tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57648335091216914592024-03-13T09:45:27.508-04:00Book GrumpsReviewing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Genre FictionAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-8177258935412212832015-10-31T09:58:00.001-04:002015-10-31T09:58:36.885-04:00One Sentence Reviews: OctoberI started Actually Writing again, so my free time is limited--both for reading books and for reviewing them. Which is a shame, because I have read some great books this month! Please consider everything rated 3 stars and higher to have my recommendation, and pick yourself up a copy while I work on proper writeups.
Except for Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente. Wait for the review on Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-28664137736936385392015-10-08T12:01:00.002-04:002015-10-09T12:15:24.521-04:00Series Review: "Coyote" by Allen SteeleWith Earth in political and ecological ruin, the discovery of a new habitable planet means a second chance. On Coyote, humanity can start over--or retread the same bloodstained paths it always has.
The United Republic of America has spared no expense--and no few lives--to develop the first interstellar colony ship. But a group of dissident intellectuals is determined that the Coyote colony will Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-27136423117338498732015-09-30T22:46:00.002-04:002015-09-30T22:46:33.423-04:00One Sentence Reviews: SeptemberI have now sat upon my review of Mary Renault's The Charioteer for two months, like a hen with an egg. I begin to wonder if it will ever hatch... or if I've been incubating a rock this whole time.
In the meantime, I read a lot of classics and war stories this month, most of which deserve a thumbs-up! If you haven't read some of the 4- and 5-star rated books of this month, I highly encourageAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-58822459656675403352015-09-22T15:56:00.007-04:002015-09-22T15:56:38.198-04:00Review: "The Book of Hours" by Rainer Maria Rilke
Every aspiring writer, at some point in their studies, will get Letters To A Young Poet quoted at them. This is a fact and a certainty, much like the sun rising in the east or the line at Starbucks Coffee. For most, that is the only contact ever made with German writer Rainer Maria Rilke.
A month ago, I stumbled across Stephen Crane's magnificent poetry and realized that I have never onceAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-60037232453755354492015-09-05T09:29:00.000-04:002015-09-05T09:29:07.096-04:00Review: "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. BeagleThe unicorn has dwelled in her quiet woods for centuries, untouched by the passage of time and unconcerned with the world. She is disturbed when passing hunters mention that all other unicorns have gone--if they ever existed. Reluctantly, the last unicorn leaves her woods to find her kin. She promises to return quickly, but already the leaves begin to fall from the eternally blossoming trees.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-83341965373952446082015-09-04T12:24:00.001-04:002015-09-05T09:31:54.164-04:00Review: "Uprooted" by Naomi NovikThe Wood by Agnieszka's village is full of horrors. Over the years, it has swallowed up both peasants and queens, and its haunted trees grow over the ruins of ancient kingdoms as well as villages like her own. The Dragon keeps the Wood at bay with his wizardry as best he can. In exchange, he takes one girl from the village every ten years. After a decade in his service, the girl is set free--but Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-27658871306271658252015-08-31T20:37:00.000-04:002015-10-28T16:26:09.998-04:00One Sentence Reviews: AugustWell. August was a little sparse on book reviews, wasn't it?
The problem, dear readers, is that I'm sitting on a number of drafted reviews, 3/4ths complete, which don't yet suit me. The books in question are so lovely that my usual dashed-off ramblings would do them a disservice. (I had a hope of finishing at least one tonight, but this Domaine de Canton isn't going to drink itself.)
I may yet Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-50440737229115551412015-08-24T22:25:00.000-04:002015-08-24T22:25:02.110-04:00Book Cover WoesA few days after my copy of Mary Renault's The Charioteer arrived in the mail, I glued the book shut.
Let me rewind.
Since its first publication in 1953, The Charioteer has had exactly one good cover: the very first. Fifty years of subpar covers have followed. As much as I would like to own a first edition, I don't have a spare hundred dollars lying around. Nor did I want to delay Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-91344300941106660222015-08-10T13:33:00.000-04:002015-08-10T21:16:42.471-04:00Review: "H Is For Hawk" by Helen Macdonald
The sudden death of her father shatters Helen Macdonald. Aching and angry, she throws herself into a new project that will occupy the empty place in her heart: the training of a young goshawk.
Since her earliest memories, she has been captivated by birds of prey. But the small raptors she has worked with in the past are nothing compared to either the enormity or the single-minded ferocity of Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-3062530419464860382015-08-04T20:12:00.001-04:002015-08-04T20:12:26.120-04:00Another Aside: A Special GiftI mentioned just how many times I have read Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor (five and counting!) since its release in April of last year. What I forgot to mention was that my lovely librarian friend, knowing my great affection for the book, picked up a signed copy for me at the ALA conference in San Francisco!
"For Kelly -- Serenity is a wish. --Sarah"
According to Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-37410541934415596252015-07-31T16:00:00.000-04:002015-09-30T16:23:48.314-04:00One Sentence Reviews: JulyWell, dear readers, your resident grump has skated across the 100-book threshold--little more than halfway through 2015! As I mentioned back in April, almost all of these books are new--if not in terms of release date, at least to me. This has certainly been the year for discovering new treasures. Thanks to all of you who have emailed me book recommendations. I've found a lot of new favorites, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-52525556747825153022015-07-28T11:39:00.000-04:002015-07-28T11:39:26.856-04:00Review: "Rose Madder" by Stephen King
In an instant of mad courage, Rose Daniels walks out of the house she has shared with her abusive husband for fourteen years. Fearful, unprepared, and desperate, she sets off for a place where Norman will never find her, where she can be Rosie McClendon once again.
With the support of other battered women, Rosie finds her footing. For the first time since her teenage years, she is free: to Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-21843937627960274772015-07-16T10:36:00.002-04:002015-07-16T10:36:40.797-04:00Two-For-One Review: "Doc" and "Epitaph" by Mary Doria Russell"He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive. In all that time, he was allowed a single season of something like happiness.
"When he arrived in Dodge City in 1878, Dr. John Henry Holliday was a frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who wanted nothing Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-90750355591623846352015-07-14T18:42:00.001-04:002015-07-14T18:42:15.831-04:00Review: "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" When Nick Halloway accompanies Anne Epstein to the MicroMagnetics lab, he isn't interested in either their cutting-edge research or on the anti-nuclear protesters demonstrating outside: only in a day out with a beautiful woman. It is only by the merest chance Nick is still inside the lab when the bomb goes off. But instead of being obliterated, Nick--as well as a small spherical chunk of New Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-52083501037446146162015-07-07T22:33:00.004-04:002015-07-07T22:33:47.328-04:00Review: "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" by Shirley JacksonFive years ago, an arsenic-filled sugarbowl claimed the lives of the Blackwood family. The three survivors have found peace in their shared isolation: Constance, acquitted of the murder by the courts but not in the minds of the neighbors; her imaginative and slightly feral sister Mary Katherine, called Merricat; and their uncle Julian, crippled in mind and body by the poison that killed the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-10857670186203689042015-06-30T17:37:00.004-04:002015-09-30T16:22:53.188-04:00One Sentence Reviews: JuneI was really certain I'd get at least Rose Madder done before the end of the month, but moving has really taken it out of me. That, and I've just read my eighty-eighth (88th!) book of 2015.
Until I get my properly grumptastic feet under me again, have some one sentence reviews for the month of June!
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JUNE 2015
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The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (2013, time-traveling Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-40634577418945563562015-06-18T22:27:00.002-04:002015-06-18T22:27:27.333-04:00Book Grumps isn't moving...... but the grump herself is!
Let this stand as my apology to you, dear reader, for the lateness of June's book reviews. Most of the time, when I'm not at work, I'm packing boxes. Still, I'm really excited about the books in my review stack. Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming reviews of Stephen King's Rose Madder, Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death, and the Alison Bechdel's Fun Home!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-74266085453851335432015-05-31T10:08:00.002-04:002015-05-31T10:08:30.275-04:00One Sentence Reviews: MayOne sentence summaries, one sentence reviews of all the books of May--both the dross I've already mostly forgotten reading, and the gems I'm looking forward to reviewing. I finished up a number of series this month, so there isn't as much variety as before. (Maybe this will be the summer I get around to reading the Discworld books...)
P.S. 69 books and counting for 2015!
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MAY 2015
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-3855954120482609202015-05-28T11:06:00.000-04:002015-07-07T22:41:25.152-04:00Review: "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell
Astronomers studying the Alpha Centauri system pick up a broadcast of unearthly music, finally putting the existence of alien civilizations beyond down. While government and scientists debate, private organizations take action. The first mission to contact an alien race is led by representatives of the Jesuit Order.
Years later, the sole survivor of the mission to Rakhat is retrieved from an Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-10867102443993272742015-05-26T18:19:00.000-04:002015-06-02T12:29:47.963-04:00Review: "All The Rage" by Courtney SummersNo one in Grebe believes Romy Grey about the sheriff's son. Her former crush on him, her willing presence at his house, her family history of alcoholism, all add up to one thing in the eyes of her peers: she is a liar who would say anything for attention. Telling the truth has cost Grey everything.
After the traditional high school lake party, Penny Young, Grey's onetime best friend, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-53475568183317935502015-05-22T10:46:00.000-04:002015-05-22T10:46:13.087-04:00Series Review: The "Spiritwalker Trilogy" by Kate Elliott
Cousins Cat and Bee Barahal are lucky to be alive in an age of invention and change. They are among the first women to be educated alongside men in the academy of Adurnam. But the daughters of Phoenician spies and soldiers weren't born to sit quietly and behave: adventure is in their bones.
To Cat's surprise, so is magic. On her twentieth birthday, cold mages from the powerful Four Moons HouseAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-59495617032925432752015-05-12T21:33:00.002-04:002015-07-12T22:08:35.383-04:00Review: "The Girls of No Return" by Erin Saldin
Lida has nothing in common with the other girls at the Alice Marshall School for Girls, the camp where troubled teens are sent to resolve their problems with spirit-enhancing nature hikes. Their wounds are superficial and their stories of woe too rehearsed, too tidy, to be genuine. She won't tell them so, of course. Lida won't say anything at all.
Her infatuation with an elegant newAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-88549259385894251802015-05-01T11:47:00.000-04:002015-07-16T10:39:33.660-04:00One Sentence Reviews: AprilThe history of this blog suggests that I take two months off per year from writing reviews. Dear readers, as you may have noticed, April 2015 was one of those months.
Despite the hiatus, I have been reading up a storm this spring. Just a few days ago, I crossed off my fiftieth book of 2015! I'm excited that the books I've read have mostly been new to me(if not necessarily recent Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-37876470792432529982015-03-31T23:46:00.003-04:002015-03-31T23:46:59.251-04:00Series Review: "Foreigner" by C.J. Cherryh
Humans and atevi are incompatible: That is the message everyone learned from the War of the Landing, when human refugees from the spaceship Phoenix tried to settle on atevi lands. For peace to exist on the planet, the two races must be strictly segregated.
Bren Cameron is the paidhi, the sole translator between the atevi mainland and the surviving human contingent on the island of Mospheira. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5764833509121691459.post-12048691188616944792015-03-27T23:28:00.001-04:002015-03-27T23:28:22.254-04:00Review: "Sharp Objects" by Gillian FlynnPolice reporter Camille Preaker would rather die than return to her troubled mother's house. But a string of murders in little Wind Gap has caught the attention of the struggling Chicago paper where she works. Her boss is convinced this will be the big break Camille--and his paper--needs. Against her better judgment, she follows the story home to a house that hasn't been on speaking terms with Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14536027372238547770noreply@blogger.com1