Planetfall by Emma Newman

It’s been a few months since I read Planetfall and I still have mixed feelings about the book. I want to love it, in fact I love parts of it, and my feelings about the story itself are still quite jumbled around…

A Book Written in Another Language: The Saga of Burnt Njal

I read Njal’s Saga along with Egil’s Saga to get some background before preparing a Mythic Iceland game. They are quite different in tone; Egil’s Saga is more the tale of a great hero, while Njal’s Saga gives us much more of an insight to life in Iceland. Egil is a borderline psycho and quite hard to relate to. However Njal and the characters in his story are much more like real people.

A Book You were Supposed to Read in School but didn’t: To Kill a Mockingbird

This was a tricky one for me; I had to cheat a little because I read all the books I was asked to in school. So I picked a book another class did: Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (I think my class was reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ at the time). I started this one knowing nothing about the story, and only that it is a favourite of some of my friends. This book is quite different from the ones I’ve previously read for the challenge: it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, an honest to goodness classic, and it moved me to tears.

A Book Published this Year: The Missing and the Dead

The Missing and the Dead is Stuart MacBride’s latest book in the Logan McCrae series. This is the first of the series that takes place outside of Aberdeen, with Logan working in a small town as a “development opportunity”. I didn’t know if I was going to like this one, I had been feeling like the series had done its dash. Briefly, I was so wrong…

A Game of Nope: Why I don’t like Game of Thrones

I really tried to like ‘A Game of Thrones’, in both formats too. I watched the first episode of the TV series thinking: “Wow, this is technically great, but totally not compelling in the slightest”. I was given the first book and dutifully read it. I kept going with the series to see where it went, but wasn’t enjoying it at all. I stopped at the end of the third book. So I feel I gave it a good chance to impress me, didn’t like it, and thought that would be the end of it. Nope, I find myself constantly having to defend my dislike of the series. Warning: There will be swears.

A Trilogy: The Hunger Games

After a bad start with ‘The Maze Runner’, I restarted my attempt at a trilogy with ‘The Hunger Games’ series. It was recommended by several work mates, and fitted the ‘not something I would normally pick’ rule. I enjoyed reading it, but it began to niggle after putting it down. It was one of those stories that you enjoy while in the moment, but soon as it’s finished start going “Hang on…”

A Book Set in the Future: The Maze Runner

I picked The Maze Runner series for several reasons; I needed a trilogy, I wanted something that I wouldn’t have otherwise chosen, and the movie looked interesting. So there I was with James Dashner’s The Maze Runner. On paper, heh, I should have enjoyed it…

A Book with Magic: Moon over Soho

Moon over Soho By Ben Aaronovitch is the second book in his Peter Grant series, which started with the very excellent Rivers of London. It was a re-read for me, and on my first reading I’d thought it not as good as the first book. I was wrong, or rather, I’ve changed my mind.

Challenge Accepted

I don’t need a push to read more; books are my drug of choice, well after coffee that is. When a co-worker approached me about a reading challenge I pooh-poohed the idea. I mean I read heaps. Then I thought about what I was reading.

Kiln People – Random Thoughts

I finally picked up Kiln People after seeing it in the stores for a while. I don’t really know why it took me so long to give it a crack; I like David Brin’s Uplift series, I like science fiction, but just haven’t been buying as many books lately.

How was it?

The odds were against it from the start; I felt the central premise was cheesy, but more importantly the last book I read was “The Demolished Man” by Alfred Bester.

TL:DR – I was being a dick. Kiln People was great.