New books! I recently used Amazon’s trade-in scheme to get rid of some old textbooks, and decided to used the resulting gift card to purchase some hardbacks that I probably would not have got under other circumstances.

The first one I intend to read in Stonemouth by Iain Banks, his newest mainstream fiction release, which is one that I definitely would have bought anyway.

Then there is The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. I’ve enjoyed a few other of Green’s YA novels recently, and this one has been widely acclaimed, so I thought I would make this one the next of his books I read.

The other two are more unknown quantities: Intrusion by Ken MacLeod and Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. The former is a SF novel which sounded interesting, and since I’ve enjoyed the other MacLeod novel I’ve read I thought I’d check it out. The later is a complete gamble, and I don’t really know much about it, but it was recommended to me, and I thought it might be worth taking a shot and reading a book that I don’t have any particular expectations of.

I have a bunch of other books to read too, ones that I’ve bought over the past few months, but I thought I’d take a picture of these ones as buying hardbacks is a rather rare occurrence for me!

Following on from my earlier posts about Harry Potter, I am now finished the first four books and about to start on book five. I have also just obtained this boxset of all the movies. Obviously I will read each book before watching the corresponding film. But the question is, should I wait until I’ve finished all the books, or start watching the films now?

I finished The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb a week or so ago, but it has taken me awhile to write this review, mainly because I’m just not sure what to say about this series that would do it justice. In general I am not the biggest fan of the fantasy genre, but these books were simply fantastic.

The first book, Assassin’s Apprentice, follows the early years of the Royal Bastard Fitz, as he is trained to serve as an assassin for his grandfather the King. The second book, Royal Assassin, follows Fitz as he gets drawn further into the plots and intrigues of the court, dealing with the war again the Red Ship Raiders, while also battling the betrayal of his uncle Prince Regal. Fitz also explores his magical ability of the Wit, bonding with the wolf Nighteyes. The book ends with his death, but he is resurrected at the start of book three. The third book, Assassin’s Quest, sees Fitz journeying in search of his missing uncle Prince Verity, who departed on a mysterious quest in the previous book. Treacherous Regal has seized the throne and is bringing ruin to the Six Duchies, so Fitz must battle to bring Verity back to serve as the rightful King.

That is a very simplistic synopsis of the trilogy; to fully explore of the details would require a much long post! On one hand I would love to write more about all the great details of the books, all the fantastic characters and brilliant plot twists. But at the same time, I also do not want to spoil the story for anyone, so I’m not going to go into any further detail.

I thought the whole trilogy was brilliant and I really loved these books. I have already reviewed the first book in the trilogy, and for this review I’m just going to cheat and reiterate what I said about that book, because it is equally true for the whole series:

I really loved the book. It is an incredibly well written story, just fantastic in terms of plot. It really was one of those books that I just got caught up in and couldn’t put down. The fact that the book is told through first person narration means the reader gets a great insight into the character of Fitz, but the other characters are very well developed too. I’m not always the biggest fan of the first person narrator, but this is it done very well. It felt like traditional fantasy, but fresh and without any of the clichés that often put me off the genre. It was just magnificent, and as I said before, I loved it.

Following on from this post, yesterday I read both Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling. Yup, I got through both books in a single day. Needless to say, I enjoyed them a lot and got hooked into the series. I don’t think they’re perfect or anything, but I can see why people love them, and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the books. In fact I am starting on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this evening! I think I will also have to watch the movies when I am done with the books. I’m not planning to review each book individually, but expect some sort of massive Harry Potter post when I am done with them.

I have somehow ended up starting several series of books recently. I’m not sure what it is about fantasy/science fiction/YA that leads to so many sequels and trilogies and series. Cynically you could probably argue it is the money, but you could also say that probably just the length of these stories requires multiple books. Anyway, this is not a post about that per se. Rather it is a post to keep track of all the series I have started, whether intentionally or accidentally (when I did not realise that the book had a sequel due out).

The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb - I have read the first two books in this wonderful fantasy series and I am currently plowing through the third one. But the trilogy is actually the first in a much longer series comprising several other trilogies. While I plan to take a break after finishing the book I am currently reading, I suspect I will return to the rest of the series at some point.

The Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling - I previously wrote about my plans to finally read the Harry Potter books. I haven’t started the first book yet, but if I enjoy it, then it is fairly safe to assume that I’ll be reading the rest of them in rapid succession.

The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons - This is a series of four books, with the first pair of books forming one complete story, and the last two books another story. I read the first book Hyperion, and I have the second book The Fall of Hyperion on my Kindle ready to read shortly. If it is as good as the first one then I will then probably read the second pair of books after a bit of a break.

The Laundry Series by Charles Stross - This is a series of science fiction Lovecraftian espionage books. I read the first one, The Atrocity Archives, and thought it was pretty good. The books are all standalone stories, so I’m not in a big rush to read the next one, but I will probably pick up one of the sequels at some point when I am in the mood for that kind of writing.

As well as those series, there are also a few books that I picked up thinking they were standalone novels, only to find that a sequel was in the works. For example, I enjoyed Divergent by Veronica Roth, a YA dystopian thriller. I chose to read it specifically because I wanted to a read a science fiction YA book that wasn’t part of a big series, but then embarrassingly I realised that it ends on a cliffhanger and has a sequel Insurgent due out next month. So I will be reading that when it is released. Very similarly I read and enjoyed Paulo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker, which is another YA book with a science fiction setting. Again, it was only after I finished it that I realised that there was a sequel to follow it. So I will be reading The Drowned Cities when it is available, which is also next month.   

There are plenty of other example that I am sure I am missing, but those are the ones that I am aware of at the moment. I also have a few books on my to-read list that are the start of series or trilogies, so perhaps this trend will continue further. I’m not complaining too much though, I am enjoying all of these books so far.

Following on from my post about Assassin’s Apprentice, I’ve now finished book two of the Farseer Trilogy, Royal Assassin, and I am just about to start on the final book Assassin’s Quest. This is not a review, I’ll wait until I’ve finished off the series before writing up my thoughts about these two books, but I will just say that I am still loving this trilogy.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of fantasy novels. I’m much more towards the SF end of the amalgamated ‘science fiction and fantasy’ genre. But recently I felt like reading some fantasy, so I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamorra, which I loved. That put me in the mood reading some kind of epic fantasy series and I opted to read Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb, which is the first in her Farseer Trilogy, which is itself the first trilogy in a series made up of various trilogies. (What is it with fantasy authors and trilogies?!) I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, other than that I’d heard people praise it highly, and LibraryThing recommended it to me.

The books follows Fitz, the bastard son of a Prince Chivalry of the Six Duchies. When his father learns of his son, he abdicates the throne and leaves court. Fitz is raised instead by Burrich, the stablemaster. He is also educated by Chade, the mysterious assassin to the king, trained to be the assassin’s apprentice. He tries as well to learn the Skill, an ancient type of magic, but his progress is hindered as some people feel it is best for him not to learn it. As he grows older he is drawn into the intrigues and power struggles of the court, as his uncles the Princes Verity and Regal struggle for power. Meanwhile the Six Duchies is also at war, facing the the Red-Ship Raiders who attack the coastlines and magically strip away the humanity of their victims.

I really loved the book. It is an incredibly well written story, just fantastic in terms of plot. It really was one of those books that I just got caught up in and couldn’t put down. The fact that the book is told through first person narration means the reader gets a great insight into the character of Fitz, but the other characters are very well developed too. I’m not always the biggest fan of the first person narrator, but this is it done very well. It felt like traditional fantasy, but fresh and without any of the clichés that often put me off the genre. It was just magnificent, and as I said before, I loved it.

I loved it so much that after I finished it I went to the book shop the next day to buy the second book in the trilogy, because I didn’t want to wait for Amazon to deliver it. (It is available on Kindle but since I got the first one in paperback because it was a birthday gift I decided that I wanted the other ones as physical copies too.) Waterstone’s didn’t have the third book in the trilogy or else I’d have bought that too, but I’ve ordered it online so hopefully that will arrive before I finish book two. Anyway, my point is, that’s a good sign that it was a great book.

I’m now reading that second one and I am planning to read the third one straight after that. I’m not sure if I’ll go on to the rest of the series, I’ll have to see how this trilogy works out. But I am enjoying reading these books a lot, I haven’t been this caught up in a book for awhile, but I am really hooked on it. Take that as a good recommendation!

The Harry Potter series has finally been released in the eBook format through the Pottermore website. I have not read the series (insert shocked gasps here) and so my friend Michael got me the first one - many thanks again! This isn’t a review as I haven’t read it yet, but I just wanted to make a post about it.

When I say I haven’t read the series that is not technically true, because I have read the first three books. I remember my Mum getting me the first book, probably when it was first released in paperback. It was a gift because I was ill in bed; I used to get really bad tonsillitis several times a year when I was a kid, so I’m sure it was probably one of those times.

(The best gift my Mum ever got me when I was ill in bed was the audio book, on cassette tape, of Leonard Nimoy’s autobiography I Am Spock as read by Nimoy himself. I listened to it whilst slightly feverish, which resulted is a very bizarre experience. But that’s really a story for another time!)

Anyway, I remember I liked the first book and I got the second one when it came out. By the time the third one came out my younger sister was obsessed with it and she got the book and got it signed by JK Rowling when she was on some kind of book tour. I remember that I wasn’t particularly bothered about it by that point but I borrowed it and read it after her. But by the time the fourth one came out I was in the middle of my pretentious literary phase and even when I came to my senses and went back to reading science fiction and fantasy, I still did not go back to the Harry Potter series.

Over the years various friends have reacted with horror when they learn that I haven’t read it, and people have tried to convince me to read it. I have generally intended to at some point, it is not like I have any objection to it, I’ve just never got around to reading it yet. But now I have no excuse, so I will be starting this one shortly and I’ll see how I get on with it. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype!

I just finished reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It took me awhile to get through the book, not because it was dragging or dull to read, but because it was rather long and intense and I did not want to rush it. I had been meaning to read the book for ages but I also got put off a bit by the length of the series (more on that shortly). But it is a very well-regarded SF classic so I eventually got around to it. I am glad I did, because I really liked the book.

First, a brief synopsis. The book is set in the future after Old Earth has been destroyed and the human race, in the form of the Hegemony, live on many different colonised worlds. The worlds form part of the Web, run by AIs and connected by farcaster technology that allows instant transport between worlds. Outside the Web are a few backwater planets, and transport there requires relativistic space travel in cryogenic stasis, with an associated time debt.

The Hegemony are at war with the Ousters, who plan to invade one of these non-Web colonies, the planet Hyperion. Hyperion is an odd planet, home to a mysterious artefact known as the Time Tombs, and a legendary monster the Shrike. Against the backdrop of this approaching war, seven pilgrims are summoned by the Church of the Shrike, the Hyperion-obsessed Cult, to travel to the planet and journey to the Time Tombs.

The book follows the journey of those seven pilgrims, but the bulk of the novel is made up of the back stories of the characters, as each in turn has to tell their story of how they came to be on the pilgrimage, and in this way the background setting of the novel is gradually revealed to the reader. The stories all vary in tone and style, but all of them were some combination of compelling, interesting and moving, and all very good in their own way.

The book is the first part of the four-part Hyperion Cantos, comprised of Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. I mistakenly thought that each book was entirely separate, but in actual fact the first book ends of a cliffhanger of sorts, or at least without any resolution. I mentioned before that I had been put off by the length of the series, but I finally got around to reading this book because I thought that I could wait a bit before reading the others. Now however I just want to go ahead and read the next book in the series!

I really liked the book. It lived up to the hype and I can see why it is so highly regarded. I thought it was really well written and I particularly liked the structure of the book and the way that all of the character background stories came together to build up the setting and flesh out the story. The setting is also very well developed, some nice world building with a good mix of the social and the technological aspects. The whole thing is just full of interesting ideas. If anything, it rather reminded me of some of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, which is high praise coming from me. As I said, I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series. I have a few other books on the go which I may end up getting through first, but I will definitely be reading at least The Fall of Hyperion in the near future. 

I haven’t really posted much about comics or graphic novels, mainly because I think the peak of my comics phase was shortly before I started this blog. But anyway, I used to read quite a lot of comic books, but now I don’t really any more. There is no particular reason why I fell out of the habit. Much like going to the cinema, it is something I used to do a lot more, and I still do it occasionally and still enjoy it, but just not very often.

One of my favourite comics series back when I was reading them a lot was Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, which is just a fantastic story. I decided to reread all of the books, which are collected in the ten volumes pictured above. I’m not sure how long it will take, I’m probably going to aim for one a week alongside reading other books, but I will have a full review up when I’m finished.

But I just wanted to post about it now because I just finished the first volume and I loved it. It reminded me of how much I enjoy this series in particular and reading comics or graphic novels in general. I am looking forward to getting through the rest of the series, and I may well need to reread some of my other favourite comic books as well.

You may have noticed the recent popularity of ‘booksing’, which is very different from reading. Booksing tends to show up as a gushy, shared celebration of the idea of books, rather than of the experience of reading any given one. […] There are many ways of being booksy. They include the over-scrutiny of cover design, the fetishization of typefaces, the reading of writing about reading and writing, and the purchase of Penguin India souvenirs. There is a new connoisseurship of pulp fiction, which we own not in hope of ever reading, but in hope of communing with the literary underbelly. There’s an epidemic of Tumblr pages that you can broadly call ‘Hemingway, Typewriter’, in which famous authors are seen doing things. Then there’s the veneration of the collection, the shelf, the bargain bin, the discount haul, and other forms of textual abundance (or, as we know too well, unread accumulation).

This is an very interesting and, in my opinion, accurate article about how ‘our irritating new tendency to fetishize the physical book is actually an excuse not to read’. (Hat tip to The Kindle Monologues for the link.)

It is definitely something I have encountered myself here on Tumblr, when searching for ‘book blogs’ to follow. Browsing the relevant tags it sadly becomes obviously that a book blog is a blog about books as objects rather than reading. So many of the most popular blogs and posts under the ‘lit’ or ‘books’ or ‘reading’ tags are just pictures of books or bookshelves or famous authors. At best you get some quotes (and at my most cynical I do wonder whether the people posting and liking the quote have actually read the book it is from).

I’d love to follow some blogs which post reviews of the books that the blogger is reading, or thoughts about books which focus on the content rather than fetishism of the book as an object… Basically the kind of thing I try to do, albeit hopefully more skilled than my own feeble attempts. But I really do have trouble finding that kind of thing on Tumblr. Seriously if anyone can point out some good ones I would love to see some.

Otherwise, where are all the readers, rather than just the ‘booklovers’?

Two book reviews in one! Except they are not really reviews, even less so than my usual book-related posts. Just some brief observations then.

I read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, mainly due to my love for the new television show based loosely on the book and its sequel. I am fairly sure that I have read this before, a decade or so ago, around the same I time I read all of HHGTTG. But my memory of it was a bit fuzzy so it was almost like reading it for the first time, except I knew that it was going to be good. It is funny and clever and weird and very, very good.

I also read Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. I recently read Green’s book Paper Towns and the advice following my post about that was that his best book was The Fault In Our Stars and I should read that one next. But I am not sure of the logic behind that. With my favourite author Iain M. Banks/Iain Banks (both of them!) I deliberately read all of his most highly regarded books first, and now I am left with two or three books of his that are generally regarded as sub-par and I am not sure when I will get around to reading them. So I figured that if I am going to read more of Green’s books then I should leave the best until last. Actually I wasn’t really planning to pick up another of his books so quickly but I saw this in the bookshop and I was taken in by the shiny cover and by the fact that it was written by two people, which I find quite an interesting thing. Anyway, it was okay, not as good as Paper Towns, but readable enough (I got through it in one go). The main drawback for me if that it was just a plain YA novel, which is not really to my tastes, but that does not detract from the quality of the book itself. I will probably read another John Green novel at some point (maybe Looking for Alaska or The Fault In Our Stars) but not immediately.

I’m not sure what I’ll read next. I have an urge for some proper grown up science fiction. I’ve been reading a lot of lighter stuff recently and a lot of YA (genre or otherwise) and while most of those books have been good, I do want something with a bit more weight to it. The only problem is that I am so swamped with studying that perhaps something light is all I can handle for the moment! I shall have to look at my bookshelves and my Amazon wishlist and see what looks tempting…

I recently finished reading Paper Towns by John Green. The narrator is a high school student named Quentin who has a crush on his neighbour Margo Roth Spiegelman. One night she shows up at his window and takes him on an adventure around town. The next day she disappears, leaving some clues behind about where she has gone. Quentin becomes obsessed with tracking her down, with the help of his friends.

The book is a bit far away from my usual tastes - I normally only read YA if it crosses into my preferred genre of science fiction. So I wouldn’t really have chosen to read this book up until recently when I got caught up in nerdfighteria and decided that I should check out at least one of John Green’s books. My choice of this one was rather arbitrary, it came up first in the Kindle store when I was searching for him!

I did enjoy the book though, more so perhaps than I had expected I would. It was very well written with interesting characters, and I loved the mystery aspect of the plot. I can definitely see why John Green is so highly acclaimed. Indeed, I will probably read another of his novels (not sure which one yet) in the near future, because I liked this one a lot and I would like to see what else he has done.

Sirius by Olaf Stapledon is a science fiction book about a super-intelligent dog. The dog Sirius was created by a scientist working on super sheep dogs and was raised as part of his family, with this book serving as a biography of the dog from his ‘puppyhood’ to his death. The book was one I had to read for the science fiction book group that I have recently joined, and I don’t think I would have chosen to read it on my own initiative. Certainly I would not have finished it unless I felt obligated to, because I really did not like the book. It did have some interesting ideas, about what it means to be human and that kind of thing. But the style was just really difficult and unappealing (the book was written in the 1940s and feels very dated). Overall I just had to force myself to get through it and I am not sure I took much away from it. Perhaps it is better than I am giving it credit for (it is after all in the SF Masterworks series) but I just did not like it at all.