Bloog

This book was amazing. I love her writing, so so very much. I also have no idea why I never read Lacuna, but I have a copy, so I’ll be reading that soon. Maybe not next though. Back to back of the same author can leave me a little burnt out on their style, and I’d hate to do that with something as wonderful as Kingsolver.

Also, I found the library book I had misplaced which is now overdue. It was underneath the dresser. Not really sure how it got there, but now I have to return it unread.

Not really sure what I’m going to read next. Not really feeling the book I have from the library. Maybe I’ll read some short stories and go to the library tomorrow and pick up the two I have on hold.

This is a book that was recommended to be by a friend, but my library didn’t have it, so I requested that they buy it, and they did. I love my library.

This is fantasy, sort of, but totally not my usual cup of tea. It’s a murder mystery set in present day South Dakota? Somewhere up there. Where is Rapid City? Outside of there. It’s set in the prairie, and I had no idea what was happening, or who had killed the ghost, or why, so I read it like a madman, in about 24 hours, during which I also worked and slept. I love books that get me so involved that I’ll read them all in one sitting.

This novel is written by a woman, and has a lady protagonist, so that, along with the YA novel I finished the yesterday, makes +2 on the novels written by women list.

On a related note, I came across a tumblr post reposted by Holly Black (one of my very favorite YA authors) about cover art, publishing, and the bias against women. It made me think about choosing books based on the author’s gender, and how I now go out of my way, or at least consciously chose, to read novels written by women, especially speculative fiction. That isn’t to say I don’t read male authors. I do. All the time. But why do I have to make a conscious choice to real female authors?

I asked my boyfriend about it, about his reading choices, and while he says he doesn’t pick novels based on the gender of the author, which I don’t think he does, he also hasn’t read a novel written by a women since he read Howl’s Moving Caste a year or so ago.

So do we pick novels that look good? Or do we pick novels of authors we know? Is it easier to find appealing looking novels by men? Do women write the same scope of novels as men do? Are they published equally?

The next thing I have out from the library is Barbara Kingsolver’s newest novel Flight Behavior. Not speculative fiction at all, but recommended to me by a friend, and I do love Barbara Kingsolver’s writing. After this, I might take a break from speculative fiction and read some straight fiction. There are some things on my shelves that I’ve been meaning to pick up, mostly written by men.

This is the second YA novel written by Nnedi Okorafor. The first of her YA I read (her third YA novel) was set on Earth, the second of her YA, (her first YA novel) was set on another world called Ginen, and this one, her second and my third to read, is set on both. I like that these three novels are all set not in America, not dealing with an all white cast, and all having to do with strong, independent warrior women, in their different ways.

Nnedi Okorafor also wrote an adult novel which I put on hold at the library, so I’ll read that in the next month or two.

These are the first two novels in hopefully a set of five? I couldn’t figure out when the next one was coming out, and only saw them referred to as a pentalogy.

I love Cornelia Funke. Her Inkheart novels are fantastic. I love the stories within stories that she weaves, and I’m so pleased that I picked these books up from the library.

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I picked this up because I had finished reading something else and this was the nearest thing on hand. It is interesting, and I like the format of it, a sort of memory/interview/retelling sort of tale. I can definitely see the groundwork laid here for some serious development. However, I don’t know that I love Asimov, and I might not read very much else by him. I am glad I read this and the first of the Foundation books, just to give myself a little foundation in classic scifi.

This is a YA scifi/fantasy novel written by an Ethiopian author. This is her first novel, I think. I read her most recent novel recently, and I think she’s definitely grown as a writer, but I really like the world that this novel exists in. The technology in this novel is all melded with plants, which is super neat, and Earth is a mythological place far far away. Also, the underlying message is one of growth and the perpetual search of knowledge, which I can get down with.

I have Okorafor’s second novel out from the library as well, which will be in the next two or three novels I read.

some words I’ve come across reading that I didn’t know the meaning of off the top of my head:

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This is one of many Darkover novels, and one of the sort of stand alones. Also, there is an entire species that is dual-gender.

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Zelazny writes like a man on acid.

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Just finished a book by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and it got me thinking: who are other female sci-fi authors? Have I read them?

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