childhood's End
17 - Ash
18 - Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
19 - Childhood's End
20 - Hillbilly Elegy
21 - I Can't Think Straight
22 - The House on Mango Street
23 - Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
24 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
25 - Buddhism without Beliefs

2pammab
Bewerkt: jan 2, 2018, 11:45 pm

A. Speculative fiction

1. Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (2017.01.04)
great worldbuilding in gravity and planet dirt
★★★★ (review)

2. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (2017.01.05)
the author fics herself
★★★ (review)

3. Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold (2017.03.29)
fascinating all-male society; addresses social burden of child rearing
★★★★ (review)

4. Agent of Change by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (2017.04.08)
interesting Turtle alien race
★★★ (review)

5. Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane (2017.04.16)
revisiting a formative world I've loved for decades
★★★★½ (review)

6. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler (2017.06.20)
simply amazing spec fic short stories
★★★★★ (review)

7. Grass by Sheri Tepper (2017.07.26)
ethics and religion, driving and engaging, technically only okay
★★★½ (review)

8. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (2017.09.05)
not a style of satire that works for me
★★★ (review)

9. Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 by various (2017.09.13)
modern SFF stories -- quite varied and at least one will strike home
★★★½ (review)

10. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (2017.09.19)
delightful, and the highest avg rating I've ever seen
★★★½ (review)

11. Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (2017.09.22)
didn't speak to me
★★ (review)

12. Octavia's Brood by various (2017.12.11)
too much like bedtime stories (inexperience?)
★★ (review)

Ideas:
-- Fledgling
-- "You'll Surely Drown if You Stay Here" (Alyssa Wong)
-- Babel-17
-- Six Wakes
-- The Fifth Season (rec from mathgirl40)
-- Strange Weather: Four Short Novels (rec from mathgirl40)

3pammab
Bewerkt: jan 2, 2018, 11:34 pm

B. Religion and philosophy

1. American Grace by Robert D. Putnam (2017.01.04)
fascinating -- the role of religion in modern America
★★★★½ (review)

2. No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh (2017.01.08)
okay: Buddhism on death
★★★½ (review)

3. Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor (2017.05.09)
modern Augustine for Buddhism
★★★½ (review)

4. Philosophy Bites edited by David Edmonds (2017.06.12)
blog-as-book basic philosophy
★★ (review)

5. Buddhism without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor (2017.07.01)
brief West-focused introduction to core Buddhist beliefs
★★★★½ (review)

6. Unwind by Neal Shusterman (2017.08.03)
well-done novelization of core right-to-life philosophical questions for YA audience
★★★★ (review)

7. Monk's Hood by Ellis Peters (2017.12.14)
light cozy mystery starring a Medieval monk
★★★ (review)

Ideas:
-- Why Buddhism is True

4pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:22 pm

C. Queer and feminist

1. Ash by Malinda Lo (2017.04.19)
love the focus on grief and depression in this retelling of Cinderella
★★★ (review)

2. I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif (2017.05.11)
disappointing execution on religious lesbians of color
★★ (review)

3. Valencia by Michelle Tea (2017.05.25)
so self-destructive
★★ (review)

4. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (2017.06.13)
hard to relate to pop culture
★★★ (review)

5. Tremontaine: Season One by multiple authors (2017.07.08)
chocolate and swords and queerness
★★★★ (review)

6. Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr (2017.08.12)
very identifiable; makes me want more space!
★★★★★ (review)

7. Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (2017.08.19)
not my style; didn't particularly like the characters or plot
★★★ (review)

8. The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie (2017.08.26)
great worldbuilding with lesbian (PG) pirates & Stockholm syndrome
★★★★ (review)

9. Huntress by Malinda Lo (2017.09.05)
tasty fairy tale fantasy, which isn't my usual cuppa
★★★★ (review)

10. Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrice Barnett (2017.10.02)
historical fiction, undercaptivating to me
★★★½ (review)

11. Aimee and Jaguar by Erica Fischer (2017.10.13)
juicy WWII lesbian Jewish-Nazi love story, with execution undercaptivating
★★★ (review)

12. Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (2017.11.01)
fantastic coming of age story of white feminism for a brown young woman
★★★★★ (review)

13. She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya (2017.11.20)
short but deep interspersed tale of Hinduism and change
★★★★★ (review)

Ideas:
-- The Edge of the Abyss

5pammab
Bewerkt: jan 2, 2018, 11:20 pm

D. Empathy

1. House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (2017.02.03)
evocative and deep; best read like poetry
★★★★ (review)

2. April and the Dragon Lady by Lensey Namioka (2017.06.02)
entertaining cross-culture but YA so short and lacking in depth
★★ (review)

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2017.05.04)
heartbreaking, young, male
★★★ (review)

4. The Circuit by Francisco Jiménez (2017.06.20)
life as a migrant farmer, from the view of a child
★★★★ (review)

5. Breaking Through by Francisco Jiménez (2017.06.27)
selfless teachers and self-interested employers open opportunity after opportunity for a HS immigrant
★★★★½ (review)

6. Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (2017.07.04)
good but not the description of good core values in poor white culture I'd wanted
★★★★ (review)

7. Reaching Out by Francisco Jiménez (2017.07.23)
Jesuits open doors for college student Frank, Mexican immigrant, ex-bracero, ongoing-janitor
★★★ (review)

8. Crucial Conversations by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler (2017.08.01)
simple principles for better communication
★★★★½ (review)

9. Deaf and Hearing Siblings in Conversation by Berkowitz and Jonas (2017.08.02)
unsurprising Deaf studies
★★★ (review)

10. God Loves Hair by Vivek Shraya (2017.11.27)
vignettes of growing up -- maybe-queer, Hindu, Canadian
★★★★ (review)

Ideas:
-- Evicted
-- The Anxiety and Worry Workbook
-- Elephant Company
-- Crucial Accountability
-- Influencer
-- Change Anything
-- Being Mortal
-- Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World
-- Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears

6pammab
Bewerkt: jan 1, 2018, 11:07 pm

E. Freedom

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2017.01.01)
different view of the Holocaust
★★★★ (review)

2. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (2017.04.06)
fantastic, Americana
★★★★ (review)

3. Marva Collins' Way by Marva Collins (2017.05.21)
teaching in the '90s
★★★½ (review)

4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2017.06.23)
huge swaths of modern medicine from a poor tobacco farmer with cancer that killed her at 31
★★★★ (review)

5. Redshirts by John Scalzi (2017.10.05)
cute spoof of Star Trek
★★★½ (review)

6. When Grit Isn't Enough by Linda F. Nathan (2017.11.03)
direct discussion of problems in current educational fads
★★★★½ (review)

Ideas:
-- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
-- Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, and Our Future
-- All the Pretty Horses
-- Endurance
-- Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace
-- The Buried Giant (recommended by saroz in SantaThing 2017)

7DeltaQueen50
jun 17, 2017, 5:46 pm

Great to see you back and I hope you enjoy the Challenge for the balance of the year.

8rabbitprincess
jun 17, 2017, 10:02 pm

Welcome back! Great setup, and I hope you find lots of gems on your shelves :)

9lkernagh
jun 18, 2017, 1:40 pm

Happy to see you back!

10pammab
jun 20, 2017, 10:55 pm

Yay! Thanks for the welcome backs -- it's great to see you again. :-D

11pammab
Bewerkt: jun 20, 2017, 11:21 pm

20. Bloodchild
Octavia Butler
2014.06.20 / ★★★★★ / review

Light spec fic stories, heavy on women and Big Ideas. Butler says she doesn't like to write short stories...but I love these, and more than the full-length fiction of hers that I've read. They sparkle, they pack a punch, and they get out of their own way.

---

"Bloodchild" -- Creepy, unhappy, vaguely racial symbiosis of the Wild Seed sort -- this time between alien races. One author quipped this was her favorite story about pregnancy, which reflects more about her relation to pregnancy than anything else. Disturbing imagery, but nestled directly in that region of toying with big ideas that I love. ★★★★★

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night" -- Genetic disease brought on ourselves, trading present for future, free will in a world of pheromones. It is missing just a bit of an ending / of a "so what", but the genetics angle is fresh in my spec fic reading. ★★★★

"Near of Kin" -- An incest story. The boundaries played with here are done well, but they're ones I've seen done well before. ★★★

"Speech Sounds" -- A world reborn without language, and what that means for the present and future. Very thoughtful, very enjoyable. ★★★★½

"Crossover" -- Mental illness as a relationship that just doesn't quit. I needed to read this one twice to see it all, and it's excellent. ★★★★

"Positive Obsession" -- Brief vignettes from Butler's life as a writer. I was most surprised at the final section, which names all four Black spec fic authors in 1989: Delany, Barnes, Charles R. Saunders, and herself. So few. ★★★

"Furor Scribendi" -- Brief essay on how to write. Not my scene, so no opinions from me on this score. ★★★

"Amnesty" -- Strange, fascinating aliens full of small creatures with humans becoming yet another part, more slavery and power parables, and totally unputdownable. Even picked it up to read in the car. ★★★★★

"The Book of Martha" -- God chooses a woman to make a beneficial change in humanity. Is he just bored and interested in the fireworks? Or actually hoping new creativity will make his creation better than he was able to? What does this mean to her and everyone else? Is she making good choices? Just fascinating. ★★★★★

12pammab
jun 20, 2017, 11:17 pm

21. The Circuit
Francisco Jimenez
2014.06.20 / ★★★★ / review

A memoir of life as an undocumented child of Mexican migrants picking crops in California in the middle of the 20th century. Very well written, captures the childhood experience of normalcy and excitement and the exhaustion that comes with maturation, crushing poverty, love, and lack of options. I found myself drawn to the implicit indictment of lack of birth control (4 more siblings in just a handful of years, starting from a place of soul-crushing poverty!), an educational system that left the author to coast without any language support and then demanded he repeat the experience the next year, and how chances to get ahead flee with each new slap of poverty and bad luck.

Powerful in its transference of the beloved middle school struggle story to the recent present and to a person's lived experience -- this short book seems to be well known in the 10-14 age group, and for cause.

13pammab
jul 1, 2017, 1:19 am

22. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
2014.06.23 / ★★★★ / review

Three stories in one: how immortal cells from a poor black woman outside Baltimore have had a huge impact on the field of medicine, the science and ethics and laws related to tissue cultures today, and the relationship between the author and Henrietta Lacks' daughter Deborah.

Tons has been written on this book, so I'll leave it short. It is quite long and took me quite a while to work through on audiobook, but there is a lot of meaningful content. It's very punchy, with a nice mix of facts, science, numbers, and anecdotes, and enough modern day content that I'm now very educated and opinionated about how our legal system should work regarding the "waste material" we leave behind during routine tests at the hospital -- though the book itself treated the issue quite fairly.

Definitely a book I'll recommend to everyone, and deserving of all the accolades it received when it came out in 2010.

14pammab
jul 1, 2017, 1:20 am

23. Breaking Through
Francisco Jiménez
2014.06.27 / ★★★★½ / review

The second in a trilogy of memoirs from Francisco Jimenez, this focuses on California high school for Panchito, whose family brought him into the USA illegally in the middle of the 20th century, and who returned with a green card after the family was deported.

The initial portion of the book focuses on eighth grade, when the author and his fifteen year old brother lived alone picking crops and as janitors, while going to school and feeding themselves, while his parents and younger siblings stayed behind for a few more months in Mexico. I found myself surprised that anyone thought this was a good idea and not just a chance to get attention from the authorities, but apparently it was not a big deal that a couple teenagers lived alone in a barracks without drinking water for months on end, had jobs under the age of 16, and all the rest. I'm inclined to chalk that up to different times more than anything, but even that is quite a cultural difference.

I loved and I am worried by how many caring adults intervened in his life to guide him to the future he was able to get, and by how much is serendipity. I'm sure that a lot of that is in the narrative that Jiménez understands and tells about himself -- but even so, there is an awful lot of helping and noticing and guiding, everything from the idea that this kid who wants to be a teacher should be immediately switched to academic college prep classes rather than vocational classes, to the Spanish teacher coming to visit his parents so they could have a conversation about college, to his senior counselor calling in a favor with someone in admissions at Santa Clara University to allow Jiménez to be considered after the deadline, which he let pass because his family needed his wages just to stay afloat.

For me, this is primarily a powerful story of what caring adults can do to facilitate kids dreaming bigger and achieving their goals, and how much patience and attention are needed for success to even have a chance.

15pammab
jul 1, 2017, 12:24 pm

24. Buddhism without Beliefs
Stephen Batchelor
2017.07.01 / ★★★★½ / review

Batchelor consciously re-envisions Buddhism for the modern West, stripping it of the religious and cultural relics of the places where Buddhism has flourished and refocusing on its core messages and the needs of the West. Toward the end, Batchelor explains his view that Buddhism has been crystallized for each new civilization and historical period through the genius and imagination of a small number of people -- which is exactly what Batchelor does in this book.

Rather than on the exegesis, I want to riff for a moment on the prescience of worrying in 1997 that dharma practice "could end up being swallowed by something else, such as psychotherapy or contemplative Christianity". I find the clinicalization example particularly fraught, as mindfulness is a go-to treatment for anxiety, depression, and stress and a new corporate buzzword. Since much of the interest in (and trendiness of) those practices is completely divorced from wider persistent practice, I worry they will flare up and then be exhausted without the community aspect that is core to social cohesion and happiness. This book is situated around core truths -- mixing non-Buddhist ones with Buddhism -- and has lasting power because of it.

So, recommended. This is a thin book with an enormous purpose.

16rabbitprincess
jul 1, 2017, 2:12 pm

>13 pammab: Thumbs-up for a great review!

17lkernagh
jul 3, 2017, 11:26 pm

Wow, some fabulous reading here!

18pammab
Bewerkt: jul 4, 2017, 8:01 pm

25. Hillbilly Elegy
J.D. Vance
2017.07.04 / ★★★★ / review

I may have come to this book expectations too high. This is a memoir of upward mobility from the hills of Appalachia to Yale Law, the cultural differences between those, and effect of upward mobility on identity.

I liked it, it was interesting, but it didn't offer the source of empathy I was looking for. Since the cultural observations fit with my own experience of upward mobility (though not from nearly such a rough start as J. D. Vance's), my main hope from this book was a way to feel less judgmental of people who swear at their kids, get into fistfights over hair-thin triggers, and get stuck on roundabouts of poor decisions. I'm disappointed that I didn't get some observation or set of observations that make redneck culture more valuable or beneficial than I'd been aware of. In fact, this book is pretty explicitly an indictment along the lines of, "I love my family, but the culture really is screwed up, and it needs to change if we're going to do right by our kids". So, disappointing to me, but still worth a read for people curious about Appalachia, the elites, and the chasm in between.

19pammab
jul 4, 2017, 8:01 pm

>16 rabbitprincess: Thanks, rabbitprincess!

20pammab
jul 4, 2017, 8:02 pm

>17 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori! I'm doing my best to poke around and grab what gets my fancy (and lots of what's been recommended -- even if long ago :))

21pammab
jul 8, 2017, 5:41 pm

26. Tremontaine: Season One
multiple authors
2017.07.08 / ★★★★ / review

Chocolate as currency, swashbuckling women with swords, lively Mesoamerican traders, unremarkable queerness, a fantasy of manners -- as marvelous as light quasi-fantasy fare can be.

Tremontaine is set in the world of Swordspoint, though fifteen years earlier, and it is written as a weekly serial by authors including Malindo Lo and Ellen Kushner herself. Though the plot is more mundane than I'd expected from the opening chapters, I found myself pulled back again and again due to the atmospherics and the characterization. A duke pulled into an affair, a duchess struggling to keep her position, a farm girl who earns money gambling to pay for her friends and study of mathematics, a disgraced spy-merchant having a love affair with a forger in the bad part of town -- what's not to enjoy?

22lkernagh
jul 10, 2017, 10:26 am

>21 pammab: - Oh, that one does sound like a fun read! Not sure about the chocolate for currency... I would be poor (I would be eating my income, literally!) ;-)

23pammab
jul 23, 2017, 11:57 pm

>>22 lkernagh: As would I! Chocolate is one of my favorite vices...

24pammab
jul 23, 2017, 11:58 pm

27. Reaching Out
Francisco Jiménez
2017.07.23 / ★★★ / review

College experience of Francisco Jimenez, who came to California illegally from Mexico as a small child, was deported, came back legally, and excelled at school. This book is the third in a series of memoirs.

I'm continually blown away by how much of his story is dependent on people in his life looking out for him and giving him opportunities. It's clear that the story he understands of his life is one of community rather than personal achievement, and equally clear that without the intervention of key people in his life, he would have been a very different person. I'm impressed, as before, by the quality of the storytelling and the life he lived, though I found many of the most powerful anecdotes of this book hearkened back to the elementary school experiences he documented in The Circuit.

25pammab
Bewerkt: aug 2, 2017, 1:14 am

28. Grass
Sheri Tepper
2017.07.26 / ★★★½ / review

Grass is a planet of grass. People only venture outside their cleared areas during the regularly-held Hunts, in which the aristocracy mounts the native Hippae and seek to kill foxen. As the rest of the galaxy dies from an unstoppable plague, Marjorie and her family arrive on Grass to investigate a rumor that Grass has been spared, and they become caught up in the inter-species strife of the planet.

I liked...
- serious treatment of religion (Old Catholics and Sanctity, which obtains tissue samples from infants -- and steals them from non-sanctified adults -- to guarantee the chance for a cloned life after death, and which reads names to empty rooms to ensure the saved will not be forgotten)
- horses!
- super alien aliens
- the gradual unfolding of new aspects to the story that led the past to be considered in a new light
- Brother Mainoa, whom I found delightful
- Rillibee's name (the sound of water over stones) and his vivid plague description, though it turned my stomach and hasn't left me yet
- the parallel of humans as God's viruses or antibodies -- small units with enough awareness to achieve a task, none of them important in the wider scheme of existence

I didn't like...
- the argument for genocide being ethical (! yes, seriously, it went there!)
- the technical execution (plots intersect glancingly, people and locations are introduced and dropped, pacing at beginning and ending is not quite right)

This book contains many of my favorite themes, drew me in multiple evenings when I hadn't planned to read, and has a lot of meat. I see why it's a touchstone of woman-written science fiction. After finishing it, though, I'm also not surprised it missed out on the Hugo when it was nominated in 1990 -- it has just a few too many technically rough aspects.

26VictoriaPL
jul 27, 2017, 8:22 am

>25 pammab: your review has me curious about Grass!

27pammab
jul 28, 2017, 7:41 pm

Hi Victoria! You should definitely check it out if it piques your interest -- there is a lot there that is staying with me, and I suspect that is true for lots of people, because it seems to garner lots of discussion... so many good things to read though!

28DeltaQueen50
Bewerkt: jul 29, 2017, 3:13 pm

>25 pammab: Your review has also got me thinking that Grass is a book that I should check out.

29pammab
aug 1, 2017, 11:21 pm

>28 DeltaQueen50: I'll be curious to see what you think if you do read Grass, Judy!

30pammab
Bewerkt: aug 2, 2017, 1:17 am

29. Crucial Conversations
Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler
2017.08.01 / ★★★★½ / review

Crucial Conversations has been praised by multiple people I respect -- it contains valuable insights for succeeding in high-tension dialogues, they say. I agree.

It operates from the non-zero sum premise that it is always possible and ideal to be both direct and tactful, and provides specific strategies for understanding and managing challenging conversations.

It all seems rather straightforward until it's time to really apply it. I'd have liked more rewriting exercises and fewer cutesy names, but overall I found the book well-written and actionable, with repetition appropriate to reinforcing its main points. I'll be looking for others by the authors, and I recommend this book to anyone who dreads confrontation or finds themselves in verbal battle more than they'd like.

31pammab
Bewerkt: aug 3, 2017, 1:49 am

30. Deaf and Hearing Siblings in Conversation
Marla C. Berkowitz and Judith A. Jonas
2017.08.02 / ★★★ / review

My finishing of this book about deaf and hearing siblings has been a long time in coming -- this was an Early Reviewers book from 2013(!).

I found it to hit the common themes of family isolation, need for sign language to facilitate closer relationships, and dependency on/bonds with interpreters, illustrated with anecdotes from a soft sociological study. This is a rather academic niche book, with findings that didn't particularly surprise me -- but it is well written and a well designed study, with a chatty tone that is easy to read.

32pammab
aug 9, 2017, 11:08 pm

31. Unwind
Neal Shusterman
2017.08.03 / ★★★★ / review

Excellent page-turner for the young adult crowd that is based on philosophical and moral issues: if every single part of you was "unwound" and used to replace a broken part of someone else, do you still exist? It is right for a society to unwind citizens that cause problems to help model citizens?

The world as reimagined is slightly exaggerated but rooted in the present, with the main twists from our current reality based on potential developments in the next few generations. Abortion, religion, the culture wars, belonging, and more are neither elided nor a source of only good or evil, and all the characters ring true. I was very impressed by this book. Though it is clearly not written for an adult audience, I'd recommend it to all advanced students in middle school looking for something to read that is connectable and mind-expanding, as well as to any high schoolers and adults looking for a fast read that doesn't dodge tough ethical questions.

33pammab
aug 26, 2017, 1:05 pm

33. Swordspoint
Ellen Kushner
2017.08.19 / ★★★ / review

A melodrama of manners in a non-magical fantasy land of nobles and a social underbelly, in which swordsmen are hired to fight nobles' battles for them -- to the death.

This was... not my favorite. It was okay. It didn't speak to me, though I can see that it would appeal to others with different tastes. I found the nobles interchangeable, with their intricate plottings and motivations hard to follow (this is my dislike of highly political fantasy speaking), and I found our heroes -- a swordsman-for-hire and his crazy-lover-with-a-Secret -- disturbing more than compelling (this is my dislike of grittiness in fiction speaking). A bit of a disappointment after Tremontaine, which had more motivated characters that I was comfortable with despite their moral grayness.

34pammab
aug 26, 2017, 1:21 pm

34. The Abyss Surrounds Us
Emily Skrutskie
2017.08.26 / ★★★★ / review

Pirates in the dystopian future, in which seas have encroached on land and states devolved to support smaller groups of people. Those who opted out end up as part of floating cities of stateless people, who have no resources except what pirates bring them home, often fighting huge genetically engineered beasts that accompany others' ships. Our heroine is captured and a study in Stockholm Syndrome beneath a manipulative captain who leads her ship into the future like nobody's business.

Quite fun and recommended! There's a wee bit of romance that builds nicely, and a lot of moral conflict and shades of grey emerging. I loved the worldbuilding. I found the characters extremely human, and appreciated some adult reflections on motherhood. I was not entirely convinced by Cas's actions at the very end, but I'm convinced enough -- I'd look for more in this series. Highly recommended as a light YA read!

35DeltaQueen50
sep 1, 2017, 4:54 pm

>35 DeltaQueen50: You got me with "pirates", The Abyss Surrounds Us is going on my wishlist!

36pammab
sep 2, 2017, 7:40 pm

>36 pammab: I quite liked The Abyss Surrounds Us and I'm planning when to buy the next one, so I hope you like it too! There is no abyss in the book, so the title is all a bit strange.

37DeltaQueen50
sep 3, 2017, 12:37 pm

>37 DeltaQueen50: I couldn't resist. The first book was only $2.99 for the Kindle yesterday and since I saved some money, I picked up the 2nd book as well! It's called The Edge of the Abyss so perhaps the abyss is yet to come! :)

38lkernagh
sep 4, 2017, 7:36 pm

>33 pammab: - Excellent review!

>34 pammab: - Oooohhh... pirates!

39pammab
sep 10, 2017, 10:59 pm

>38 lkernagh: Ha ha ha! Yes, perhaps the Abyss is yet to come. I always hate to read the last book in a series that I like since it brings things to a close, so I'm postponing for now, but I'm looking forward to the next!

>39 pammab: I love the Sally Ride biography! One of my favorites so far this year, and I'm glad to have a chance to share the appreciation with others.

40pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:08 pm

35. Huntress
Malinda Lo
2017.09.05 / ★★★★ / review

A quintessential YA fantasy of the fairy tale sort, featuring a mix of ancient cultural settings, an appropriately paced set of romances (including a lesbian one), real character destruction, an understandable villain, and an ending in which teenagers opt for their careers over their few-week love affair. These themes are a breath of fresh air and very engaging to me -- I seem to quite like Malinda Lo. (My literary diet rarely includes fantasy, though, so this appreciation is twice exceptional.)

41pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:08 pm

36. Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett
2017.09.05 / ★★★ / review

Very disappointed in myself that this book was not engaging to me (didn't finish). Perhaps I just don't read enough fantasy to appreciate the humor. This is my second attempt at Pratchett after some number of years. I'll be setting him aside for a while again. I was really hoping to hit a satire BINGO square with this one, too...

42pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:07 pm

37. Nebula Awards Showcase 2017
various
2017.09.13 / ★★★½ / review

This is a collection of Nebula 2016 nominees and winners. It's fascinating how present these feel -- the quasi-political commentary on our world is clear in a way that I rarely experience in science fiction. Apparently in 2017 we are very interested in the questions of sentience, of AI, and of Alzheimer's (the last presumably an effect of Terry Pratchett's death?). The balance here veers into fantasy more than I'd usually read, but I'm glad to have gotten this taste of what current science fiction and fantasy look like.

"Madeleine" (El-Mohtar) -- Sense-based time travel with a commentary on modern medicine. Very strong, though not especially novel for me. ★★★★

"Cat Pictures Please" (Kritzer) -- Sentient AI tries to make things better in exchange for cat pictures. A whimsical story that doesn't have anything new to say on a well-worn theme. ★★

"Damage" (Levine) -- Sentient airplane cobbled together from parts, fighting the losing side of a war, faced with a moral dilemma. The story has a nice arc and pacing, but feels rather pat to me. ★★½

"When Your Child Strays From God" (Miller) -- When her son doesn't come home, a mother takes a drug to meet him where he is, and finds she isn't where she thought she was. I quite enjoyed this story, which hits some of my favorite themes of religion and LGBTQ identity. ★★★★

"Today I am Paul" (Shoemaker) -- Fascinating concept and execution of a sentient android in a nursing home, emulating folks from the patient's present and past. Incredibly sad, grief-triggering, and beautiful. ★★★★★

"Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" (Wong) -- Flavors of people taken rather literally, with family and lover dynamics fascinating in their complexity. Parts were hard for me to follow, but I've never seen this idea before. ★★★½

"Our Lady of the Open Road" (Pinsker) -- A band marches to the beat of its own drummer in a dystopian near-future, in which only self-driving cars are allowed on highways, folks demand Wallyworld credit instead of cash, and live bar music has been replaced by holographic recordings of folks who made it big years ago. The worldbuilding of the future rang true for me, though the plot didn't seem to really come together or conclude as majestically as the world had promise for. ★★★★

"Binti" (Okorafor) -- A young woman moving to another planet for university solves an intergalactic crisis. This novella has a very solid core. Unfortunately bits and pieces didn't ring true for me, like the fantastical healing properties, the blurry envisioned role of math, Binti's quick recovery from seeing murders, and so on -- but I was very intrigued and wanted to know more about this story, so it wins on that score. ★★★½

(Beyond this, the collection contains poetry and excerpts of novels. The poetry didn't speak to me and I chose to skip the excerpts of larger works in favor of moving on to another whole novel.)

43pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:06 pm

38. A Closed and Common Orbit
Becky Chambers
2017.09.19 / ★★★★★ / review

A spaceship AI self-named as Sidra unhappily embodied in a rare (and illegal) human form, and how her persistent caretaker Jane grew up as a slave in a recycling factory and because a good, free adult through limited horizons and unimaginable hurdles with the help of her adoptive mother.

I love the characterization in this soft science fiction book especially -- the alienness of Sidra's embodiment to her, the limitations of Jane's world view at age 10, the voice changes as Jane ages. I love the lightness, the focus on the meaning of family, and how the stories build on themselves. I cried. It won. I want more. (It also has the highest average rating I've ever seen on LT.)

Pretty sure this was a book I picked up on someone's thread -- if you read this book this year, thank you very much for sharing!

44pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:06 pm

39. Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke
2017.09.22 / ★★ / review

The Overlords arrive from outerspace, require that people stop hurting other creations and enforce the stipulation with pain, ensure needs are shared, and refuse to show themselves for many years on end. What are they doing here?

I'm not sure what to make of this book. At first I was trying to read the Overlords as an allegory for the Soviet state -- with ever-present attention, crime drops to nothing; with ever-present resources, there is no more need to work -- and I was absolutely convinced of this interpretation when we finally catch a glimpse of an Overlord body. But it doesn't hang together quite as tightly later in the book, which seems to be arguing that human children hold the most potential of all, and need a clean break with the past to chrysalise and emerge into even more powerful -- but utterly foreign -- beings. A plot with a man stowing away to see the Overlord's planet felt tacked on to me -- though the fact that it starred a black man was surprising to me, it wasn't clear what was added except a convenient view of the next generation of humans.

I also found that reading this book, first published back in 1953, time stretches in a most interesting way. It's painfully dated in places (especially in attitudes to women -- of course they faint and sometimes they faint just for attention, and thank god men are naturally polyamorous because women don't like sex much -- and its idea that we'll all use the n-word just like we use the word "child" now). It also feels dated in the preoccupation with light-speed travel and with the story format, which exhibits almost near-total lack of characterization and one of my least favorite plot devices, multiple multi-decade jumps in time. In others, though, it is modern-feeling or even prescient (Buddhism eats all other religions? universal basic income and twenty hour work weeks? folks start spending excessive amounts of time watching long-form entertainment at home of a complexity that would have been considered high-brow decades earlier?) Perhaps Clarke introduced these ideas in the re-release in the '90s -- even so, the book is interesting for the shadow it casts on what is top-of-mind today and what was top-of-mind in the past.

So. I didn't find this book particularly engaging, and the most interesting parts that seemed prescient or drew contrasts might have been tweaked 30 years ago rather than 60. I'll be dropping Clarke for a while; it isn't standing up for me.

45rabbitprincess
sep 23, 2017, 9:06 am

>44 pammab: I've got the first book in the series on my list thanks to a glowing review from my cousin. Glad to hear the second book is just as good!

46pammab
sep 25, 2017, 11:54 pm

>46 pammab: I haven't read the first book yet actually (they stand alone) so I am looking forward to doing that soon -- even moreso with the good word your cousin put in!

47LisaMorr
okt 21, 2017, 10:26 am

Catching up on a few threads and yours has me catching book bullets! I'm adding Blood Child, the Jimenez memoirs, Grass, Unwind, Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space and A Closed and Common Orbit.

48pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:06 pm

>48 pammab: Oh wow, Lisa, that's a huge number of bullets! Those were all pretty darn good books, though, so I'm glad you took them. ;)

49pammab
dec 5, 2017, 10:45 pm

Now to catch up on posting recent reviews into this thread (too much bookkeeping for me to be on top of recently -_-)...

(So excited for SantaThing! I love this time of year on LT.)

50pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:06 pm

40. Jam on the Vine
LaShonda Katrice Barnett
2017.10.2 / ★★★½ / review

Ivoe, an African American girl around the turn of the century, is fascinated by newspapers. Her community pulls together money to send her to college, where she meets -- and falls in love with -- a teacher who never stops encouraging her to write for the paper. As the years pass, she works to find a job as a black woman, and hits a series of roadblocks that culminate in her starting her own paper -- and all the challenges that go alongside.

I found myself undercaptivated by the story, but this book had historical flavor and insight that I loved. I also particularly liked its use of perspective, shifting between characters like children and adults and what each perceived in the same situation, to illustrate Ivoe's world -- I found it well and powerfully done.

51pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:05 pm

41. Redshirts
John Scalzi
2017.10.5 / ★★★½ / review

An amusing satire of Star Trek. I didn't find it laugh-out-loud funny, though I could imagine an audiobook with the right delivery would have that effect. I did find it fully engaging, and I'll be recommending it to people that I have a suspicion it will tickle in all the right ways.

52pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 10:55 pm

42. Aimee & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943
Erica Fischer
2017.10.13 / ★★★ / review

A truly amazing love story between a Jewish woman and a Nazi woman in 1943, whose documentary-style format and poor translation quality were disappointing. I have heard the 1999 film portrays this amazing story with the emotion it deserves, so I'd steer potential non-academic readers in that direction first.

The Nazi/German layman perspective on the war was fascinating for me -- mandatory home service, the different way in which rations were allocated, and the plight of adult U-Boats (Jews gone underground) was similar-yet-different to me from the England-focused WWII books I tend to read, and the child-focused Holocaust novels I devoured. I found the language around "illegals" and "deportation" to concentration camps (historically accurate, apparently, and documented as such before any of the recent American debates kicked off) to be particularly evocative and effective at forcing my reflection on social responsibility, right vs. law, and political machinery.

As a whole, though, this story has a ton of promise, and I didn't leave with the sense that the author (and/or translator?) delivered on it.

53pammab
dec 5, 2017, 10:56 pm

43. Juliet Takes a Breath
Gabby Rivera
2017.11.1 / ★★★★★ / review

So good. I will be recommending this book to many folks. It sits right at the edge of fictionalized memoir, telling the story of a 19-year-old Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx who heads to Portland for an internship with her idol, the quintessential white lady feminist who wrote a book about pussy power, sees auras and loves polyamorously, and rejoices when Juliet accidentally bleeds into the mattress. In a great story that doesn't read as YA, there's a lot of love, a lot of cultural differences, and a lot of learning that happens -- for the characters and, it seems intended, for the readers. Extremely entertaining, excellent lively voices and dialogue, and an award winner -- happy, light fare with social themes to integrate into one's own experience. One of the best books I've read all year.

54pammab
dec 5, 2017, 10:58 pm

44. When Grit Isn't Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-for-All Promise
Linda F. Nathan
2017.11.3 / ★★★★½ / review
(Early Reviewers)

Excellent book that names and problematizes the core assumptions and mantras that we repeat to students in poverty. I found it very engaging and hard to put down once picked up. Though the core of the argument was a set of topics we've heard repeatedly raised, I am not sure they have ever been condensed into such a direct and well-written book. The author makes specific recommendations for policy change when it is relevant, and balances personal anecdotes with data -- altogether a well-written book that I've shared with educators in this space for its beating of the timely message that there is no panacea and that universal trendiness should be questioned. I find its message complicated a bit by the author's white skin, which she doesn't seem to acknowledge for all that she discusses social class -- a surprising gap.

Like most education books, I didn't find a ton of new interest here. I did emerge with one new insight from this compilation (and I expect others will walk away with different aspects): the focus on grit in schools is a convenient way to shift the burden of student success back onto the students themselves, rather than onto their communities, families, schools, and societies. This makes the core mantra that "if you are gritty, you will be successful" actively dangerous in setting expectations around these students, especially expectations from their middle-class teachers, who may internalize the wrong message despite good intentions.

This is not an academic book. It wants to make change, just like the author's previous principalship at Boston Arts Academy advocates.

55pammab
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2017, 11:27 pm

45. She of the Mountains
Vivek Shraya
2017.11.20 / ★★★★ / review

Vivek Shraya's novel of a struggle toward self-acceptance as a queer Canadian-Indian man is lyrical and light, poetry as prose, and tangibly deeply rooted in Hinduism. The modern story -- in the third person limited perspective of an unnamed man -- launches from and repeatedly incorporates retellings of well-known Hindu tales, primarily those of the mother goddess Parvati and her elephant-headed son Ganesha. Gorgeous monochrome images adorn the novel. This is a short book that benefits from analysis and discussion, and I'd highly recommend it.

I didn't find the two storylines -- one ancient myth, one modern story -- explicitly linked or parallel to each other initially, though like poetry, their connections became more tightly linked as I reread. My initial sense was that these stories were linked just to ensure the audience with a wee bit of Hindu background for the tale to come. It's the Hindu aspect that speaks most to me in this story, and even I, minimally educated in Hinduism, found it sprouting in many directions. (If you're into Hinduism, my review has a lot of specific examples -- I was so intellectually engaged that I couldn't stop and needed to share. :))

There is a ton to chew on here, and discussions make it even more appreciable. It's a lovely book. If you're lucky enough to see it, you should pick it up and take a look, or bring it to a book club that likes literary analysis.

56pammab
dec 5, 2017, 11:02 pm

46. God Loves Hair
Vivek Shraya
2017.11.27 / ★★★★ / review

Extremely short with gorgeous, telling pictures, the entire coming-of-age story can be read in about 15 minutes. It tracks a boy from his birth -- his mother wants boys so badly that she promises to donate their hair in a temple if given boys, leading everyone to believe the boy is a girl for his first two years -- through his coming of age and the beginnings of puberty and sexual awakening. Lots of nice Indian-Canadian and queer experience details mixed in with a series of powerful vignettes, excellently written.

57pammab
dec 5, 2017, 11:05 pm

And two additional books that I started and didn't stick with:

- Flowers for Algernon -- this was a reread; knowing how it ends, I couldn't get keep going
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid -- this seems very relevant and its core thesis is engaging, but it wants a more substantial engagement from me than I'm willing to give it, especially since I think I'll know a lot of the material from other sources already

58pammab
dec 5, 2017, 11:29 pm

Annnd, that's the Bingo card! Redshirts put it over.

Reflecting on it, I allowed books to double-count this year -- perhaps that will need to change next year.

59DeltaQueen50
dec 6, 2017, 1:10 am

Congrats. on completing your Bingo Card! And for catching up with your posting ;)

60pammab
dec 7, 2017, 12:29 am

Thanks! ;) (So slow!)

61pammab
dec 11, 2017, 11:46 pm

47. Octavia's Brood
various
2017.12.11 / ★★ / review

Octavia's Brood is a 2015 collection of speculative visionary fiction, written by social justice activists in workshops and published by an anarchist press that prides itself on having "no boss, no managers, no bullshit". The Octavia Butler homage workshops seems to be the real-world analogue of the anthology that Gabby Rivera's Juliet Takes a Breath character participates in with breathy excitement (in a peer of whom I believe the original incarnation of the story was introduced), and given that I adored Juliet Takes a Breath, I was excited to explore this anthology.

I wanted to like this book, but I really didn't. Most of the stories had a bedtime story vibe (much telling, not much showing, meandering toward a pat lesson or thin/abrupt ending), and I struggled to follow more than a few. I appreciate that the stories are written by inexperienced writers, and I wish them all the best, so I won't pick apart the ones that worked poorly for me.

I particularly liked:

Excerpt from "Aftermath" by LeVar Burton -- In a future with climate change and increase in skin cancer, brown skin becomes desirable -- with horrific consequences. I liked how this story merged multiple themes and was able to explore along a couple different lines. (I wonder if part of the success was in the excerpting, or in Burton's decades of experience in film storytelling?) ★★★½

"Star Wars and the American Imagination" by Mumia Abu-Jamal -- A short essay on how the USA likes to think of itself as the underdog even though it behaves more like Darth Vader, how Vietnam affected the story, and how the Star Wars climax of kinship between Luke and Vader speaks more loudly than perhaps was intended. There were a lot of throw-away lines in this essay that contextualized a film that I've thought about and seen often, even in academic contexts, in ways that I hadn't perceived before. I love when reading inspires new connections. ★★★★

62pammab
dec 11, 2017, 11:48 pm

I am close to 50! I suppose I should work hard to finish what I'm in the middle of (and perhaps find a short book or two to add in? :)) so I can hit 50 books in 2017. I haven't read this many books for pleasure in over a decade, so this is a delightful crossroads to be at.

63pammab
dec 11, 2017, 11:57 pm

Oy, and in reading other reviews of Octavia's Brood, apparently Mumia Abu-Jamal is also well-known. Well. I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed or proud that my tastes apparently follow so closely to the masses....

64lkernagh
dec 12, 2017, 9:06 pm

>52 pammab: - I loved the audiobook of Redshirts! Of course, that "love" probably has something to do with the fact that Wil Wheaton was the reader... ;-)

65pammab
dec 14, 2017, 12:22 am

Will Wheaton, like Wesley Crusher? That is too cute! I wonder which stops they pulled to make that happen. =D

66pammab
dec 14, 2017, 11:38 pm

48. Monk's Hood
Ellis Peters
2017.12.14 / ★★★ / review

Monk's Hood is a cozy murder mystery starring Brother Cadfael, a Middle Ages monk -- when a landowner man turns up poisoned and the abbey is embroiled in whether they may or may not own his land, Brother Cadfael is on the side of right to find the murderer and nice guy that he is, he also frees him!.

I love the wholesome feel of this book. Given a lot of what I read, I kept half-expecting Brother Cadfael to have hidden longings for the woman of his youth, or to question his faith, or to have some kind of queer twist -- just to be edgy. But this book is not at all like that, and a break from all that active edginess in recent publications is extremely calming (even though I'm so trained into that worldvview that the perfection does require some suspension of disbelief ;)). I wish I hadn't found the language itself to require such serious, read-aloud-in-my-head-style attention -- if it had been a faster read, I'm sure I'd devour all of the series.

67mamzel
dec 15, 2017, 10:36 am

>67 mamzel: I love this series also. I've collected quite a number of them and pick one up every so often. Think I'll read one over winter break as a matter of fact.

68christina_reads
dec 15, 2017, 2:08 pm

I do love Cadfael! I've been slowly savoring the series...I still have five or so books left to read.

69lkernagh
dec 17, 2017, 2:03 pm

>66 pammab: - Apparently Wheaton is a good friend of John Scalzi, so I think it might have been an easy "ask". :-)

70pammab
dec 17, 2017, 6:24 pm

>68 christina_reads: I adore series that can be picked up in bits and pieces whenever there's a need. I'm hoping Cadfael can be one of them. :)

>69 lkernagh: Only five books left -- drawing to a close is so sad. Did you read them in any particular order?

>70 pammab: It would be then indeed! It's funny how all the famous people end up knowing each other.

71christina_reads
dec 19, 2017, 3:55 pm

>71 christina_reads: I think I read book 4 (St. Peter's Fair) first, but then I went back and started from the beginning. I'd say the series can generally be read out of order, although books 2 (One Corpse Too Many) and 6 (The Virgin in the Ice) have plot developments that affect later books in the series.

72lkernagh
dec 23, 2017, 8:04 pm

Stopping by to wish you and your loved ones peace, joy and happiness this holiday season and for 2018!

73pammab
dec 24, 2017, 11:58 pm

>72 lkernagh: Thanks for the insight! It sounds like I should read Cadfael in order then, rather than picking and choosing whichever looks most interesting at the time.

>73 pammab: That is absolutely adorable and so incredibly sweet! Thank you very much for the good wishes, and all the very best back to you and yours.

74VivienneR
dec 25, 2017, 10:38 am

75pammab
jan 1, 2018, 11:06 pm

Thank you and Merry Christmas to you as well, Vivienne!

76pammab
Bewerkt: jan 1, 2018, 11:30 pm

49. On Basilisk Station
David Weber
2017.12.30 / ★★★★ / review

Honor Harrington takes command of her first starship and finds herself dealing with limited weaponry, a diffident crew, and unexpected responsibility for a corner of the galaxy that has been ignored and poorly policed for far too long, just as a mysterious set of uprisings start to foment.

Military science fiction has all the best parts of leadership, lead female characters and characters exhibiting racial diversity are impressive especially for being published over 20 years ago, and a reasonable plot line and character development made me like this book. I found parts hard to follow, but I also kept going back to pick it up. It's quite different from the other series science fiction I've been reading, but it seems like it will be an excellent series to return regularly to visit.

77pammab
jan 1, 2018, 11:30 pm

And that's that! Only 49 books in 2017 -- a good number, but short of the 50 (or even 52) that I'd have liked to finish. I suppose if I hadn't abandoned so many I'd have done even better. I'll be building out a new thread in the next few days to herald 2018's arrival.

Congratulations to everyone on finishing out 2017. Here's wishing you all the best of 2018 to you and yours!

78pammab
Bewerkt: jan 3, 2018, 11:45 pm

My best books of 2017:

-- Bloodchild by Octavia Butler -- masterful short stories
-- A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers -- spec fic commenting on the present that played me intellectually and emotionally like a fiddle
-- Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr -- now I adore Sally Ride
-- Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera -- very entertaining engagement with intersectionality of privilege
-- Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf -- relaxing breath of fresh and rooted Americana

(And I just realized -- that's 80% women! Huh.)

And now it's time to turn over into 2018, with a new thread and all the forward progress that entails.