en-US Thu, 17 Dec 2020 19:42:30 -0800 60 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 1802106 504 Ármin Vámbéry 1402197845 Alex 0 turkmen 4.00 1864
author: Ármin Vámbéry
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1864
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/17
shelves: turkmen
review:

]]> 14610565
Originally Norwegian, they have been part of Scotland for centuries, but their many and varied legends, folk tales and customs are still saturated with Norse influences. While this book tells tales and discusses beliefs that are known throughout the northern isles, it also outlines those elements which are unique to each island group.

Ernest Marwick not only recounts countless tales which have been transmitted aurally and by writing, but also places these tales within geographical and historical contexts, thus enabling a deeper appreciation of this wonderful material. A bibliography is also included, together with an index of tale types and motifs.]]> 216 Ernest W. Marwick 1780270089 Alex 4 4.00 1975
author: Ernest W. Marwick
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2012/08/24
date added: 2019/06/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 13115184 112 Nalo Hopkinson 1604864974 Alex 4 fiction, short-fiction 4.05 2012
author: Nalo Hopkinson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/11/09
shelves: fiction, short-fiction
review:

]]> 22609306 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

A literary fantasy about love, music and sorcery, set against the background of Mexico City.

Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said “I love you” with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends -- Sebastian and Daniela -- and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. With help from this newfound magic, the three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love...

Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father’s funeral. It’s hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, and it revives memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? And, is there any magic left?]]> 272 Silvia Moreno-Garcia Alex 0 currently-reading 3.70 2015
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Alex
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 18753656
Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.

‘There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.’]]> 306 Nnedi Okorafor 1444762753 Alex 4 fiction
(One downer: dead queer character. I'm not on board the idea that queer characters ought never to die, especially in a novel with high/risky stakes, but this death felt harsher than I'd have liked. YMMV!)]]> 3.62 2014
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Alex
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/04/25
date added: 2015/04/26
shelves: fiction
review:
Really liked this one! Brilliant fun contemporary SF, with a multiplicity of voice and exuberance of vision that really suited the book's goals AND made it a compelling read. Recommended.

(One downer: dead queer character. I'm not on board the idea that queer characters ought never to die, especially in a novel with high/risky stakes, but this death felt harsher than I'd have liked. YMMV!)
]]> 24423323 A unique book, from the incomparable Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Among Others, Jo Walton: What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Fantasy and SF is a collection of brilliant reassessments of the classics - and the forgotten gems - of modern fantasy and SF.

Jo Walton is an award-winning author of, inveterate reader of, and chronic re-reader of science fiction and fantasy books. What Makes This Book So Great? is a selection of the best of her musings about her prodigious reading habit.

Jo Walton's many subjects range from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. Among them, the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by 'mainstream'; the under-appreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read.

Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers.]]> 512 Jo Walton 1472111613 Alex 0 currently-reading 3.96 2014
author: Jo Walton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 10201361 286 Sayuri Ueda 1421540037 Alex 2 fiction, genderqueer 3.20 2004
author: Sayuri Ueda
name: Alex
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: fiction, genderqueer
review:

]]> 22735855
Until one day, she comes across a wounded, bleeding woman no one else can see, and is drawn into an old, old story of love, snake women, and the deathless monk who hunts them.]]> 110 Benjanun Sriduangkaew 0956392490 Alex 5 fiction Scale-Bright follows on from the short stories “Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon”, “Chang’e Dashes From the Moon” and “The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate”, all free to read online, which are not required pre-reading but recommended (for quality as well as clarity).

What I most loved about Scale-Bright was its depiction of anxiety, internalised fears and the slow process of stepping past those. Also: queer women! So very many. Julienne and Olivia and Chang’e and Houyi are wonderful, as is the writing, whether describing chandeliers of Buddha hands using sign-language (OMG) or the minor moments of realisation in a relationship.]]> 3.74 2014
author: Benjanun Sriduangkaew
name: Alex
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: fiction
review:
Julienne is a regular young woman in Hong Kong, anxious and often lonely. After a snake demon, Olivia, drinks from her life force in a time of need, she is forced to face a little more head-on the reality that she also has Chang’e and Houyi for aunts. Scale-Bright follows on from the short stories “Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon”, “Chang’e Dashes From the Moon” and “The Crows Her Dragon’s Gate”, all free to read online, which are not required pre-reading but recommended (for quality as well as clarity).

What I most loved about Scale-Bright was its depiction of anxiety, internalised fears and the slow process of stepping past those. Also: queer women! So very many. Julienne and Olivia and Chang’e and Houyi are wonderful, as is the writing, whether describing chandeliers of Buddha hands using sign-language (OMG) or the minor moments of realisation in a relationship.
]]> 3121331 146 နုနုရည်အင်းဝ 1401303374 Alex 3 fiction, genderqueer Smile As They Bow is not pleasant — Daisy treats Min Min abusively, made worse by the fact that Min Min was bought from his parents by Daisy. The purpose is not, however, to portray sympathetic people but to offer a week-long slice-of-life, and at that Smile As They Bow succeeds compellingly. It is beautifully written/translated. I enjoyed aspects of it.]]> 3.55 2008
author: နုနုရည်အင်းဝ
name: Alex
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: fiction, genderqueer
review:
A Burmese novel about spirit mediums at the Taungbyon Festival. Daisy Bond, an elder medium, walks the world between man and woman in performance and reality. Min Min, Daisy’s young assistant and lover, wants to get away and be in a more ‘normal’ relationship. The novel deftly balances the extravaganza of a major festival with the minor — and nasty — mundanities of everyday life, which certainly don’t get left behind. Daisy’s gender defies easy definition. In places Smile As They Bow is not pleasant — Daisy treats Min Min abusively, made worse by the fact that Min Min was bought from his parents by Daisy. The purpose is not, however, to portray sympathetic people but to offer a week-long slice-of-life, and at that Smile As They Bow succeeds compellingly. It is beautifully written/translated. I enjoyed aspects of it.
]]> 22793545
Deep in the heart of history's most infamous concentration camp, a man lies dreaming. His name is Shomer, and before the war he was a pulp fiction author. Now, to escape the brutal reality of life in Auschwitz, Shomer spends his nights imagining another world - a world where a disgraced former dictator now known only as Wolf ekes out a miserable existence as a low-rent PI in London's grimiest streets.

An extraordinary story of revenge and redemption, A Man Lies Dreaming is the unforgettable testament to the power of imagination.]]> 288 Lavie Tidhar 1444762923 Alex 4 fiction
It is not the lightest of reads, or, ah, a book I could have bought for my father (I learnt a little more about Hitler’s sex life than I ever expected and wanted to) but it is definitely an interesting book, in the least I-have-nothing-else-to-say-so-I’ll-call-it-interesting way possible. It is deliciously meta, in that it’s aware of what it’s doing, in dialogue with itself, and I’m really into that at the moment. I’m still thinking about it a couple of months later.]]> 3.82 2014
author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Alex
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: fiction
review:
In Auschwitz, shund-writer Shomer imagines a final pulp narrative: an alternate late 1930s Britain where the infamous Wolf is a down-on-his-luck PI. (I’ve got to say, as ‘unexpectedly fucking genius’ ideas go, this is up there...) That narrative is the majority of the book, but Auschwitz is never far, and it is more than a frame. The set-up allows a dialogue between the two realities: the rather obvious notions of ‘revenge fantasy’ and ‘wish-fulfilment’ colour Shomer’s imagined alternate Britain, but it is more complicated than that. Pulp tropes abound. Other unpleasant realities take hold: it is not possible, I suspect, to imagine a late 1930s Europe that saw the rise of extremism without seeing that extremism carried through to some extent. The rise of Mosley’s British fascists in the alternate history is especially chilling for a British reader today. In Auschwitz, prisoners debate how to write about the Holocaust. The whole book asks: how do you write about Hitler?

It is not the lightest of reads, or, ah, a book I could have bought for my father (I learnt a little more about Hitler’s sex life than I ever expected and wanted to) but it is definitely an interesting book, in the least I-have-nothing-else-to-say-so-I’ll-call-it-interesting way possible. It is deliciously meta, in that it’s aware of what it’s doing, in dialogue with itself, and I’m really into that at the moment. I’m still thinking about it a couple of months later.
]]> 11020173
Intensely timely it is a book about how stories can give us the courage to face our own demise. The Ragnarok myth, otherwise known as the Twilight of the Gods, plays out the endgame of Norse mythology.

It is the myth in which the gods Odin, Freya and Thor die, the sun and moon are swallowed by the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr eats his own tail as he crushes the world and the seas boil with poison.

It is only after such monstrous death and destruction that the world can begin anew.
Byatt taken this remarkable finale and used it as the underpinning of this highly personal and politically charged retelling.]]> 240 A.S. Byatt 1847670644 Alex 4 fiction 3.49 2011
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Alex
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: fiction
review:
A slim treat of a book. A thin child, evacuated to the British countryside in World War Two, finds comfort in the /ending/ of Ragnarök: this is no cyclical story, no rebirth-narrative. The world ends, and that is so much more real. It really stuck with me.
]]> 6215736 200 Xiaolu Guo 0701183357 Alex 2 fiction 3.47 2009
author: Xiaolu Guo
name: Alex
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: fiction
review:
Kwok Yun, a woman in a Chinese village, sees a strange light that might be a UFO. The government takes an interest, not only in her but in her village. The village’s chief, Chang Lee, sees this as an opportunity to develop the village into a modern town and starts implementing plans, acquiring funds and changing the lives of everyone in her small village, to predictably mixed results. The novel’s format is government documentation: interviews with various people of the village and reports. I normally like unusual narrative formats, but here I felt it dilutes the potential potency of a story about Kwok Yun and Chang Lee — the two most interesting characters — with a lot of repetitive content from the other characters. The political angle on the story is cynical, the characters are little more than players in their political roles, which is a disappointment when Kwok Yun and Chang Lee are clearly interesting individuals straining to break free from the constrained plot.
]]> 17614822
Alice Shih, who has lost her husband and son in a climbing accident, is quietly preparing to commit suicide in her house by the sea. But her plan is interrupted when a vast trash vortex comes crashing onto the shore of Taiwan, bringing Atile'i with it.

In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Atile'i and Alice retrace her late husband's footsteps into the mountains, hoping to solve the mystery of her son's disappearance. On their journey, memories will be challenged, an unusual bond formed, and a dark secret uncovered that will force Alice to question everything she thought she knew.]]> 304 Wu Ming-Yi 1448130905 Alex 0 currently-reading 3.79 2011
author: Wu Ming-Yi
name: Alex
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 17437358
With stories by Yves Meynard, Ian McHugh, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Richard Parks, Gemma Files, Yukimi Ogawa, A.C. Wise, Marie Brennan, Alisa Alering, Tanith Lee, Cat Rambo, Shira Lipkin, Corinne Duyvis, Kenneth Schneyer, Camille Alexa, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Patricia Russo and Barbara Krasnoff.

Table of Contents
“Our Lady of the Thylacines” by Yves Meynard
“The Canal Barge Magician’s Number Nine Daughter” by Ian McHugh
“On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse” by Nicole Kornher-Stace
“Beach Bum and the Drowned Girl” by Richard Parks
“Trap-Weed” by Gemma Files
“Icicle” by Yukimi Ogawa
“Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story” by A.C. Wise
“What Still Abides” by Marie Brennan
“The Wanderer King” by Alisa Alering
“A Little of the Night” by Tanith Lee
“I Come from the Dark Universe” by Cat Rambo
“Happy Hour at the Tooth and Claw” by Shira Lipkin
“Lilo Is” by Corinne Duyvis
“Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” by Kenneth Schneyer
“Three Times” by Camille Alexa
“The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
“The Old Woman with No Teeth” by Patricia Russo
“The History of Soul 2065″ by Barbara Krasnoff]]> 276 Mike Allen 0988912406 Alex 3 fiction, short-fiction 3.96 2013
author: Mike Allen
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2013/10/17
date added: 2014/10/04
shelves: fiction, short-fiction
review:

]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Alex 4 fiction
The game segments most interested me, as well as Ye Wenjie’s career: she’s a compelling character, even if I strongly dislike the conclusion that humans will never redeem themselves and require outside intervention. It shifts responsibility away from us. It denies the possibility of hard work and change. Ye’s experiences are pretty awful, so her conclusion is not that surprising, and fortunately the book points out the biggest problem with the idea of benevolent intervention. Back to the game segments. They, like the rest of the book, involve a lot of science! It’s no surprise that they involve the titular three-body problem, which is especially fun when there’s a planet added to the system and life has to evolve on the planet. I liked this aspect the best. It’s incredible to imagine life surviving in such harsh conditions — the sort of what-if I want in science fiction about space. (De-hy-drate...) It’s a bit sly in places (the in-game personae of at least two prominent Western scientists are played by Chinese gamers — one of them Wang), and fun to follow to its conclusion(s), which helps to compensate for Wang’s lack of personality.

The prose is nothing to remark on and while there are varied female characters, there are also unnecessary moments such as a young woman being described as “so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through [her body]". Right then. It’s very het and binary-gendered. Some of the footnotes explaining cultural references are cringingly obvious, but I’m sure this is an impossible balance to strike. Fortunately the unnecessary moments are only moments, not the tone of the book: it’s scientific/hard science fiction that doesn’t think science/the future is 100% white men! More than just that, it’s fun science and I liked a lot of the story. I look forward to the second and third books in the trilogy.]]> 4.07 2006
author: Liu Cixin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/21
date added: 2014/08/30
shelves: fiction
review:
I got an ARC. I’m glad: it’s an interesting science fiction novel. It has several narrative threads. Young scientist Ye Wenjie falls afoul of political upheaval in the 1960s and is assigned to a mysterious base where she works for the following decades. In roughly the present day, scientist Wang Miao receives mysterious, scientifically impossible threats if he continues his nanomaterials research. In the game of Three Body, Wang observes — and contributes to solving — the problem of sustaining life on a strange planet with three suns and periods of atmospheric chaos and stability.

The game segments most interested me, as well as Ye Wenjie’s career: she’s a compelling character, even if I strongly dislike the conclusion that humans will never redeem themselves and require outside intervention. It shifts responsibility away from us. It denies the possibility of hard work and change. Ye’s experiences are pretty awful, so her conclusion is not that surprising, and fortunately the book points out the biggest problem with the idea of benevolent intervention. Back to the game segments. They, like the rest of the book, involve a lot of science! It’s no surprise that they involve the titular three-body problem, which is especially fun when there’s a planet added to the system and life has to evolve on the planet. I liked this aspect the best. It’s incredible to imagine life surviving in such harsh conditions — the sort of what-if I want in science fiction about space. (De-hy-drate...) It’s a bit sly in places (the in-game personae of at least two prominent Western scientists are played by Chinese gamers — one of them Wang), and fun to follow to its conclusion(s), which helps to compensate for Wang’s lack of personality.

The prose is nothing to remark on and while there are varied female characters, there are also unnecessary moments such as a young woman being described as “so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through [her body]". Right then. It’s very het and binary-gendered. Some of the footnotes explaining cultural references are cringingly obvious, but I’m sure this is an impossible balance to strike. Fortunately the unnecessary moments are only moments, not the tone of the book: it’s scientific/hard science fiction that doesn’t think science/the future is 100% white men! More than just that, it’s fun science and I liked a lot of the story. I look forward to the second and third books in the trilogy.
]]> 22544926
A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Straddling the worlds of the mundane and the magical, Spirits Abroad collects ten science fiction and fantasy stories with a distinctively Malaysian sensibility.]]> 284 Zen Cho 9670374987 Alex 5 short-fiction, fiction
I also like that the publisher’s manifesto at the front of the book says “italics are a form of apology” re: the decision not to italicise non-English words.]]> 4.14 2014
author: Zen Cho
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/08/30
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
I love Zen Cho’s writing! It’s funny, comforting and clever. Spirits Abroad collects some of Zen’s short stories, which are often about families or friends — not always living, not always human, not always on Earth — but always important, if often difficult. The characters are so down-to-earth (that’s... a bad pun for the earth spirit and Liyana, sigh), no matter who they are and whatever they’re dealing with, whether an unexpected forum attendee or a difficult grandmother or moving to the Moon. I had a really great time reading Spirits Abroad and I hope other people will too!

I also like that the publisher’s manifesto at the front of the book says “italics are a form of apology” re: the decision not to italicise non-English words.
]]> 18764828
Jo, the firstborn, "The General" to her eleven sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their father's townhouse to await the cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until the day he decides to marry them all off.

The girls, meanwhile, continue to dance, from Salon Renaud to the Swan and, finally, the Kingfisher, the club they come to call home. They dance until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn't seen in almost ten years. Suddenly Jo must weigh in the balance not only the demands of her father and eleven sisters, but those she must make of herself.]]> 277 Genevieve Valentine 1476739080 Alex 4 fiction
The focal point of the book is Jo, the oldest sister and “the general”: her role in organising her sisters’ false freedom, in keeping them safe — in complicity — and, ultimately, her realisation about what real freedom is. That tension — complicity, support, freedom — is deftly done and really quite remarkable: it’s an approach to an oppressed life rooted in real complexity.

I found the book in some ways a little too quick. I wanted to see more of the lesbian sisters, in particular. I wanted a bit more examination of the ending, particularly marriage-as-freedom. But, overall, I’d recommend it.]]> 3.78 2014
author: Genevieve Valentine
name: Alex
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/08/30
shelves: fiction
review:
A breezy read with a bit of bite. I liked it. I don’t know the fairytale it retells (Twelve Dancing Princesses), but it has a bit of a fairytale feel: a certain neatness to some events, the image of twelve sisters going out dancing. The love of dancing suffuses the book, as does the tense relationship between the sisters and the prison of their father’s house.

The focal point of the book is Jo, the oldest sister and “the general”: her role in organising her sisters’ false freedom, in keeping them safe — in complicity — and, ultimately, her realisation about what real freedom is. That tension — complicity, support, freedom — is deftly done and really quite remarkable: it’s an approach to an oppressed life rooted in real complexity.

I found the book in some ways a little too quick. I wanted to see more of the lesbian sisters, in particular. I wanted a bit more examination of the ending, particularly marriage-as-freedom. But, overall, I’d recommend it.
]]> 15131305 239 Judith Schalansky Alex 4 misc-nonfiction, fiction 4.23 2009
author: Judith Schalansky
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2014/01/25
date added: 2014/01/26
shelves: misc-nonfiction, fiction
review:

]]> 4271380 336 Lily Hoang 0981502725 Alex 3 fiction 3.93 2008
author: Lily Hoang
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2014/01/20
date added: 2014/01/20
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 13642287
Lizard Kings and swashbuckling pirates, secret government agencies and scuttling automata, tripods and airships.

There’s never been a series with quite so much adventure crammed between two covers!

File Under : Steampunk [ Alternate History! | Diabolical Anarchists! | Murder Most Foul | The End of Days ]


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 1022 Lavie Tidhar 0857663003 Alex 0 currently-reading 3.73 2012
author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Alex
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 17864397 264 Nnedi Okorafor 160701405X Alex 4 3.96 2013
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/12/18
date added: 2014/01/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 18096579 213 Fábio Fernandes 0957397526 Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction
Some, however, are absolutely brilliant.

My favourite is Benjanun Sriduangkaew's "Vector", one of the best stories I've read this year, about Western imperialists trying to infect - and destroy - the very held, lived memory of Thai culture. Needless to say, there is resistance. I also loved Shweta Narayan's "The Arrangement of Their Parts", one of a sequence of stories Shweta's writing in an India that resisted British colonialism. Then there's Lavie Tidhar's "Dark Continents", which examines the re-writing of history and the probability of alternative evils - and the possibility of better. As a historian, I really liked this one. It does things a lot of alt-history doesn't even bother to think about. Speaking of history, there's Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's "What Really Happened in Ficandula", an angry, wishing story about colonial violence.

Others I liked a lot: Sofia Samatar's "I Stole the D.C.'s Eyeglass", a steampunk-of-sorts. (To borrow the author's own words on her blog: "I am asking myself if it is possible to write an African steampunk story. Is it possible to engage with African oral traditions in a serious way and produce a story that a wider audience will recognize as science fiction?") Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Them Ships". Dinesh Rao's "A Bridge of Words".

There is such a variety of approaches in this anthology, such a vitality often lacking in SFF anthologies where familiar (and often damaging) tropes are trod into the ground and applauded for their repetitiveness. I want people to read this instead. It is diverse, it is intersectional - will the people talking about diversity in SFF read it? ]]> 3.90 2013
author: Fábio Fernandes
name: Alex
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/09/17
date added: 2014/01/10
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
This is a vital anthology and it pains me to suspect that it won't get the attention it deserves. There's been a lot of talk about diversity in SFF: well, here's a brand new anthology of stories by authors from around the world, writing post-colonial SFF. Sure, some individual stories are weak (it would be really great if Joyce Chng's "Lotus" explained how her characters drank from a still, low-lying body of water without boiling/sterilising it and didn't die of hideous infections, among other worldbuilding holes), while others are good-but-not-great (oh, how I wanted JY Yang's "Old Domes", about the history of buildings in Singapore, to be a little more sharp, more coherent).

Some, however, are absolutely brilliant.

My favourite is Benjanun Sriduangkaew's "Vector", one of the best stories I've read this year, about Western imperialists trying to infect - and destroy - the very held, lived memory of Thai culture. Needless to say, there is resistance. I also loved Shweta Narayan's "The Arrangement of Their Parts", one of a sequence of stories Shweta's writing in an India that resisted British colonialism. Then there's Lavie Tidhar's "Dark Continents", which examines the re-writing of history and the probability of alternative evils - and the possibility of better. As a historian, I really liked this one. It does things a lot of alt-history doesn't even bother to think about. Speaking of history, there's Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's "What Really Happened in Ficandula", an angry, wishing story about colonial violence.

Others I liked a lot: Sofia Samatar's "I Stole the D.C.'s Eyeglass", a steampunk-of-sorts. (To borrow the author's own words on her blog: "I am asking myself if it is possible to write an African steampunk story. Is it possible to engage with African oral traditions in a serious way and produce a story that a wider audience will recognize as science fiction?") Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Them Ships". Dinesh Rao's "A Bridge of Words".

There is such a variety of approaches in this anthology, such a vitality often lacking in SFF anthologies where familiar (and often damaging) tropes are trod into the ground and applauded for their repetitiveness. I want people to read this instead. It is diverse, it is intersectional - will the people talking about diversity in SFF read it?
]]> 17707028 “ The Pelican Bar ,” a homely tale of family ties that makes Guantánamo look like summer camp; “The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man,” a droll tale of sports, shoplifting and teen sex; and “ The Motherhood Statement ,” a quietly angry upending of easy assumptions that shows off Fowler’s deep radicalism and impatience with conservative homilies and liberal pieties alike. And our Outspoken Interview in which Fowler prophesies California’s fate, reveals the role of bad movies in good marriages, and intimates that girls just want to have fun (which means make trouble).]]> 128 Karen Joy Fowler 1604868252 Alex 4 3.91 2013
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Alex
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/06
date added: 2013/12/08
shelves: short-fiction, misc-nonfiction
review:

]]> 11001757
Eduardo Jiménez Mayo's translations include books by Bruno Estañol, Rafael Pérez Gay, and José María Pérez Gay.
Chris N. Brown lives in Austin, Texas. He is a contributor to the blog No Fear of the Future.
Bruce Sterling lives in Turin, Italy, and blogs at Wired's Beyond the Beyond.]]> 300 Eduardo Jiménez Mayo 1931520313 Alex 4 short-fiction 3.50 2011
author: Eduardo Jiménez Mayo
name: Alex
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/30
date added: 2013/11/30
shelves: short-fiction
review:
A cross-genre grab-bag of fiction from Mexican writers, varying in quality but with enough good stories to make this a worthwhile read.
]]> 17571738
Here are stories of misfits, spectral hitch-hikers, nightmare travel tales and the rogues, freaks and monsters to be found on the road.

The critically acclaimed editor of Magic, The End of The Line and House of Fear has brought together the contemporary masters and mistresses of the weird from around the globe in an anthology of travel tales like no other. Strap on your seatbelt, or shoulder your backpack, and wait for that next ride... into darkness.

An incredible anthology of orginal short stories from an exciting list of writers including the best-selling Philip Reeve, the World Fantasy Award-winning Lavie Tidhar and the incredible talents of Sarah Lotz, Ian Whates, Jay Caselberg, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Zen Cho, Sophia McDougall, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Anil Menon, Rio Youers, Vandana Singh, Paul Meloy, Adam Nevill, Helen Marshall.]]> 304 Jonathan Oliver 1781081549 Alex 3 short-fiction 3.45 2013
author: Jonathan Oliver
name: Alex
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2013/11/17
date added: 2013/11/17
shelves: short-fiction
review:
A mixed bag. Some of it is the dark fiction that reminds me why I don't read dark/horror fiction: I'm not scared or even unsettled by it, but the casual and outright misogyny (and ableism! variety!) pisses me off. However, this anthology is redeemed - and, indeed, made valuable - by the editor having invited a diverse selection of authors. Not steeped in the tropes that make so much dark/horror fiction tiresome for me, they offer quite different takes on the 'road' theme. My favourite stories were Zen Cho's humorous and sad "Balik Kampung (Going Back)" (I loved the dead debating what they'll do with their time back in the living world: possess the living? visit family?), Benjanun Sriduangkaew's historical "Fade to Gold", Vandana Singh's weird physics "Peripateia" and Lavie Tidhar's also-historical "Locusts". I also enjoyed Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's "Dagiti Timayap Garda (Of The Flying Guardians)" and Sophia McDougall's "Through Wylmere Woods". I'm glad I read this anthology, though I wish I'd known in advance to skip some of the stories.
]]> 1017883 224 Richard Labonté 1551522098 Alex 1 short-fiction 2.97 2006
author: Richard Labonté
name: Alex
average rating: 2.97
book published: 2006
rating: 1
read at: 2013/11/12
date added: 2013/11/12
shelves: short-fiction
review:

]]> 15750676
Pre-order edition also includes Nir Yaniv‘s never-before-published-in-English novelette “Undercity” (8800 words) as well as Charles Tan‘s essay, “World SF: Our Possible Future”!

Table of Contents:

“Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Mr Goop” by Ivor W. Hartmann
“Trees of Bone” by Daliso Chaponda
“The First Peruvian in Space” by Daniel Salvo (translated by Jose B. Adolph)
“Eyes in the Vastness of Forever” by Gustavo Bondoni
“The Tomb” by Chen Qiufan (translated by the author)
“The Sound of Breaking Glass” by Joyce Chng
“A Single Year” by Csilla Kleinheincz (translated by the author)
“The Secret Origin of Spin-Man” by Andrew Drilon
“Borrowed Time” by Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro (translated by Daniel W. Koon)
“Branded” by Lauren Beukes
“December 8th” by Raúl Flores (translated by Daniel W. Koon)
“Hungry Man” by Will Elliott
“Nira and I” by Shweta Narayan
“Nothing Happened in 1999” by Fábio Fernandes
“Shadow” by Tade Thompson
“Shibuya no Love” by Hannu Rajaniemi
“Maquech” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“The Glory of the World” by Sergey Gerasimov
“The New Neighbours” by Tim Jones
“From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7” by Nnedi Okorafor
"The Slows” by Gail Hareven (translated by Yaacov Jeffrey Green)
“Zombie Lenin” by Ekaterina Sedia
“Electric Sonalika” by Samit Basu
“The Malady” by Andrzej Sapkowski (translated by Wiesiek Powaga)
“A Life Made Possible Behind The Barricades” by Jacques Barcia
“Undercity” by Nir Yaniv
“World SF: Our Possible Future” by Charles Tan]]> 375 Lavie Tidhar 1937009041 Alex 0 short-fiction 3.82 2012
author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Alex
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/11/10
shelves: short-fiction
review:

]]> 7038849 287 Lavie Tidhar 0982159633 Alex 0 short-fiction 3.59 2009
author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/11/10
shelves: short-fiction
review:

]]> 12429380
Includes

Lipton Village Society
Montage
My Lady Tongue
God and Her Black Sense of Humour
The Lottery
Merlusine
The Queen of Erewhon
Absolute Uncertainty
Frozen Charlottes
La Sentinelle
Matricide
The Revenant
Mist and Murder
Something Better than Death
Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies
Albert and Victoria
Robots and Zombies, Inc
Ardent Clouds
Kay and Phil
A Tour Guide in Utopia
The Parish and Mrs Brown
Runaways
Red Ochre
Duchess
A must for any Lucy Sussex fan. Published June 2011.

Introduction by Delia Sherman]]> 516 Lucy Sussex 098078137X Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 4.00 2011
author: Lucy Sussex
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/08
date added: 2013/11/08
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
Finally finished it! Such a huge book. Because of its size, plenty of the stories didn't work for me, but the ones that did more than made up for it: "The Queen of Erewhon", "A Tour Guide in Utopia" and "My Lady Tongue" doing some different and very interesting things with utopias, "Ardent Clouds" with volcanoes and lesbians, "Merlusine" and "Absolute Uncertainty" with history, "Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies" with folklore... It's a good mix and there are lots of lesbians and though some stories are quite blandly told, in some Lucy Sussex's voice - loud and direct and fun - really comes through, and then the stories are excellent. I love a writer who actually has voice.
]]> 656020 384 Nicola Griffith 0879517328 Alex 4 short-fiction 3.81 1998
author: Nicola Griffith
name: Alex
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2013/10/26
date added: 2013/10/26
shelves: short-fiction
review:
A good anthology! An interesting mix of stories about gay and lesbian people in the future, with some really awesome ones: I loved Ellen Klages' "Time Gypsy" (time travel! lesbian scientists! addressing the suppression of women's science!) except for its terrible title, and Elisabeth Vonarburg's "Stay Thy Filght" is really cool, and more. The anthology does show its age, not just in the ideas of future tech (space habitation and... fax machines?) but in the number of futures where homosexuality is illegal or disapproved of. I suspect (I hope) that such an anthology compiled today would be more optimistic. Nonetheless, I'd definitely recommend this one.
]]> 17333324
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.]]> 386 Ann Leckie Alex 5 fiction, genderqueer 3.97 2013
author: Ann Leckie
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/10/15
date added: 2013/10/19
shelves: fiction, genderqueer
review:

]]> 15803902 341 Toh EnJoe 1421549360 Alex 3 3.73 2007
author: Toh EnJoe
name: Alex
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2013/10/07
date added: 2013/10/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 189015
For she is a being who started her journey on the kami, the spirit road, as a humble tortoiseshell feline. Her family was destroyed by a fire that decimated most of the Imperial city, and this loss renders her taleless, the only one left alive to pass on such stories as The Cat Born the Year the Star Fell, The Cat with a Litter of Ten, and The Fire-Tailed Cat. Without her fudoki--self and soul and home and shrine--she alone cannot keep the power of her clan together. And she cannot join another fudoki, because although she might be able to win a place within another clan, to do so would mean that she would cease to be herself.

So a small cat begins an extraordinary journey. Along the way she will attract the attention of old and ancient powers. Gods who are curious about this creature newly come to Japan's shores, and who choose to give the tortoiseshell a human shape.]]> 316 Kij Johnson 0765303914 Alex 4 fiction 4.01 2003
author: Kij Johnson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2013/10/02
date added: 2013/10/03
shelves: fiction
review:
This is a really lovely, charming book about two women's lives in 12thC Japan. It was just what I needed. I would give it five stars, if not for moments of cultural awkwardness like "tanuki-badger" and "hakama-trousers" and naming a half-fox character Kitsune, which makes me wonder what other, bigger cultural issues lurk beyond my limited perception.
]]> 17332243
Hild is the king’s youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world—of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next—that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the king’s seer. And she is indispensable—until she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the world and see the future.

Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age—all of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffith’s luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal world—and one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitby—to vivid, absorbing life.]]> 546 Nicola Griffith 0374280878 Alex 5 fiction 3.80 2013
author: Nicola Griffith
name: Alex
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/09/25
date added: 2013/09/25
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 11360235 Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization.


Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union.



Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.]]> 501 Christopher I. Beckwith Alex 2 misc-nonfiction 3.67 2009
author: Christopher I. Beckwith
name: Alex
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: misc-nonfiction
review:

]]> 1419346 Dervla Murphy 0719509890 Alex 4 3.97 1966
author: Dervla Murphy
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 359139
Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women.

Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion.]]> 334 Elizabeth Wayland Barber 0393313484 Alex 5 ancient-history 4.29 1994
author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
name: Alex
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: ancient-history
review:

]]> 613502 288 Jeannine Davis-Kimball 0446679836 Alex 4 ancient-history 3.95 2002
author: Jeannine Davis-Kimball
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: ancient-history
review:

]]> 12106165 224 Carole Blackwell 0700713549 Alex 5 turkmen 5.00 2001
author: Carole Blackwell
name: Alex
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: turkmen
review:

]]> 11407521

Published in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art



Exhibition

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(10/09/12–02/24/13)]]> 248 Layla S. Diba 030012404X Alex 0 turkmen 4.40 2011
author: Layla S. Diba
name: Alex
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: turkmen
review:

]]> 7354904 Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer proposes a new way of thinking about ancient Greeks, showing how real-life journeys shaped their mythical tales.

The tales of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousands of years. But where did they originate? Esteemed classicist Robin Lane Fox draws on a lifetime's knowledge of the ancient world, and on his own travels, to open up the age of Homer.

His acclaimed history explores how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering strange new sights - volcanic mountains, vaporous springs, huge prehistoric bones - and weaving them into the myths of gods, monsters and heroes that would become the cornerstone of Western civilization: the Odyssey and the Iliad.

'A beautiful evocation of a tantalizing world ... Travelling Heroes is a tour de force'
  Rowland Smith, Literary Review

'Lyrical, passionate ... his great gift is to make this long-ago world a vivid, extraordinary and sometimes frightening place ... a wonderful story'
  Elizabeth Speller, Sunday Times

'Original, daring and arguably life-enhancing ... produced with a sweeping narrative flourish worthy of a cinematographer or screenwriter'
  Paul Cartledge, Independent

'Lane Fox argues his case with tremendous style and verve ... learned, and always lively'
  Mary Beard, Financial Times

Robin Lane Fox (b. 1946) is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a University Reader in Ancient History. His other books include The Classical World, Alexander the Great, Pagans and Christians and The Unauthorized Version. He was historical advisor to Oliver Stone on the making of Stone's film Alexander, for which he waived all his fees on condition that he could take part in the cavalry charge against elephants which Stone staged in the Moroccan desert.]]> 224 Robin Lane Fox 0140244999 Alex 3 ancient-history 3.31 1999
author: Robin Lane Fox
name: Alex
average rating: 3.31
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: ancient-history
review:

]]> 661197 Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists. Focusing on the “real” Helen–-a flesh-&-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age–-Hughes reconstructs the life context of this prehistoric princess. Thru the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, she examines the physical, historical & cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, N. Africa & Asia Minor. This book unpacks the facts & myths surrounding one of the most enigmatic & notorious figures of all time.
Illustrations
Text Acknowledgements
Maps
Timeline
Dramatis Personae
Family Trees
Foreword & Acknowledgements
Introduction
Cherchez la femme
An evil destiny
Helen-hunting
Goddess, princess, whore
1. Helen's birth in pre-history
A dangerous landscape
A rape, a birth
The lost citadel
The Mycenaeans
The pre-historic princess
2. The land of beautiful women
The rape of 'fair Hellen'
Sparte kalligynaika
Tender-eyed girls
3. The world's desire
A trophy for heroes
The kingmaker
A royal wedding
4. Kourotrophos
Hermione
A welcome burden
Helen, high priestess
La belle Hélène
5. A lover's game
The golden apple
Bearing gifts
Alexander Helenam Rapuit
The female of the species is more deadly than the male
6. Eros & Eris
Helen the whore
The pain of Aphrodite
The sea's foaming lanes
7. Troy beckons
East is east & west is west
The fair Troad
The topless towers of Ilium
The golden houses of the east
A fleet sets sail
8. Troy besieged
Helen, destroyer of cities
Death's dark cloud
A beautiful death, Kalos Thanatos
The fall of Troy
9. Immortal Helen
Home to Sparta
The death of a queen
The age of heroes ends
'Fragrant treasuries'
The daughter of the ocean
10. The face that launched a thousand ships
Helen in Athens
Helen lost & Helen found
Helen, Homer & the chances of survival
Veyn fables
Helen of Troy & the bad Samaritan
Perpulchra, more than beautiful
Dancing with the devil
Helen's nemesis
Appendices
The Minotaur's island
La Parisienne
Women of stone & clay & bronze
Elemental Helen, she-gods & she-devils
Royal purple, the color of congealed blood
Epilogue: Myth, history & historia
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index]]> 496 Bettany Hughes 1400041783 Alex 5 ancient-history 4.18 2005
author: Bettany Hughes
name: Alex
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: ancient-history
review:

]]> 189111
Janna's world was colonized long ago by Earth and then left on its own for centuries. When "offworlders" return, their superior technology upsets the balance of a developing civilization.

Mission Child follows the journeys of Janna after she and her young partner escape marauders who attack their hometown. The girl, fast becoming mature beyond her years, sets off across the planet on an odyssey of adventure, poverty, hard work, war, famine, and rebirth. Janna uses her meager skills to eke out a living in a changing world; she gains and loses a husband, a child, friends, jobs, and more.

McHugh weaves together anthropology, sociology, psychology, and gender relations in this wondrous journey. Janna assumes the guise of a boy for protection, but eventually becomes "Jan" to herself as well as others. Reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin's insightful works set in the Hainish universe, Mission Child will doubtless be nominated for a Tiptree Award for its exploration of Janna's gender identity. --Bonnie Bouman]]> 370 Maureen F. McHugh 0380791226 Alex 5 fiction, genderqueer 3.76 1998
author: Maureen F. McHugh
name: Alex
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction, genderqueer
review:

]]> 8130322 New York Times bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler's new collection, the fantastic and the uncanny lurk just below the surface of ordinary lives. In the award-winning title story, the narrator recounts the events of an expedition to the Belgian Congo in 1928 to collects gorillas for the Louisville Museum of Natural History. A mother invents a fairy-tale world for her son in 'Halfway People'. Twin sisters backpacking through Europe receive a mysterious invitation. A rebellious teenager is sent to a brutal reform school hidden away in paradise. A young woman inherits the family submarine. In 'The Dark', a researcher tracking plague outbreaks finds himself in the Viet Cong tunnels of Vietnam. A mystery writer visits an archaeological dig in Egypt and sets a curse in motion. In two stories, 'Booth's Ghost' and 'Standing Room Only', Fowler explores the circumstances of Lincoln's assassination from the perspectives of John Wilkes Booth's family and friends.

Fowler, perhaps best known for her novels, is a master of the short story form: the secret history, the account of first contact, the murderous, ordinary tensions of family life. She draws on fairy tales, historical narratives, and war reportage, measuring the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness in the fantastic tradition of writers such as Shirley Jackson, T.H. White, Karen Russell, and Ursula K. Le Guin.]]> 202 Karen Joy Fowler 1931520682 Alex 2 short-fiction, fiction 3.71 2002
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Alex
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2002
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 2441234 340 Nancy Kress 1930846509 Alex 3 short-fiction, fiction 4.11 2008
author: Nancy Kress
name: Alex
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 6463979 Interfictions, the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s first anthology, Interfictions 2 showcases 21 original and innovative writers from 6 countries, including US, UK, Poland, Norway, Australia, and France. Afterword includes editor interviews.]]> 296 Delia Sherman 1931520615 Alex 3 fiction, short-fiction 3.89 2009
author: Delia Sherman
name: Alex
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction, short-fiction
review:

]]> 68021 “Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and force of a Twain. . . . The Birthday of the World is prime new Le Guin. Like a tour of other countries, these splendid and necessary stories will send you back home with new eyes.” —Boston Globe

Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled readers with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. In The Birthday of the World, she returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.

The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it—a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "remarkable . . . a standout." The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost, is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness.

In her foreword, Le Guin writes, "to create difference—to establish strangeness—then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as no other." In The Birthday of the World, this gifted literary acrobat exhibits a dazzling array of skills that will fascinate and satisfy us all.]]> 362 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060509066 Alex 4 fiction, short-fiction 4.33 2002
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction, short-fiction
review:

]]> 68022 A Fisherman of the Inland Sea range from the everyday to the outer limits of experience, where the quantum uncertainties of space and time are resolved only in the depths of the human heart. Astonishing in their diversity and power, they exhibit both the artistry of a major writer at the height of her powers and the humanity of a mature artist confronting the world with her gift of wonder still intac]]> 207 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060763515 Alex 3 short-fiction, fiction 4.06 1994
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin Alex 4 fiction, genderqueer 4.11 1969
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction, genderqueer
review:

]]> 650770 Dangerous Space is a collection of seven seductive stories by Kelley Eskridge, whose novel Solitaire was a New York Times Notable Book, with an introduction by Geoff Ryman (author of Was and Air). The opening story, "Strings," takes us to a world that tightly controls musical expression and values faithfulness to the canon above all else. By contrast, in the title novella, "Dangerous Space," we see the full power of music unleashed to sexually enthralling as well as risky effect; original to the volume, this tale features Mars, the intriguing narrator of "And Salome Danced" (short-listed for the Tiptree Award), on tour with an indie rock band on the verge of breaking out. Closing the volume, the moving, edgy "Alien Jane" (a finalist for the Nebula Award and adapted for the SciFi Channel's Welcome to Paradox series) delves into the importance of pain for the human organism and finds hope in the most unlikely of places.]]> 255 Kelley Eskridge 1933500131 Alex 3 4.17 2007
author: Kelley Eskridge
name: Alex
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: genderqueer, fiction, short-fiction
review:

]]> 171125
This art descends from father to son, since the beginning of time itself.

But one day the empire of the God Emperor vanishes, and strangers begin to arrive from the stars to follow the trace of the hair carpets. What these strangers discover is beyond all belief, more than anything they could have ever imagined...

Brought to the attention of Tor Books by Orson Scott Card, this edition of The Carpet Makers contains a special introduction by Orson Scott Card.]]> 297 Andreas Eschbach 0765314908 Alex 5 fiction 4.21 1995
author: Andreas Eschbach
name: Alex
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 201901 Always Coming Home is a major work of the imagination from one of America's most respected writers. More than five years in creation, it is a novel unlike any other.

A rich and complex interweaving of story and fable, poem, artwork, and music, it totally immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called the Valley on the Northern Pacific Coast. The author makes the inhabitants of the valley as familiar, as immediate, as wholly human as our own friends or family.

Spiraling outward from the dramatic life story of a woman called Stone Telling, Le Guin's Always Coming Home interweaves wry wit, deep insight and extraordinary compassion into a compelling unity of vision.]]> 525 Ursula K. Le Guin 0520227352 Alex 5 fiction, poetry 4.07 1985
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction, poetry
review:

]]> 286077
Dark Matter is the first and only series to bring together the works of black SF and fantasy writers. The first volume, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, was featured in the "New York Times", which named it a Notable Book of the Year.

Contents
Introduction (Dark Matter: Reading the Bones) • essay by Sheree Renée Thomas [as by Sheree R. Thomas]
Ibo Landing (1998) / short story by Ihsan Bracy
The Quality of Sand / short story by Cherene Sherrard
Yahimba's Choice [Dossouye] / short story by Charles R. Saunders
The Glass Bottle Trick (2000) / short story by Nalo Hopkinson
Desire / short story by Kiini Ibura Salaam
Recovery from a Fall / short story by David Findlay
Anansi Meets Peter Parker at the Taco Bell on Lexington (2000) / short story by Douglas Kearney
The Magical Negro / short story by Nnedi Okorafor [as by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu]
Jesus Christ in Texas (1920) / short story by W. E. B. Du Bois
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (1974) / short story by Henry Dumas
'Cause Harlem Needs Heroes / short story by Kevin Brockenbrough
Whipping Boy / short story by Pam Noles
Old Flesh Song / short story by Ibi Zoboi [as by Ibi Aanu Zoboi]
Whispers in the Dark (2001) / novelette by Walter Mosley
Aftermoon / short story by Tananarive Due
Voodoo Vincent and the Astrostoriograms / short story by Tyehimba Jess
The Binary / short story by John Cooley
BLACKout / short story by Jill Robinson
Sweet Dreams / short story by Charles Johnson
Buying Primo Time / short story by Wanda Coleman
Corona (1967) / short story by Samuel R. Delany
Maggies / short story by Nisi Shawl
Excerpt from Mindscape / short story by Andrea Hairston
Trance / short story by Kalamu ya Salaam
The Second Law of Thermodynamics • essay by Jewelle Gomez
Her Pen Could Fly: Remembering Virginia Hamilton • essay by Nnedi Okorafor [as by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu]
Celebrating the Alien: The Politics of Race and Species in the Juveniles of Andre Norton • essay by Carol Cooper
.]]> 400 Sheree Renée Thomas 0446693774 Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 4.09 2004
author: Sheree Renée Thomas
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2013/09/17
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
Really good quality anthology. Highlights include Kiini Ibura Salaam's beautifully voiced "Desire", Ibi Aanu Zoboi's creepy "Old Flesh Song", Tyehimba Jess' rather funny "Voodoo Vincent and the Astrostoriograms", Nalo Hopkinson's folk tale retelling "The Glass Bottle Trick" - but there are plenty more to enjoy, with a refreshingly wide array of approaches to speculative fiction.
]]> 18207082 53 Greer Gilman 1618730770 Alex 5 short-fiction, fiction 3.90 2013
author: Greer Gilman
name: Alex
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/07/16
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
Tremendous fun. Greer Gilman's prose is poetry, and begs to be read aloud.
]]> 13414149
Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells is an anthology for everyone who loves these works of neo-Victorian fiction, and wishes to explore the wide variety of ways that modern fantasists are using nineteenth-century settings, characters, and themes. These approaches stretch from steampunk fiction to the Austen-and-Trollope inspired works that some critics call Fantasy of Manners, all of which fit under the larger umbrella of Gaslamp Fantasy. The result is eighteen stories by experts from the fantasy, horror, mainstream, and young adult fields, including both bestselling writers and exciting new talents such as Elizabeth Bear, James Blaylock, Jeffrey Ford, Ellen Kushner, Tanith Lee, Gregory Maguire, Delia Sherman, and Catherynne M. Valente, who present a bewitching vision of a nineteenth century invested (or cursed!) with magic.

The Line-up:
“Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells” by Delia Sherman
“The Fairy Enterprise” by Jeffrey Ford
“From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvelous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” by Genevieve Valentine
“The Memory Book” by Maureen McHugh
“La Reine D’Enfer” by Kathe Koja
“Briar Rose” by Elizabeth Wein
“The Governess” by Elizabeth Bear
“Smithfield” by James P. Blaylock
“The Unwanted Women of Surrey” by Kaaron Warren
“Charged” by Leanna Renee Hieber
“Mr. Splitfoot” by Dale Bailey
“Phosphorus” by Veronica Schanoes
“We Without Us Were Shadows” by Catherynne M. Valente
“The Vital Importance of the Superficial” by Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer
“The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown” by Jane Yolen
“A Few Twigs He Left Behind” by Gregory Maguire
“Their Monstrous Minds” by Tanith Lee
“Estella Saves the Village” by Theodora Goss]]> 352 Ellen Datlow 0765332264 Alex 2 short-fiction, fiction 3.51 2013
author: Ellen Datlow
name: Alex
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2013/07/23
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
Admittedly I bought this cheap for just a handful of its stories, knowing that the theme is not of much interest to me - so it's no surprise that I found most of the stories underwhelming, and skipped several. The standout is "Phosphorus" by Veronica Schanoes, a bitter, angry, sad story about the fatal illness poor working girls in match factories succumbed to, and the lengths one afflicted girl's grandmother is willing to go to let her see the end of the strike that'll take steps towards better conditions for the girls. Amidst so many stories about the hardships of upper class life for women (which, yes, it wasn't great, but...), "Phosphorus" is biting and important and excellent. I also enjoyed Genevieve Valentine's story of the people destined to be in an exhibit of the Uncanny and Marvellous at the Great Exhibition, while "La Reine d'Enfer" by Kathe Koja was a voice-full read and "The Unwanted Women of Surrey" by Kaaron Warren was pleasantly dark. I didn't enjoy "We Without Us Were Shadows" by Catherynne M Valente as much as I'd hoped, but it had its moments: the melancholy of lives' abrupt ends across multiple universes. Otherwise, I wasn't especially fond of this anthology, and could definitely have done with less casual racism in too-ready service of the period. (The subjects of the racism: nearly invisible, naturally.)
]]> 10077103 This is an alternate cover edition for 9780307346612

We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z, now a #1 New York Times bestseller, is the only record of the plague years.]]> 352 Max Brooks Alex 2 fiction 4.09
author: Max Brooks
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2013/07/23
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:
It's fun. It's an interesting approach to narrative that occasionally succeeds in giving very individual glimpses of how people would deal with a zombie uprising (I especially liked the one about the people on the ISS). Elsewhere it trades in national stereotypes (the Japanese otaku and his wise mystical samurai-ish mentor, the Russians who really want a tsar, the British person who gets misty-eyed about the monarchy) and has a staggering scarcity of women. It also manages to be very US-centric despite claims to the contrary. I wanted to switch off and enjoy it, but its problems were too great to ignore.
]]> 15770475 253 Kiini Ibura Salaam 1933500964 Alex 3 short-fiction, fiction 3.87 2012
author: Kiini Ibura Salaam
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/20
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
Though I liked this collection, I didn't love it: there were times when voice and story came together and I was compelled to keep reading, and times when that didn't happen. There's a lot of emphasis on sex and strong emotional connections between people (and a lot of sex = emotional connection) which isn't something I really relate to (especially when it's written in such a way that suggests everyone should be able to relate to it). There's also a lot of imagination - this isn't like any other collection I've read, and that was definitely for the better. It certainly left me wanting to read more of Kiini Ibura Salaam's work, because when it works for me, it really works.
]]> 13528370
Yet even disaster can be profitable, for the right sort of individual, and into this flooded realm sail three conspirators: a deranged thug at the edge of madness, a ruthless conman on the cusp of fortune, and a half-feral girl balanced between them.
With The Folly of the World, Jesse Bullington has woven an extraordinary new tale of the depraved and the desperate.]]> 502 Jesse Bullington 0316190357 Alex 4 fiction 3.63 2012
author: Jesse Bullington
name: Alex
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/07/08
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:
Fun and weird and fucked up. What I like about Jesse Bullington's books is that they stand at strong contrast to all the grimdark fantasies out there that claim to be rooted in historical accuracy (women get raped a lot because history!!) by actually being based in history. They have multi-page bibliographies at the back. They present a world which is indeed grim and dark, but it's genuinely like that for everyone - and women (and other minorities - the two main male characters are gay) have a chance of successfully shoving their way through the shit-pile just the same as men (because, in real history, women found ways too). There's a pleasant lack of sexualised/gendered violence in The Folly of the World. It's not without moments of unpleasantness in other ways, but I liked it a lot: some cool characters (especially Jo, the girl), hilarious similes, and a nice dose of weirdness always lurking on the edge of the story, sometimes intruding. Eels, man.
]]> 17131859
Content

"Ghostweight" (2011)
"The Shadow Postulates" (2007)
"The Bones of Giants" (2009)
"Between Two Dragons" (2010)
"Swanwatch" (2009)
"Effigy Nights" (2013)
"Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" (2010)
"Iseul's Lexicon" (2013)
"Counting the Shapes" (2001)
"Blue Ink" (2008)
"The Battle of Candle Arc" (2012)
"A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" (2011)
"The Unstrung Zither" (2009)
"The Black Abacus" (2002)
"The Book of Locked Doors" (2012)
"Conservation of Shadows" (2012)]]> 332 Yoon Ha Lee 1607013878 Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 3.99 2013
author: Yoon Ha Lee
name: Alex
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 7509040 144 Eleanor Arnason 1604860758 Alex 4 fiction, short-fiction 3.75 2010
author: Eleanor Arnason
name: Alex
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction, short-fiction
review:

]]> 13657
This method - changing planes - enables Sita to visit fifteen societies not found on Earth. She will encounter cultures where the babble of children fades over time into the silence of adults; where whole towns exist solely for holiday shopping; where personalities are ruled by rage; where genetic experiments produce less than desirable results. And many other exotic landscapes whose denizens are fundamentally human...]]> 239 Ursula K. Le Guin 0441012248 Alex 2 short-fiction, fiction 3.87 2003
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at: 2012/08/02
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
I did not expect to be this disappointed by a Le Guin book, but this just isn't very good. It's about travelling to alternate planes while stuck in airports (kind of like the astral plane Snapes and their wives except far less funny), mostly focusing on describing those planes and the human-like people living there. Le Guin does touch on some important issues of outsider perspectives and colonialist-like attitudes (stealing children for experiments, making the indigenous people work for white American interlopers), but ultimately this book remains 100% within the outsider perspective and is about how fun it is to travel and see quirky customs and stuff. There was also a worrying tendency for the more developed civilisations to be very pseudo-European and the less developed civilisations to be pseudo-not-European. I quite liked some bits of it, but overall it was underwhelming.
]]> 847409 So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of color.

Stories of imagined futures abound in Western writing. Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre “speaks so much about the experience of being alienated but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves.” It’s an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology.

The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the “third world.” It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centered in the worlds of the “developing” nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into.

The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures.

Contributors include: Opal Palmer Adisa, Tobias Buckell, Wayde Compton, Hiromi Goto, Andrea Hairston, Tamai Kobayashi, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Carole McDonnell, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, Nisi Shawl, Vandana Singh, Sheree Renee Thomas and Greg Van Eekhout.

Nalo Hopkinson is the internationally-acclaimed author of Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk, and Salt Roads. Her books have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, and Philip K. Dick Awards; Skin Folk won a World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award. Born in Jamaica, Nalo moved to Canada when she was sixteen. She lives in Toronto.

Uppinder Mehan is a scholar of science fiction and postcolonial literature. A South Asian Canadian, he currently lives in Boston and teaches at Emerson College.]]> 270 Nalo Hopkinson 155152158X Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 4.00 2004
author: Nalo Hopkinson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 11515328
Enfrentándose a sus propias percepciones, Imp debe descubrir la verdad sobre su encuentro con una maligna sirena, o un lobo de­samparado que se le apareció como una joven salvaje, o ninguna de estas cosas, sino algo mucho más extraño… algo que transita por los intersticios de la realidad.]]> 332 Caitlín R. Kiernan 0451464168 Alex 5 fiction 3.75 2012
author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
name: Alex
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2012/08/01
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 6271668 Distances is fascinating far-future science fiction, set in a desert city. For Anasuya, mathematics was experiential, a sixth sense that bared before her the harmonies, natural and artificial, that formed the sub-text of the world. So when mathematicians from the planet Tirana, 18-light-years-distant, ask Anasuya's help in solving a series of equations, she finds the new geometrical space they present her with intriguing. But as she explores the new space, she soon comes to suspect that it represents an actual physical system, and that the equations she is being asked to solve have a significance the Tiranis are concealing.

This is a story of intrigue, science, and art, rich with emotional and social exploration.]]> 158 Vandana Singh 1933500263 Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction
Yeah, I really liked this one. :D]]> 3.86 2008
author: Vandana Singh
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/30
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:
Fascinating far-future humans and human cultures! Mathematics as a sort-of-magic-like gift! Talented women! Mathematics as a part of worship! Many-dimensional reality as a part of worship! Poly relationships! An instrument made of bone!

Yeah, I really liked this one. :D
]]> 836964 313 Maureen F. McHugh 0312860986 Alex 3 fiction 3.95 1992
author: Maureen F. McHugh
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/27
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 7894642 329 Patricia A. McKillip 0441019579 Alex 5 fiction
A friend of mine recently wrote that McKillip's books often use the same motifs, which has drawn some criticism by those who find it repetitive. I, however, am thinking of writing a PhD on narrative motifs, so the possibility of finding them if I read more of McKillip's books means I want to buy all of her books right now.]]> 3.94 2010
author: Patricia A. McKillip
name: Alex
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2012/06/19
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:
I can't really be objective about this book. It spoke to too many personal interests: archaeology and research and standing stones and the power of old stories/songs and not-quite-knowable magic. And it had several central, skilled women. And the writing is quite pretty. And ballads!

A friend of mine recently wrote that McKillip's books often use the same motifs, which has drawn some criticism by those who find it repetitive. I, however, am thinking of writing a PhD on narrative motifs, so the possibility of finding them if I read more of McKillip's books means I want to buy all of her books right now.
]]> 870425 276 Githa Hariharan 033037236X Alex 4 fiction 3.23 1999
author: Githa Hariharan
name: Alex
average rating: 3.23
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 13324706
– Jeannelle M. Ferreira]]> 32 Sonya Taaffe Alex 5 poetry 4.43 2011
author: Sonya Taaffe
name: Alex
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 10495913 69 C.S.E. Cooney 1907881069 Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 4.52 2011
author: C.S.E. Cooney
name: Alex
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 7826116
Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan's peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what's ahead.]]> 481 Scott Westerfeld 1416971750 Alex 4 fiction 4.17 2010
author: Scott Westerfeld
name: Alex
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 13696390
Much like the quasi-fictional adventures in map-reading and remapping explored by Paul Auster, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, Dung Kai-cheung's novel challenges the representation of place and history and the limits of technical and scientific media in reconstructing a history. It best exemplifies the author's versatility and experimentation, along with China's rapidly evolving literary culture, by blending fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in a story about succeeding and failing to recapture the things we lose. Playing with a variety of styles and subjects, Dung Kai-cheung inventively engages with the fate of Hong Kong since its British "handover" in 1997, which officially marked the end of colonial rule and the beginning of an uncharted future.]]> 153 Kai-Cheung Dung 023116100X Alex 4 fiction 3.49 1997
author: Kai-Cheung Dung
name: Alex
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2012/08/14
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:
Interesting stuff. Especially the first section, which mediates on many different, strange ways to view maps, as well as some other parts: stories of streets, such as the one that changed names between winter and summer; a play on the double meaning of legends in a cartographic context.
]]> 865698 149 Catherynne M. Valente 0809510871 Alex 5 fiction 3.70 2005
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Alex
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 71409 here.

It's Carnival time, and the Carribean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favourite costume to wear at the festival--until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgivable crime.

Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Here Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth--and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life...and set her free.]]> 329 Nalo Hopkinson 0446675601 Alex 5 fiction 3.92 2000
author: Nalo Hopkinson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 212246
Sightseeing is a masterful new work of fiction, a collection of stories set in contemporary Thailand and written with a grace and sophistication that belie the age of its young author. These are generous, tender tales of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts, and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm, Edenic setting. Rattawut Lapcharoensap offers a diverse, humorous, and deeply affectionate view of life in a small Southeast Asian country that is inevitably absorbing the waves of encroaching Westernization.

In the prizewinning opening story, "Farangs," the young son of a modest beachside motel owner commits the cardinal sin of falling for a pretty tourist, and the confrontation that ensues between the native boy and the girl's pompous American boyfriend culminates wondrously amid flying mangoes and Clint Eastwood—a pet pig—swimming out to sea. In "Sightseeing," the much-anticipated holiday of a young man about to leave for college and his loving and fiercely independent mother becomes a different kind of pilgrimage altogether when they are forced to confront the mother's impending blindness. The concluding novella, "Cockfighter," is a triumph of storytelling in which a young girl witnesses her proud father's valiant but foolhardy and drawn-out battle against the local delinquent and violent hoodlum whose family's vicious stranglehold on the villagers has passed down unchecked through generations.

Through his vivid assemblage of parents and children, natives and transients, ardent lovers and sworn enemies, Lapcharoensap dares us to look with new eyes at the circumstances that shape our views and the prejudices that form our blind spots. Gorgeous and lush, painful and candid, Sightseeing is an extraordinary reading experience, one that powerfully reveals that when it comes to how we respond to pain, anger, hurt, and love, no place is too far from home.]]> 250 Rattawut Lapcharoensap 0802142346 Alex 5 short-fiction, fiction 3.95 2004
author: Rattawut Lapcharoensap
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 10533450 75 Jorge Luis Borges 0141195819 Alex 5 short-fiction, fiction 3.50 2011
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Alex
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 10490871 64 Nicole Kornher-Stace Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 3.81 2011
author: Nicole Kornher-Stace
name: Alex
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 11465626 378 JoSelle Vanderhooft Alex 3 short-fiction, fiction 3.96 2011
author: JoSelle Vanderhooft
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 94669
Now immortal, and living in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman, Tilo has set up shop in Oakland, California, where she administers curatives to her customers. But when she's surprised by an unexpected romance with a handsome stranger, she must choose between everlasting life and the vicissitudes of modern society. Spellbinding and hypnotizing, The Mistress of Spices is a tale of joy, sorrow, and one special woman's magical powers.]]> 338 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 0385482388 Alex 4 fiction 3.51 1997
author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
name: Alex
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 8038401
Multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow and award-nominated author and editor Nick Mamatas recruited Jeffrey Ford, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin Kiernan, Catherynne M. Valente, Kit Reed, Ekaterina Sedia, and thirteen other fine writers to create stories unlike any they've written before. Tales to make readers shiver with fear, jump at noises in the night, keep the lights on.

These twenty nightmares, brought together by two renowned editors of the dark fantastic, are delightful visions sure to send shivers down the spines of horror readers.

Table of Contents
“Introduction” Nick Mamatas
“Knickerbocker Holiday” Richard Bowes
“That Girl” Kaaron Warren
“Akbar” Kit Reed
“The Spring Heel” Steven Pixie
“As Red as Red” Caitlin R. Kiernan
“Tin Cans” Ekaterina Sedia
“Shoebox Train Wreck” John Mantooth
“Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai” Catherynne M. Valente
“La Llorona” Carolyn Turgeon
“Face Like a Monkey” Carrie Laben
“Down Atsion Road” Jeffrey Ford
“Return to Mariabronn” Gary A. Braunbeck
“Following Double-Face Woman” Erzebet YellowBoy
“Oaks Park” M. K. Hobson
“For Those in Peril on the Sea” Stephen Dedman
“The Foxes” Lily Hoang
“The Redfield Girls” Laird Barron
“Between Heaven and Hull” Pat Cadigan
“Chucky Comes to Liverpool” Ramsey Campbell
“The Folding Man” Joe R. Lansdale]]> 352 Ellen Datlow 0765323001 Alex 3 short-fiction, fiction 3.71 2010
author: Ellen Datlow
name: Alex
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 8386023 320 Ekaterina Sedia 1607012286 Alex 4 fiction 3.53 2010
author: Ekaterina Sedia
name: Alex
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 7817846
 

Juxtaposing barbarity and whimsy, Brian Conn’s The Fixed Stars is a novel that has the tenor of a contemporary fable with nearly the same dreamlike logic.

 

At the novel’s heart are the John’s Day celebration and the interactions of a small community dealing with a mystery disease. Routinely citizens are quarantined and then reintegrated into society in rituals marked by a haunting brutality. The infected and the healthy alike are quarantined. In a culture that has retreated from urbanism into a more pastoral society, the woman who nurtures spiders and the man who spins hemp exist alongside the mass acceptance of sexual promiscuity. Conn delivers a compelling portrait of a calamitous era, one tormented by pestilence, disease, violence, and post–late capitalism. An unflinching look at a world impossible to situate in time, The Fixed Stars is mythic and darkly magical.]]> 312 Brian Conn 1573661538 Alex 4 fiction 4.19 2010
author: Brian Conn
name: Alex
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 6012314
"This is an impossible thing, a dream object."—Joyelle McSweeney]]> 139 Lily Hoang 0979995426 Alex 4 fiction 4.01 2008
author: Lily Hoang
name: Alex
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 735504
IMAGINE A WORLD...
Half-human, half-machine, Voyager Isol was as beautiful as a coiled scorpion–and just as dangerous. Her claim that she’d found a distant but habitable earthlike planet was welcome news to the rest of the Forged. But it could mean the end of what was left of the humanity who’d created and once enslaved them.

IMAGINE A FATE...
It was on behalf of the “unevolved” humans that Professor Zephyr Duquesne, cultural archaeologist and historian of Earth’s lost worlds, was chosen by the Gaiasol military authority to uncover the truth about this second “earth.” And her voyage, traveling inside the body of Isol, will take her to the center of a storm exploding across a spectrum of space and time, dimension and consciousness.

IMAGINE THE IMPOSSIBLE...
On an abandoned planet, in a wrinkle of time, Isol and Zephyr will find a gift and a a power so vast that once unlocked, it will change the universe forever. With civil war looming, Zephyr’s perilous journey will lead her to a past where one civilization mysteriously vanished...and another may soon follow.]]> 336 Justina Robson 0553587412 Alex 4 fiction 3.61 2003
author: Justina Robson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 11221794 290 Genevieve Valentine Alex 4 fiction 3.79 2011
author: Genevieve Valentine
name: Alex
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 7005878
Unfortunately, not all the djombi are happy about this gift: the Indigo Lord believes this power should be his and his alone, and he sets about trying to persuade Paama to return the Chaos Stick.

Chaos is about to reign supreme...]]> 188 Karen Lord 1931520666 Alex 5 fiction 3.86 2010
author: Karen Lord
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 7767021 An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of post-apocalyptic Africa.

In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.

Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny – to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture – and eventually death itself.]]> 386 Nnedi Okorafor 075640617X Alex 4 fiction 3.91 2010
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Alex
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 10105459 Emma, Shirley) brings the nineteenth-century Silk Road to lavish life, chronicling the story of Amir Halgal, a young woman from a nomadic tribe betrothed to a twelve-year-old boy eight years her junior. Coping with cultural differences, blossoming feelings for her new husband, and expectations from both her adoptive and birth families, Amir strives to find her role as she settles into a new life and a new home in a society quick to define that role for her.

Crafted in painstaking detail, Ms. Mori’s pen breathes life into the scenery and architecture of the period in this heartwarming, slice-of-life tale that is at once both wholly exotic, yet familiar and accessible through the everyday lives of the rich characters she has created.]]> 191 Kaoru Mori 0316180998 Alex 5 fiction 4.23 2009
author: Kaoru Mori
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 10954336
Crafted in painstaking detail, Ms. Mori’s pen breathes life into the scenery and architecture of the period in this heartwarming, slice-of-life tale that is at once both wholly exotic, yet familiar and accessible through the everyday lives of the rich characters she has created.]]> 196 Kaoru Mori 0316194468 Alex 5 fiction 4.35 2010
author: Kaoru Mori
name: Alex
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 8554605 318 Rachel Swirsky 1607012383 Alex 4 short-fiction, fiction 3.75 2007
author: Rachel Swirsky
name: Alex
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 11966692 252 Catherynne M. Valente 1597802034 Alex 5 fiction 4.19 2011
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Alex
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 8694389
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.]]> 352 Catherynne M. Valente 0765326302 Alex 4 fiction 3.95 2011
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 8706185 Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she and her twin sister played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins, but her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her mother tries to bend the spirits to dark ends with deadly results, Mori is sent away and must try to come to terms with what has happened without falling prey to the darkness.]]> 304 Jo Walton 076532153X Alex 5 fiction 3.70 2011
author: Jo Walton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 9922371 Winner of:
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, National Book Foundation

Newly revised and presented here in book form for the first time, this Nebula Award-winning story tells of two captive "dirt children" in a society of sword and silk, whose determination to find a glimpse of justice leads to a violent and loving end. Also included is the nonfiction essay "Staying Awake While We Read" which demolishes the pretensions of corporate publishing and the basic assumptions of capitalism, and "Outspoken Author Interview," which reveals the hidden dimensions of America's best-known sci-fi author.

Content:
Wild girls
"Staying awake while we read"
Poems
"Conversation of the modest"
"Lovely art" - Outspoken interview with Ursula K. Le Guin.]]> 112 Ursula K. Le Guin 1604864036 Alex 5 short-fiction, fiction 3.95 2011
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: short-fiction, fiction
review:

]]> 68041 691 Ursula K. Le Guin 0140154272 Alex 3 fiction 4.33 1993
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1993
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 11470277
]]> 376 Kameron Hurley 1597802247 Alex 4 fiction 4.01 2011
author: Kameron Hurley
name: Alex
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 9359818 Nyx is a bel dame, a bounty hunter paid to collect the heads of deserters – by almost any means necessary.

‘Almost’ proved to be the problem.

Cast out and imprisoned for breaking one rule too many, Nyx and her crew of mercenaries are all about the money. But when a dubious government deal with an alien emissary goes awry, her name is at the top of the list for a covert recovery.

While the centuries-long war rages on only one thing is certain: the world’s best chance for peace rests in the hands of its most ruthless killers. . .]]> 288 Kameron Hurley 159780214X Alex 4 fiction 3.69 2011
author: Kameron Hurley
name: Alex
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 9359810
Fugitive Rachel Nolander is a newcomer to the city of Dogsland, where the rich throw parties and the poor just do whatever they can to scrape by. Supported by her brother Djoss, she hides out in their squalid apartment, living in fear that someday, someone will find out that she is the child of a demon. Corporal Jona Lord Joni is a demon's child too, but instead of living in fear, he keeps his secret and goes about his life as a cocky, self-assured man of the law. The first book in the Dogsland Trilogy, Never Knew Another is the story of how these two outcasts meet.

Never Knew Another is the first book in the Dogsland Trilogy.]]> 232 J.M. McDermott 1597802158 Alex 5 fiction 3.47 2011
author: J.M. McDermott
name: Alex
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 11282970
And long ago, in the days of the first kings in the north, the seven devils, who had deceived and possessed seven of the greatest wizards of the world, were defeated and bound with the help of the Old Great Gods...

And perhaps some of the devils are free in the world, and perhaps some are working to free themselves still…

In a land where gods walk on the hills and goddesses rise from river, lake, and spring, the caravan-guard Holla-Sayan, escaping the bloody conquest of a lakeside town, stops to help an abandoned child and a dying dog. The girl, though, is the incarnation of Attalissa, goddess of Lissavakail, and the dog a shape-changing guardian spirit whose origins have been forgotten. Possessed and nearly driven mad by the Blackdog, Holla-Sayan flees to the desert road, taking the powerless avatar with him.

Necromancy, treachery, massacres, rebellions, and gods dead or lost or mad, follow hard on the their heels. But it is Attalissa herself who may be the Blackdog’s—and Holla-Sayan’s—doom.]]> 547 K.V. Johansen 1616145218 Alex 4 fiction 3.59 2011
author: K.V. Johansen
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 4567585 358 Liz Williams 0230709311 Alex 4 fiction 3.65 2008
author: Liz Williams
name: Alex
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/29
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 2963207 141 Renate Rolle 0520068645 Alex 0 ancient-history 4.06 1980
author: Renate Rolle
name: Alex
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/21
shelves: ancient-history
review:

]]>