Reading List: 2012

I mentioned reading a fair bit a few entries back and had several people ask what I’ve been reading, so I figured this is a good way to wrap up the year. If you want to know more about any specific book or what I thought of it, just ask!

• Song of Ice & Fire – George RR Martin
  Clearly these books are big hits right now. I’ve been meaning to watch the TV series, but Ryan has been interested so I just haven’t gotten around to it. It took me a while to get into the first book, as they’re much more dry than the average fantasy series I read, but once I did, I was completely hooked. I think I finished all 5 of these in about a month, and considering they run from 700 to 1200 pages, that’s no small feat even for me! If you’re looking for a fantasy series that focuses more on people & politics than “Oh yeah, ps, there’s a girl with dragons over there,” this is the series for you. Just be prepared to be very frustrated when you realize you’re probably going to have to wait 10 years before the whole series is finished.
• Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein
  I read this is high school and figured I’d reread it. It wasn’t as life-changingly good as I remember it being 5 years ago.
• Temeraire series (1-7) – Naomi Novik
  These were quick reads, and pretty entertaining. They’re set in the Napoleonic Wars, but they explore what it would’ve been like if there were dragons. Dragons as aerial fighters, dragons as high-speed messengers, etc. I’m pretty sure there are more to come, but each book ends satisfyingly enough that I’m not being driven crazy waiting for more.
• Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
  This book just made me melancholy in the way only a good book can.
• 1Q84 – Haruki Murakami
  What a fascinating read. Again, this is “fantasy,” in that the main characters are temporarily, and at different times, transported to a parallel world (you can tell because there are 2 moons), but it’s certainly not “high fantasy.” It’s just that there are fantastical elements. This was a great read.
• House of the Scorpion – Nancy Farmer
  I read this one on vacation. It was way too heavy for vacation.
• The Inheritance Cycle (1-3) – Christopher Paolini
  I remember everyone being amazed by this guy when I was in middle school and so was he but still he managed to be a published author. Um, guys? His parents owned the publishing company. What’s the big deal here? They weren’t awful, just obvious and full of cliches.
• Maze Runner Trilogy – James Dashner
  A classical YA trilogy I hadn’t ever actually read. They were really great, but the end was …not as satisfying as I wanted it to be.
• Book of the New Sun (1 & 2) – Gene Wolfe
  I’d actually forgotten I read these! There are a couple more to this series that I might have to check out. I think I didn’t have them on my kindle, then I just forgot?
• Time Quartet (1 & 3) – Madeleine L’Engle
  It was the anniversary of one of these (A Swiftly Tilting Planet, I think?) so I pulled it back out. I LOVED these books as a child. Reading them now, I wonder how I loved them so much. Did I understand anything that was going on? How does L’Engle make such complicated scientific ideas palatable to children? Incredible.
• The Veil Trilogy – Christopher Golden
  Imagine if all the myths – Jack Frost, the Greek Gods, Medusa, Johnny Appleseed, the Sandman – were real, just sealed off from our world a few hundred years ago to keep everyone safer. Now imagine meeting one of them the night before your wedding and being taken across the Veil, suddenly being a central character in a war between these mythical characters.
  I loved these.
• The Matched Trilogy – Allie Condie
  Very YA, but surprisingly not nearly as vapid as I expected.
• The Last Unicorn – Peter S. Beagle
  Another fantasy classic that I just got around to reading. It feels old, but that’s because it is.
• Sword of Truth series (2-8) – Terry Goodkind
  Ugh. Okay. I read the first 3 or 4 of these when I was in 5th grade. I gave a book report on the first one and no one else in my class could figure out what was going on, partly because I didn’t know how to explain it to other 10 year olds and partly because those 10 year olds probably didn’t have the capacity to understand it.
  The first 4 or 5 of these books are really great. They are a series I love.
  The rest of them decline, and they do so pretty quickly. Goodkind got really preachy. It felt like he was running out of material, and all he wanted to do was drive home his one big idea (Richard’s ideas about how to run the world are correct, dammit!). He does this by giving a 5-page speech about ideals we’ve already heard him talking about for 3 books, taking 2 pages to advance the plot, and then giving another 5-page speech about the EXACT SAME THING AGAIN.
  It got very frustrating and annoying, so I gave up on that crap. I might eventually get around to reading the wiki to see how the good guys eventually win.
• City of Ember – Jeanne DuPrau
  This is the first of a trilogy, but it ends well, so I’m not sure if I’ll end up picking the others up or not. We’re in a city that’s entirely underground, and we’ve been here for 200 years. Things like “sky” and “wind” and “rain” are unheard of. Power is started to fail. Food supplies are starting to run out. Is there a way to save ourselves?
• Dark Currents – Jacqueline Carey
  Jacqueline Carey wrote a series my best friends & I loved in high school. She wrote 3 trilogies in that series, and the first 2 were fantastic but by the 3rd it was obvious she needed to move on. If this is where she’s going, I’m alright with that! Set in a town that is an intersection of the mundane world and the eldritch community, the main character is tasked with being the liaison between the two communities. She deals with some crazy vampires, saves a mermaid, and has been in love with a closeted werewolf since she was in middle school. Pretty YA, but not in a dumbed-down way, just a fast-paced, fun way.
• Angelfall – Susan Ee
  Angels appeared to the world, and then they started blowing things up.
  Again, the first in a series, but I’m not sure I’ll read the others.
• Daughter of Smoke & Bone – Laini Taylor
  ALSO the first in a series, but I definitely want to read the others! Our main character has bright blue hair, a necklace full of wishes, tattoos on her palms, and goes home through a secret door to a family full of people who are half-human and half-animal. When that door is destroyed, she goes on a journey to find out who she really is. I definitely did not expect the answer.
• The Chaos Walking trilogy – Patrick Ness
  This trilogy was really interesting, and I can’t decide if I would recommend it or not. I think I would. I liked it. I’m just not sure how to describe it.
  We’re colonizing a new world, but it turns out there’s a virus here that makes every thought you ever have audible… if you’re a man. Imagine how that changes society. Imagine the sexism.
• Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
  A future world where everyone practically lives their lives in a virtual world. The maker of this world dies and leaves his entire fortune to whichever gamer can find 3 easter eggs first. Follow the s

tory of one guy who is trying to be that person.
Sort of interesting, but I would enjoy it more if I were 30. The game designer was really into things like Zork and Pong and the Brat Pack, and while I recognize all of those cultural mentions, they don’t resonate within me like they would if I were 5-10 years older.