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Dec. 24th, 2014 12:13 amFor the 17th, for the December meme (so behind!) ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ceitfianna asked me about the top five books on my to-read list and why.
...as usual, I don't know if this is top five really if one is grading empirically, but it's the top five I am thinking of at the moment and/or can see on my shelf!
1. The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge
I don't even have any idea what this is about yet, I just know that NEW FRANCES HARDINGE COMES OUT IN MAY and I am PSYCHED. I loved her first book with a fiery passion and basically everything she's written since then has been consistently better (oh my god Cuckoo Song was SO GOOD!) and ... I know in theory someday this will not be true? But in practice I am going to JUMP ON THIS BOOK AND DEVOUR IT as soon as I can get it into my hands.
2. Species Imperative, Julie Czerneda
I read the first book in this trilogy a few months ago and I loved it! Excellent space opera with a solid female friendship at the heart of the series, a science protagonist who feels like she does actual science (she's a MARINE BIOLOGIST, not a XENOBIOLOGIST, why does everyone keep asking her about aliens?!), and interesting weird alien politics. So then I bought the omnibus so I could read the whole thing in a go ... but I haven't yet because the omnibus is too heavy and I keep balking at carrying it around. :( I outsmarted myself! I have a cunning plan though, I'm going to bring it with me on my vacation home and read it on the bus, and then just leave it in my suitcase the rest of the time. Species Imperative trilogy, I will conquer you!
3. Making it Big: The Diary of a Broadway Musical, Barbara Isenberg
This book has been surprisingly elusive; I've wanted to read it since I first heard about it, and I finally tracked it down at one of my local libraries. To the best of my knowledge it is an account of the DISASTER that was the making of the Broadway musical Big, which, a.) I love disastrous making-of accounts of theatrical and film performances and b.) I was in a disastrous production of Big, when I was in middle school (ok, it was not actually that disastrous except inasmuch as all productions of Big are inherently disastrous, BUT STILL) and I am really looking forward to the schadenfreude. I can only hope it's as magical as Song of Spiderman.
4. Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho
Zen Cho has just sold her first full-length novel -- it comes out sometime next September, I think -- and I AM EMBARRASSINGLY EXCITED. Zen calls the genre "postcolonial fluff for book nerds," which is exactly my favorite sort of fluff, and it's set in the magic 1800s and stars London's first black Sorcerer Royal. Zen says, "It has secret dragons and schoolgirl hijinks and confrontations at balls and bossy witch aunties. It’s even got pontianak, because why not." WHY NOT INDEED. Anyway I assume now you all have heard this you are all as excited as I am!
1. Fish Tails, Sheri S. Tepper
I am not ... 'top' is not exactly the right word here. I did not willingly put this book on my to-read list. Fate, helped along by the cruel hands ofvaradia, has thrust it upon me. For the record, this is Sheri Tepper's latest. It is a combined sequel to the one where the heroine lays eggs that turns into cephalopod merbabies and the ones with the D&D superpowers and the secret underground mountain full of evil disabled people. It is SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES LONG and Lynne gave it to me for my holiday present, because she wants to laugh at me and my suffering and she KNOWS that now it's in my hands I won't be able to resist.
ceitfianna asked me about the top five books on my to-read list and why. ...as usual, I don't know if this is top five really if one is grading empirically, but it's the top five I am thinking of at the moment and/or can see on my shelf!
1. The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge
I don't even have any idea what this is about yet, I just know that NEW FRANCES HARDINGE COMES OUT IN MAY and I am PSYCHED. I loved her first book with a fiery passion and basically everything she's written since then has been consistently better (oh my god Cuckoo Song was SO GOOD!) and ... I know in theory someday this will not be true? But in practice I am going to JUMP ON THIS BOOK AND DEVOUR IT as soon as I can get it into my hands.
2. Species Imperative, Julie Czerneda
I read the first book in this trilogy a few months ago and I loved it! Excellent space opera with a solid female friendship at the heart of the series, a science protagonist who feels like she does actual science (she's a MARINE BIOLOGIST, not a XENOBIOLOGIST, why does everyone keep asking her about aliens?!), and interesting weird alien politics. So then I bought the omnibus so I could read the whole thing in a go ... but I haven't yet because the omnibus is too heavy and I keep balking at carrying it around. :( I outsmarted myself! I have a cunning plan though, I'm going to bring it with me on my vacation home and read it on the bus, and then just leave it in my suitcase the rest of the time. Species Imperative trilogy, I will conquer you!
3. Making it Big: The Diary of a Broadway Musical, Barbara Isenberg
This book has been surprisingly elusive; I've wanted to read it since I first heard about it, and I finally tracked it down at one of my local libraries. To the best of my knowledge it is an account of the DISASTER that was the making of the Broadway musical Big, which, a.) I love disastrous making-of accounts of theatrical and film performances and b.) I was in a disastrous production of Big, when I was in middle school (ok, it was not actually that disastrous except inasmuch as all productions of Big are inherently disastrous, BUT STILL) and I am really looking forward to the schadenfreude. I can only hope it's as magical as Song of Spiderman.
4. Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho
Zen Cho has just sold her first full-length novel -- it comes out sometime next September, I think -- and I AM EMBARRASSINGLY EXCITED. Zen calls the genre "postcolonial fluff for book nerds," which is exactly my favorite sort of fluff, and it's set in the magic 1800s and stars London's first black Sorcerer Royal. Zen says, "It has secret dragons and schoolgirl hijinks and confrontations at balls and bossy witch aunties. It’s even got pontianak, because why not." WHY NOT INDEED. Anyway I assume now you all have heard this you are all as excited as I am!
1. Fish Tails, Sheri S. Tepper
I am not ... 'top' is not exactly the right word here. I did not willingly put this book on my to-read list. Fate, helped along by the cruel hands of
varadia, has thrust it upon me. For the record, this is Sheri Tepper's latest. It is a combined sequel to the one where the heroine lays eggs that turns into cephalopod merbabies and the ones with the D&D superpowers and the secret underground mountain full of evil disabled people. It is SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES LONG and Lynne gave it to me for my holiday present, because she wants to laugh at me and my suffering and she KNOWS that now it's in my hands I won't be able to resist.
