2011 involved less reading for me than any year other than 2004, with a rather low total of 37. I’m not sure why it was so low, but I went through a very slow reading period after starting Gravity’s Rainbow in mid-August, and after starting (and never finishing) it I didn’t finish reading another book until the end of October.

2011 was my year of the ebook; I read more ebooks than paper books for the first time, 32:5. I’d be surprised if that trend were reversed (failing some kind of major economic/technological breakdown), and anticipate reading mainly ebooks in future.
[more...]

I just finished China Miéville’s Embassytown, and was quite impressed with it. I think it’s more like “straight sci-fi” than his previous works, while at the same time being ambitious and different in the Miéville way and achieving the strangeness present in most of his work.
[more...]

Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones is the best work of fiction I’ve read in the last couple of years. It is the story of Max Aue, a Nazi military bureaucrat, as recollected by him in his old age. It’s powerful, gripping, disturbing, shocking, and insightful, and I highly recommend it.
[more...]

2010 wasn’t a great reading year for me.
[more...]

I read 55 books in 2009; my reading rate seems to be dipping towards about one book per week.

A dozen books stand out for me from that year.
[more...]

A Bourne Identity fairy tale, with the moral, “always wear sensible shoes”.

I could have titled this “Tron: Legacy Review”, but decided on the more honest naming.

I should note that I don’t remember the original Tron very well, and wasn’t coming to this film hoping that it would be “true” to the original. I didn’t really have expectations; I dread to think what my reaction would have been if I had had any.
[more...]

I read Agassi’s autobiography during a five-hour layover in Philadelphia airport this weekend, and have to say I was impressed—with the book, not the layover. I had expected it to be of interest mainly for its hardcore tennis content, with some celebrity stuff thrown in, but I found it gripping throughout and was very impressed with Agassi’s voice.
[more...]

I read 75 books in 2008, just managing to hit my target. (This year, I won’t make my target of 80, or even get close.) Some excellent books were among those 75.
[more...]

Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book won the Nebula award in 1992 and the Hugo and Locus awards in 1993. I would describe it as a time travel plague thriller academic farce, and of all the triple crown winners it is my least favorite. Some of its ideas were good, and some of its passages powerful, but overall I found it disjointed and less than gripping.
[more...]

Speaker for the Dead is the second novel in Orson Scott Card’s Ender series. It won the Nebula award in 1986 and the Hugo and Locus awards in 1987. Its predecessor, Ender’s Game, is revered as a science fiction and geek cult classic that still has resonance in geek culture. I liked Ender’s Game when I first read it years ago, and when I re-read it recently (prior to Speaker for the Dead), I enjoyed it and thought it held up quite well.
[more...]

Startide Rising is the second novel in David Brin’s Uplift Universe series, and it won the Nebula in 1983 and the Hugo and Locus in 1984. I read its predecessor Sundiver first, and it nearly stopped me from going on to Startide Rising. I didn’t like the writing style at all, and it felt unpolished. It must be said that its ideas and setting were interesting: it’s “big universe” science fiction, with a multitude of alien races. The unique concept Brin came up with was that every alien race was raised to technological advancement (or even sentience) by some other race acting as “patron”—except for humanity, which reached a high degree of advancement, and raised dolphins and chimpanzees to higher-level sentience, without a patron.
[more...]

Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama won the Nebula in 1973, and the Hugo and Locus in 1974 (as well as the 1973 BSFA award and the 1974 Jupiter and John W. Campbell awards). After I read it I described it as “old school”, which still seems accurate.
[more...]

Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake won the 1978 Nebula and the 1979 Locus and Hugo awards. I’m having trouble figuring out why. This is not to say it’s bad—it’s quite good, and I’ve definitely encountered worse award winners. But it won all three while seeming to me like a good but unremarkable novel, and my expectation is that the “triple crown” winners would be remarkable in some way.
[more...]

My total number of books read for 2007 dropped significantly from 2006, to 50. This was mainly due to not reading much in the first six months of the year. I read significantly more non-fiction, and that difference felt more marked because almost 50% of my favorite books from that year are non-fiction.
[more...]

2006 involved quite a lot of reading, including perhaps a higher number than average of books in series.
[more...]

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, the opening novel in his Heechee series, won the Nebula in 1977 and the Hugo, Locus, and John W. Campbell awards in 1978 (making it even more highly-decorated than most of the “triple crown” winners).
[more...]

In 2005 I set myself a goal of reading 60 books, partly to try to make up for the low numbers in 2004. I barely made it, reading The Phantom Tollbooth on 31 December.
[more...]

I read only 37 books in 2004, the lowest total since I started keeping track. I’m not sure why I read so few that year, particularly since quite a few of the books on the list are books that I was completely absorbed by and went through quickly. The quality is mixed, but some of them were excellent.
[more...]

Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War is the fifth winner of the science fiction “triple crown”, winning the Nebula in 1975 and the Hugo and Locus in 1976. It is a story of future interstellar war, between humanity and a species known as “Taurans“. It focuses on the war career of its main protagonist, William Mandella. I consider it an anti-war novel, and was quite impressed with it when I first read it last year.
[more...]

This time, I’ve managed to let just a day pass since my last roundup of books from a given year.

2003 started slowly on the reading front; apparently The Idiot took me three months to get through. The first five months of the year saw me read just four books, an extremely low rate. I returned to a normal reading pace thereafter, with some dips and a surge in December.
[more...]

Yet again it’s taken me more than a year since the last collection of book favorites. Part of the reason for this delay is that I’ve made abortive efforts to improve the display of book information on this blog, but none of those have reached a point where I think they’re usable. So, basic text lists it is.
[more...]

I was tired and stuck in my seat and made the poor choice of watching this awful Liam Neeson action movie. I say “awful” but I don’t just mean bad, I mean its themes and messages were highly questionable and disturbing. Spoilers will follow, but a) it’s not worth seeing and b) I’m not sure they’re “spoilers” with a movie as predictable as this.
[more...]