2012 Reading List (as of August)

Following up on my April Post

 May

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

A retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale, I couldn’t NOT pick this up. The story starts out strong and takes a rather long route to its final conclusion. My favorite aspect of the book was the historically-accurate portrayal of male soldiers as knitters and the supplemental information about how it was thought to be too manly of a pasttime for women to enjoy.

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

A fantastic adventure with an immediately likeable main character (how do you NOT love someone who names their bright pink taser “Tasey”?). A very interesting premise, and I adored the romance with the water boy. (KISSING BOOK) A very strong start to a series, even if I didn’t really like the elf-stuff. (I don’t think I was supposed to like the elf-stuff, so that’s not entirely a negative)

The Search for Wond-La by Tony DiTerlizzi

Half sci-fi and half fantasy, this GORGEOUSLY illustrated book is aimed at the younger set. Without the illustrations, I think it would have been a confusing mess, but WITH the illustrations, it was fascinating and fun. I enjoyed this for the art (did I mention the art?) and the fantastic creatures and people she met moreso than the actual story, which felt much more sci-fi than my normal fare.

June

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas

I liked this one so much that I immediately followed it up with both of the other books in the series.

That … that says a lot, since I’m not normally so avid. This is a younger young adult novel (no kissing) but the story and characters were so wonderful that I didn’t care that the book was aimed at 10-year-old boys. *grin* The main character’s voice is so … so real, and so compelling that I never got bored. Three books, each a FAST fast read. Really enjoyed these.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Book 2 of the Dresden Files (book 1 is Storm Front). Most people already know what that means, but for those that don’t, the Dresden Files are an urban fantasy series that’s been around almost as long as Urban Fantasy has.  Harry Dresden (wizard) tries to keep balance between the “real” world and the “really real magical” world, often to his own detriment. This one’s got multiple kinds of werewolves and magic and Bob the talking skull and I think the series is still trying to find it’s footing at this point. Even so, it was a fun read that I didn’t want to put down till the end.

July

Academ’s Fury by Jim Butcher

Book 2 of the Codex Alera series (book 1 is The Furies of Calderon). I loved the first one and I loved the second one, and if I could find the whole kit and caboodle for a decent price, I’d probably just buy the whole series and be done with it, because there’s no way I’m not going to love this one through to the end. High Fantasy that actually makes me CARE about the political machinations going on (I am notoriously allergic to political storylines) this series has fascinating characters and exciting action and I cannot wait to find out what happens next.

Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

I adored the premise of this book AND the first quarter to half of the book. After that, things get a little out of hand, but the BEGINNING of this book is just stellar. Keepsie lives in a city with real, spandex-clad superheroes and supervillains doing battle overhead … and making her late for work. She has a power too, but it has been deemed “too useless” and she was sent on her way.

Suddenly, Keepsie’s power becomes the most important thing in the world as both the heroes and villains need her desperately as the line between good and evil blurs beyond recognition.

August

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

This book was amazing, hilarious, and I recommend it for almost everyone (so long as you don’t mind swearing). Honestly? I don’t know how to describe this without ruining some of the fun of reading it. Try it. Really. The author runs a website called TheBloggess.com and if you have any doubts, check there first for a taste of her humor.

The book is even better than the website.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This book is a very recent fantasy, and is getting a lot of well-deserved praise. This is the story of a girl and a boy, both apprentices to true magic … but their masters have chosen them for a deadly game in which they are the pawns and there can be only one winner. Unluckily for their masters, the boy and girl fall in love, and that’s when things get interesting.

The prose in this book is smart and gorgeous, and it’s fun to read just because it paints such beautiful word-pictures.

Unfortunately, the result of this elevated prose is that the characters themselves are seen at arm’s-length, a distance that kept me from falling in love with them even though I desperately wanted to. In no way is this a negative on the book, mind you. I know the difference between “poorly written” and “I prefer my chocolate to have sea salt in it instead of mint.”

The girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making by Catherynne M Valente

I did not finish this book, but it wasn’t the book’s fault. The first chapter was cleverly written, interesting, strange, and all the things a first chapter should be. It reads somewhat like a fairytale and would be gorgeous fun to pass a book around and read aloud with friends.

Honestly, with a title like that, it almost doesn’t need pages in order to be a good book. *wink*

However, I had a rather lengthy stack of library books peeping mournfully for attention from my shelf, and although the first chapter was good, it was the sort of good that comes from clever prose and I wasn’t quite in the mood for that.

I have heard many, many people praise this book, including a random passer-by at work when it was out on my desk. I intend to come back to this book someday.

The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by  Catherynne M Valente

Same author as above, but honestly, it was a total accident. I got the titles as recommendations from two different sites and never even checked the author names. /blush

I am LOVING In the Night Garden.

I’ll likely have finished it by the time this post goes live, but the subtle interweaving of tales within tales within tales is maddening … and then infinitely fascinating as the stories tangle into a bolt of cloth more beautiful than any individual tale could have been.

Many, many reviewers have said you need to give this book time — don’t give up on it in the beginning. Personally, I wasn’t even remotely tempted to stop reading. (Then again, I’m a horse lover, so the early stories sang to my heart).

Written entirely in fairy-tale style, each story still manages to have its own voice and its own narrative style. The stars-who-are-wolves, the great mare and the little fox, the gosling and the firebird, the vengeance of the snake star, the sorrow of the little red raft, the four-then-three dog-headed monks – I love them all. Even if most of the stories contain more sorrow than joy, which is incredibly unlike me.

The end of the book still leaves a few dangling story threads … and I see that there’s another book in the series, In The Cities of Coin and Spice. I might have to pick that one up and see if those lost stories are woven into a larger cloth.

Related posts:

2012 Reading List (as of April)
Reading, For Writers
Writing Status, July 2012