2018 Read List

[triadruid]

Legend: bold means I've read it already, Italics means I'm working on it, and normal text means it's a potential. * means I've read it before. Previously read books/reviews are in the 'read lists' tag.

1. Neil Gaiman, American Gods* (9, still a great story though it loses just a bit when you know the twist is coming)
2. China Mieville, The Last Days of New Paris (8.5, this is assuredly even funnier if you know anything about Surrealism, but the helpful footnotes are great and the concept of Surrealist warfare is terrific; reminds me of Declare)
3. David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself (8, this was better than I expected, an interwoven story about a man who discovers time travel and gifts it to himself, then suffers the tragic consequences of every manner of time travel paradox)
4. Ursula K LeGuin, The Wild Girls (7.5, sparse little ethnographic...horror story? interesting, as always from LeGuin, but I wanted more than 50 pages or so. the ebook also contains an interview, an essay, and some poems, all worth reading as well).
5. Harry Harrison, The Velvet Glove and Arm of the Law (8, Harrison has a real love-affair with Asimovian robots and these are great short stories for that topic)
6. Harry Harrison, Three (The Repairman, Navy Day, Toy Shop) (7, these were actually quite good, especially the first and last)
7. Ben Peek, The Dreaming City (6, short story about Mark Twain visiting Sydney, but maybe only in his dreams, or in the aboriginal Dreamtime? it all just kind of wandered intricately into a conclusion of sorts, without ever really telling the reader much; being Australian would probably help, or being high)
8. Ursula LeGuin, Earthsea* (8, still gripping and twisty, need to get the rest as well; I didn't remember most of the story after almost 30 years)
9. Neil Gaiman, A Study in Emerald (8, more like a novella, read by the author for an enjoyable Mythos-meets-Sherlock pastiche)
10. J.B. Rockwell, Serengeti (5, ehh... audiobook was entertaining enough to listen through the trip to Atlanta, but only barely; the author is obsessed with emotional and infantilized AIs, and the plot just seemed to be dragged out to no greater purpose)
11. J.B. Rockwell, Dark and Stars (4, gave up partway through this sequel to Serengeti when I realized I just didn't care what happened)
12. Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form (6, this is probably good book...from 1960s European academia; right now it's just dated and impenetrable, when I was hoping for a sort of primer)
13. C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew* (8, still a good book at any age, though you do get to sympathise more with the non-Charn adults after a certain age)
14. C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian* (8, it might be nostalgia talking but this is such a sweet and hopeful book overall)
15. C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy* (7, this one is definitely marred by lots of stereotypes and strange pacing, though the titular characters are pretty charming)
16. Edgar Rice Burroughs, At the Earth's Core (6, speaking of stereotypes....oi - I never read this prequel before, but it's about all of the What These Savages Need Is A British Imperialist or Two I ever need to read again...unintentionally hilarious in parts)
17. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pellucidar (5, I lied - THIS is all the Imperialism I never needed, with a heaping dose of racism and terrible plotting)
18. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan at the Earth's Core* (6, not nearly as fun as I remember as a kid, we trade equal parts Imperialism for Noble Savages and nonsensical ecologies)
19. Brian K. Vaughn, Saga (Volume 8) (8, still the most charming, disturbing, and hilarious comics I've read in a VERY long time)
20. Jack London, The Scarlet Plague (8, for a post-apoc book published in 1912 this actually aged astonishingly well, I was very pleasantly surprised; the ending is a little meandering, but that's sort of endemic to the genre these days, it's more of a Day In The Life Of...)
21. Eleanor Arneson, Mammoths of the Great Plains (8, again pleasantly surprised; this is a thin volume of Alternate History centered on the indigenous experience; the book also includes a few essays, being in the same series as Wild Girls above)
22. Robert Kirkman, Invincible (Vol 23-25) (7. finishing the saga which suffers from Kirkman's inveterate need to escalate the power level of *everything* in his stories; despite all that I liked where we wrapped up)
23. Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars (7, I really wanted to like this book more than I did; it's got some interesting ideas in it but doesn't really explore most of them well)
24. Clifford D. Simak, The Werewolf Principle (5, I wish I liked this book more than I did...Simak really wants to bludgeon you over the head with his admittedly fascinating concept of a jointly-controlled organism returning to Earth, but then has no idea how to wrap it up so you just get a ride into the sunset)
25. Scott Snyder, Swamp Thing (Vol. 1-3) (6, I expect Swamp Thing to be hella weird, but this was mostly just confusing - maybe I needed more grounding in recent DC worldbuilding? first volume was probably the best, frankly, the third is a mess)
26. Antony Johnston, The Coldest City (3, really disappointing after the immersive and tight Atomic Blonde that was based on it - I get the reasons for B&W storytelling, but it's so much less engaging here than the saturated and musical film is)
27. Marvel Comics, Star Wars: Darth Vader: Vader Down (6, much more middling and straightforward than the new canon stuff that has come before it)
28. Harry Harrison, Deathworld (8, Harrison writes a good yarn even when the world itself is improbable, and he might even have a lesson or two to work in amongst the lines)
29. Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin, A Vision of Fire (7.5, solidly cinematic and multicultural, showcasing Anderson's trippy personal beliefs merged with a very Scully-esque main character; doesn't hurt that it was read by Anderson herself, either!)
30. Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin, A Dream of Ice (6, the continuation is necessarily weirder and harder to follow, digging deep into the not-Atlantis' history, and an evil henchman's sideplot)
31. Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin, The Sound of Seas (6, we wrap things up, after a fashion, but it would have been difficult to have it actually make any sense... so an ambiguous ending probably is for the best anyway; sadly I no longer want to visit ancient Gaalderkhaan)
32. Joanna Russ, We Who Are About To... (10, holy crap! I've never even heard of this author before a chance encounter in a NM bookstore, but this book ran right through me like a dire feminist swordblade; less than 200 pages long, the story grabs ahold and never lets go)
33. Greg Pak, Battlestar Galactica, Vols 1 & 2 (7, graphic novel side story about an interstitial occurrence in the reimagined universe's S3 hiatus; nothing special but not bad for what it is)
34. Mirka Andolfo, Unnatural (8, surprisingly deep allegory buried in a kinky furry comic)
35. James Stokoe, Aliens: Dead Orbit (6, side comics sometimes get really weird and reductive, on the other hand...give this one a miss)
36. G. K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers, (5, did not finish due to the dated language and references, even though Chesterton has a witty barbed tongue)
37. Zack Whedon, Terminator: 2029-1984 (5, honestly just give up, guys - the time-travel well is dry)
38. Ron Fortier and Alex Ross, Terminator: The Burning Earth (6.5, this one tries to fill in the gaps of what happened after Reese dropped through the time displacement device, at least, rather than rewriting continuity once more)