Reading from Stash

Looking back over the books I read last year, I realized I need some accountability for how many books I purchase. Last year, it was a lot. I don't even want to count how many because the number may cause me to hide in shame.

This year, I'm determined to read from my stash. Of course, there will be new books coming out and I've already earmarked some space on my TBR list for books some of my favorite authors are releasing. But the fact of the matter is, I have too many unread books in my collection, and getting an ebook reader has not helped that at all. Those cheap or free books are hard to resist.

In 2015, I read 116 books, novellas, or graphic novels. Of those 116, I only owned about 20 of them prior to the start of the year. All the others were new purchases, borrowed, review copies, or read via my Oyster subscription. 20 out of 116. That's about 17%. Eesh.

Now that Oyster has sunsetted, that avenue for new books is closed to me. But my impulse purchases really are books. Between how ridiculously easy it is to buy an ebook and the slew of review copies I can get, it's difficult to keep my resolution to only read from stash. I know because I recall that was my resolution last year, as well.

Whoops.

Okay. New year; new resolve.

I still have:

• Review copies. So many review copies. So I'll stop requesting so many and work through the backlog.
• Two book subscription boxes. These are going to keep coming because I enjoy them a lot, and I feel that only two new books a month is doable.
• Some books that will be instant-buys as soon as they are available for purchase. These are ongoing series I'm reading or favorite authors. They will just happen

But I'm going to think twice before hitting the "Buy Now" button at Amazon when that book which has been on my TBR list is on sale. I will accept it is okay to walk out of a bookstore without buying a book. 

And lastly, I will read from stash. I have a wall of books I stare at every day while I'm sitting at home working. It really shouldn't be hard to find a new book to read once I finish one. 

So. Fingers crossed.

Amy might not have had the most exciting life over the past few years, up here in her room, but she must have been fighting death to the very end. Sara could understand why she had been in denial or so long. It must have been a frightening realization: so many books she would never get to pick up, so many stories that would happen without her, so many authors she would never get to discover.

That night, Sara sat in Amy's library for hours, thinking about how tragic it was that the written word was immortal while people were not, and grieving for her, the woman she had never met.

-- Katarina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Top 10 of 2015

Last year, I read a lot. According to my count, I read 116 books, including graphic novels and novellas. That's a lot of books. It helped that I wasn't fully employed for a number of months and had insomnia for a few weeks in the fall, dropping me into a vicious cycle of staying up until 4 reading, napping, and then not being able to fall asleep at night so I pick up a book...

Side note: That was seriously unhealthy and I destroyed my immune system. Don't do that.

Looking back at those 116 books, I decided to whittle that down to my top ten books of the year. This was hard, as you can imagine, but not as hard as I expected. Despite reading a lot, many of the books were not that memorable or were easy to drop from my short list once I had a short list of seventeen books.

So, without further ado: my top books of 2015. These are in no particular order because asking me to do that would be infinitely more difficult than just picking ten.

1. The Martian by Andy Weir - Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard of this book. I adored and devoured this book and commend it for not being afraid of being full of science!geekery. I loved that Weir had a diverse cast gender-wise, did not make a big deal about this, and did not describe anybody's physical characteristics. Also, it was a damn good book.
2. Akata Witch by Nnedio Okorafor - This was the first Okorafor I read and I'm thankful that my public library had this book available as an ebook. If it hadn't I don't know if I'd had ever discovered Okorafor's books which are full of wonder and beautiful prose. Akata Witch tells the story of a young girl learning she has magic and going off to learn magic. Sound familiar? Think again. The book takes a well-known story trope and recasts it in a completely unique way.
3. Saga, Deluxe Edition, Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples - I borrowed this from a friend, and need my own copy now. This Deluxe Edition collects the first three trades of Saga, which I had been hearing good things about for years but never picked up. Once I started, this blew me completely away. I fell into the story and fell in love with the characters. It's incredibly smart, unique, and quirky.
4. The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan - This is unabashedly British royal family fanfiction. It's also incredibly well-written and compelling with truly likable and human characters. I started this one night and did not get any sleep at all.
5. Returning My Sisters Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster - I don't normally like short stories, but the late Eugie Foster's stories are these perfect gems that eat into my brain and warm me up. This collection is my favorite of all her books. All the stories are firmly grounded in the history, culture, folklore, and mythology of China and Japan. These stories were like coming home for me. I grew up with these stories, this history, and Foster took the familiar and made them new with a veneer of adult sensibility.
6. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold - A new Vorkosigan novel! This isn't due to be published for another month but I happily gave Baen money for the eARC. I read this repeatedly for about a week; I loved it so. This is Cordelia's story, post-Aral. It's a story of life and love and moving on. It was a giant hug.
7. You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day - Felicia Day is my spirit animal. Her memoir of growing up a geek and nerd resonated heavily with me.
8. Winter by Marissa Meyer - I adore the Lunar Chronicles and had this, the last book of the series, pre-ordered since it was available for pre-order. It was a perfect end to a perfect and amazing series that started with a cyborg mechanic who befriended a prince.
9. The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna - This book showcases the best of what YA and science fiction can be, tackling some heavy philosophical questions of self, identity, and free will. The main character is an echo (aka, clone) of a girl in India, and if that girl dies, the echo will take her place.
10. Cinder and Ella by Kelly Oram - A modern re-telling of Cinderella in which the prince is a famous movie star who is already best friends with Ella but she doesn't know who he is. I loved it.

Best Books of 2011

A bit late but my life has been beyond hectic. Between my work life taking over my entire life, my immune system finally catching up and punishing me with three weeks of being sick in December, and then getting eye surgery in January - I haven't had much time to even remember I had a blog, let alone update it.

But I did read in 2011. I didn't reach 100, but I tried.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
This is a family saga, a mystery, and a tragic fairy tale all in one. After her grandmother's death, Cassandra learns the family secret... her grandmother was found abandoned as a little girl on a dock in Australia. Rather than being taken to the authorities, the dockmaster and his wife who found her decide to keep her as their own daughter.

"We're all unique, just never in the ways we imagine."

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
In 1899, a girl on the cusp of adulthood rebels against her mother's expectations, instead aspiring to be a naturalist like her grandfather.

“One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.”

Hester: The Missing Years of The Scarlet Letter by Paula Reed
At the end of The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and her daughter Pearl leave the colonies. Many years later, Hester returns by herself. Reed explores what may have happened to Hester and Pearl during that time. Hester's unique sight from her time wearing the red A on her chest gives her entree into the inner circle of Oliver Cromwell, and she finds herself embroiled in politics and intrigue.

“There are many more layers to innocence than one might ever imagine, and we are ever unaware of them until each barrier is breached.”

Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World's Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler by Jessica Speart
This is all true -- the story is so outlandish, the characters so completely unbelievable that it is impossible that the story is anything but. This is the story of Ed Newcomer, US FWS agent, and his quest to bring down Yoshi Kojima, the world's "butterfly kingpin".

"According to Interpol, the illegal worldwide animal trade rakes in a cool ten to fifteen billion dollars a year, and in the world of butterflies, Kojima had established himself as the kingpin."

Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn
This is a straight-up fantasy set in a near future dystopia police state. It merges Greek mythology, folktales and fairytales, King Arthur, global political struggle, and the most awesome little storeroom in the world into one intricate story. Evie returns home to look after her sick father, only to discover that he has one hell of a family secret, and a legacy to pass onto her.

"He sounded like a mystic sage. A wizard, not her father. Another character from a story, and she couldn't turn the page to see what happens next."

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebeca Skloot
This is the story of a woman, Henrietta Lacks, who died of cancer in 1951 but whose cells live on to this day. Her doctor took her cancer cells and used them to create the immortal cells which are the basis of modern medicine. This is also the story of Lacks' descendants, who were never told of their mother's unwilling contribution of science, and who never saw any money from the billions her cells made for the medical industry.

“But I tell you one thing, I don't want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you while you stay the same, and that's just sad.”

Keep Politics Out of My Fiction

Lately, I've been trying to read some books by some of the newer Baen authors and have found that I just cannot. I have known for a long time that Baen, as a company, leans heavily towards the right but I have (for the most part) not encountered that in their books. This may speak more of the books I prefer than the books they publish. I tend to read more fantasy than science fiction, and don't really care for military science fiction.

But since the founder Jim Baen's death, I've noticed a steady trend of political creep into their books, particularly with their new authors. Has it become a de facto requirement that in order to be published by Baen you have to shout your Republican credentials from page 1?

I read fiction for enjoyment, not to get preached to. I am heavily opinionated and work in the policy world, so I don't need to encounter it when I'm thinking I'm picking up a nice story about a time traveling family. (I nearly threw the book across the room when I got to the line in the prologue "Just thank God for Ronald Reagan." It also didn't help that the writing style was crap.)

While I'm a liberal, I don't want to see politics of either stripe in my books unexpectedly. If I want to read something political, I'll read something political. But don't preach to me or shoehorn in political ideology into a fiction story. I've stopped reading authors I used to love because of their constant soapboxing. I can't read Mercedes Lackey anymore because I felt her books were beating me over the head with the message of how unfit, controlling, or even misunderstanding parents did not deserve their children. I don't necessarily disagree with that but I don't want to read it over and over and over again.

Using fiction books as partisan political platforms ultimately drives away readers. If overdone, it annoys those who share those same views, and angers those who do not. And ultimately, it is completely unnecessary to the plot. The vast majority of books tell a damn good story without having the author's personal political or religious beliefs shoved down the readers' throats. It is even possible to tell a good political story without being partisan. Christopher Buckley, who is a Republican, wrote an entire book satirizing the American political system without once naming a political party.

There are too many lines drawn in the sand throughout our society. In a time when the extremes dominate the conversation, and the idea of "you're either with us or against us" has taken on a life of its own, people seem to have become so entrenched in their own particular opinions, mindsets, and world views that they are unwilling to compromise or even talk. I see it every day around me. I do not need or want to see it in books I read for pleasure.

Baen, of course, has the right to publish whatever they want. Just as I have a right to read whatever I want. Unfortunately, Baen's stable of new authors won't make it onto my TBR list.

Dude, Where's My Forehead?

A while ago, I started a book list over at Goodreads titled "Dude, Where's My Forehead?". I seeded the list with scads of books I've noticed where the cover figure is sans anything above his/her nose (and it's usually her). Since then, the list has exploded with people making their own additions of forehead-less books.

Not surprisingly, most of them are romance, chick-lit, or paranormal urban fantasy, that new subgenre of fantasy that has taken on a life of its own recently. But not all. Oh, no. Classic titles have taken the meme and run with it.

Exhibits A, B, and C:


I don't doubt that these are very striking covers. There is something very alluring about them, and a hint of mystery. Just what does the rest of the face look like? Are the eyes looking at you? Closed?

The eyes are one of the most expressive parts of a person's body. They can convey sadness, happiness, amusement, anger, lust, hate, annoyance, loneliness, and boredom. There are some who say the eyes are the window's to a person's soul. So why are the eyes not shown on these book covers? It could be laziness. Really expressive eyes are difficult to capture in a painting or even a photograph. But eyes, when done well, are extremely haunting. A few years ago, I felt like getting some culture and decided to go visit the National Gallery of Art for a day. There was one painting by Renoir, Madame Henriot, which stopped me dead in my tracks, and I found myself circling through the rooms just to go visit it again. There were other Renoir paintings with amazing eyes, but none that struck me like Madame Henriot's. If Renoir had been less skilled with painting her expressive eyes, the painting would probably not have moved me. It is otherwise a pretty ordinary portrait done in neutral tones. The only dark spots are her hair and eyes.

Eyes are also integral to a person's identity. They are the organs with which we view the world. By hiding the eyes, the cover artist could be playing into subconscious wish-fulfillment. You too could be the heroine: slayer of demons, lover of pirates, and star of your own story.

Or, another theory. Without the eyes, the focus moves to the lips, which are an inherently sensual part of the body. We use our lips to kiss, smile, murmur, caress. Lips are beautiful and we are drawn to them. The focus on the lips could be a subtle hint to the sexiness within a book. When you stare at another's lips, you imply you wish to kiss him or her. So looking at the lips on a cover, you subliminally want the book; need the book; want to take it home and spend long hours with it.

Of course, this all boils down to marketing. And the truth is, covers sell books. No matter how many times we hear, "Don't judge a book by its cover," we still do. We all have a little magpie in our hearts, and it is human nature to be drawn to things that we find visually appealing. And those forehead-less covers do look pretty cool.