Books in 2013

[kaberett]

Date completed	Author	Gender	Race	Title	Reread	Comments
26/01/13	Lewis Wolpert	M	W	Malignant Sadness		I am deeply, deeply amused (and kind of horrified) at how much of myself I recognise in the descriptions of childhood behaviour in response to parents. Was sad about some of the cultural/anthropological things, and also the use of the word “handicap”, but overall helpful hurrah.
23/01/13	John Scalzi	M	W	Questions for a Soldier		Twitchy at some of it; overall pleased. HI SAVRITI, etc.
08/02/13	Jack London	M	W	White Fang	*	DOG DOG DOG DOG DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG ;__________;
08/03/13	Julia Serano	F	W	Whipping Girl		Oh I have SO many thoughts on this. Edit in the link to the detailed review when you've writ it, there's a good Alex.
08/03/13	Ken Liu	M	C	Paper Menagerie		Oh, but my heart would break – so much truth about immigration and culture and family and language and.
09/03/13	Suzanne Selfors	F	W	The Sweetest Spell		Alas, both less disappointing and more confusedly racist than the summary made it sound. But it did feature an explicitly canonically queer couple?
10/03/13	Zen Cho	F	C	The Four Generations of Cheng E		YES YES YES
12/03/13	J.O.	M		Irredeemable		Liked! Inhaled! Have more thoughts on.
14/03/13	Rebecca Skloot	F	W	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks		Yes. GO AND READ THIS. I wept gently.
16/03/13	Susan Sontag	F	W	Illness as Metaphor		Lots of thoughts! Very interesting back-to-back with TILoHL: the conception of cancer, and scientific understanding of it, is clearly changed a very great deal since the 70s, when Sontag was writing this essay. I was surprised to find the descriptions and mythologisation of TB much more relatable & familiar than those Sontag describes of cancer: because I am a scientist? Because of the family history? I don't know; she definitely makes a compelling argument, but it was so frustrating to be regularly thrown out of it by my utter incomprehension of the idea of a “cancer personality”, of a character type predisposing people to cancer (especially given popularly-reported studies about attitudes and outcomes); I was also very interested in her assertion that claiming multiple disease causes is a result of mysteriousness, of lack of understand, and her claim that cancer would one day be considered a single illness (rather than a family of illnesses dependent on where it started, etc) – it seems to me that in explaining cancer it is precisely our detailed understanding of the multifarious causes that demystify it, cause it to make sense. Hmm.
19/03/13	Helen Oyeyemi	F	C	White is for Witching		I always find her books so haunting and so very difficult to understand, but equally so very, very absorbing. Approval.
21/03/13	Lisa Shearin	F	W	Magic Lost, Trouble Found		yep, this was exactly the easy reading I wanted.
22/03/13	Catherynne M Valente	F	W	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making		Yes, yes, yes, I know, I know, but I couldn't – after all that – quite resist.
25/03/13	Catherynne M Valente	F	W	The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland And Led The Revels There		Ditto.
26/03/13	Lisa Shearin	F	W	Armed & Magical	*	yes yes yes it's a reread; no, I don't care. I'm not going to skip book 2 on a whole-series read just because I accidentally read it last year!
27/03/13	Lisa Shearin	F	W	The Trouble With Demons		oh my god please can the canon poly ship not be sunk
30/03/13	Lisa Shearin	F	W	Bewitched & Betrayed		NO CANON POLY SHIP THEY ARE LIKE SHARING PARENTING DUTIES AND SHIT
01/04/13	Lisa Shearin	F	W	Con & Conjured		Unfortunately I find myself planning novel-length fix-it fic. Along with all the other writing I'll be doing this summer...
02/04/13	Lisa Shearin	F	W	All Spell Breaks Loose		And the beginnings of the fix-it plot take shape...
06/04/13	CP Snow	M	W	The Two Cultures		Holy shit, cis white dude from the 1960s is better at social justice than most of the Internet in 2013 (yes, I include the social-justice-y bits). I think I'm in love. http://kaberett.dreamwidth.org/114295.html
14/04/13	Elizabeth McCoy	F	W	The Legend of the Morning Star		Tentatively positive! I am not sure the writing style quite manages to be what it's aiming for, but I like the idea.
26/04/13	Katie Roiphe	F	W	In Praise Of Messy Lives		At 30% of the way though, I'm starting to get seriously annoyed by the amount of time she's spending arguing with straw feminists, and acting as though there's some universal objective standard of “good writing”.But I remain interested in what she has to say, so... – got to end, was really irritated, will shortly write up angry review.
26/04/13	Patricia McKillip	F	W	The Changeling Sea		FAIRYTALES AND HORSES AND SEA AND MYTHOLOGY AND YESSSS BEAUTIFUL EASY READING AS PALATE-CLEANSER
07/05/13	Patricia McKillip	F	W	Wonders of the Invisible World
15/05/13	Catherynne M Valente	F	W	Silently and Very Fast		yes I know ;_; but it is pulpy and I didn't give her money for it so?
20/05/13	John Scalzi	M	W	The Human Division		Hmm. Definitely fewer queers, and on the other hand LOTS of competent women, so. I probably can't complain? I disliked the “now let's recap” part of the episodic nature, and really liked some of its other features, but on the whole I am glad I waited.
26/05/13	Madeleine Robins	F	W	Sold for Endless Rue		I really loved the description in The Big Idea @ Whatever; it's turning into somewhat pulpier fantasy that I'd hoped for, so far (24 pages in) but I can but hope... – okay, it's clearly well-researched, and it's a bit pulpy and I'm kind of horrified that the rape isn't explicitly rape [in some cases], also NOBODY reliably gets that pregnant that quickly they just DON'T and I refuse to believe that Bieta, at least, had not been taught what fertility etc looked like! BUT. Reasonably enjoyable, hurrah. :-)
02/06/13	bunch of dudes	M	W?	Buffy s8		… CLEARLY NON-CANONICAL WTF IS THIS SHIT
13/06/13	Catherynne M Valente	F	W	Deathless		yes yes yes I know and it was a mangling I know but also it was a brainless read
14/06/13	Ekaterina Sedia	F	W	Moscow but Dreaming		You can stay! Bit too creepy for me in places, but hurrah fairytale.
15/06/13	Lois McMaster Bujold	F	W	The Lady on the Embankment		Hah, I like Holmes derivative works much more than canon. But seriously the NAME what is the BACKSTORY on why she decided to write this???
17/06/13	Ray Bradbury	M	W	Fahrenheit 451		I thought I ought to, and it was one of the shorter books in the to-read pile, and it made the journey on the X5 less unpleasant, so all of that is a win, I suppose? Anyway yes. Liked.
24/06/13	Pablo Neruda	M	C	100 Love Sonnets		V glad systematically read whole thing. Found some new favourites.
	Derek Walcott	M	C	Omeros
24/06/13	Marie Lebert	F	W	Multilingualism on the Web		… this is really endearing. And super from the 90s. And very optimistic. And tries hard (but fails) not to focus solely on European languages in the Roman alphabet.
01/07/13	Anne McCaffrey	F	W	Damia		pulp pulp pulp oh god this is so bad I cannot believe how embarrassingly awful the sex scenes are
04/07/13	Elizabeth Conall & Anne Walsh	F	W	A Dinner of Herbs: Tales from Scarborough Fair		SUPER-FOND, review at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/329722
09/07/13	Mercedes Lackey	F	W	Invasion		Oh dear it is so racist. But it kind of deals okay with mental illness? And sort of with disability? IDEK.
09/07/13	Oscar Wilde	M	W	An Ideal Husband		(Essentially in the spirit of “it's short and it gets the reading list down”... but ALAS the sexisms.)
13/07/13	Erin Morgenstern	F	W	The Night Circus		I am enjoying this! It is very gentle, though I'm not sure I'm supposed to think that about it. Beautifully immersive and – yes. Thank you.
11/07/13	Marissa K Lingen	F	W	The Ministry of Changes		oooooooooooooooh. I liked.
16/07/13	Gaston Leroux	M	W	The Phantom of the Opera		Surprisingly readable! And SO MANY parallels with V for Vendetta, wow, yet I cannot find any official acknowledgment that V draws on Phantom.
17/07/13	Lauren Slater	F	W	Prozac Diary		20% of the way in and I'm already regularly in tears – this is so honest and so true and resonates so well with Illness As Metaphor and – I cannot even. OH DEAR but then it turns into RACISM FOREVER towards the end :-(
19/07/13	Amitav Ghosh	M	C	The Calcutta Chromosome		Mmm, I like my stories to have a bit more resolution that that. More explicit resolution, rather. But it was absorbing until I was unsatisfied by the ending and eyebrow-raisy about the science?
20/07/13	Dean Francis Alfar	M	C	How to Traverse Terra Incognita		this is a fascinating set of snippets and I am very pleased.
20/07/13	John Scalzi	M	W	The God Engines		Yes I liked that is what I was after something short and easy.
21/07/13	Janni Lee Simner	F	W	Bones of Faerie		Yes this is exactly the kind of ridiculous fantasy writing I like good. Also wolfboy. Good. Except: it's a bunch of Celtic-folklore-Fair-Folk transported to the Mississippi, and Everyone Is White. Really, Really White. Which. Um.
21/07/13	Janni Lee Simner	F	W	Faerie Winter		Same problems hold, but as long as I pretend it's not set in the US it's actually quite pleasant. Um.
26/07/13	Frances Hodgson Burnett	M	W	The Lost Prince		Everything went implausibly smoothly! The boy is remarkably good at being completely unable to reason through anything! But there is a lot of stuff about patriotism and loyalty, and I am only a little grumpy that one female character was a sensuous slippery snake-like spy, and one was an angry house keeper, and ALL THE MOTHERS ARE DEAD.
28/07/13	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	F	C	Purple Hibiscus		Okay, I uh think this book might have been contributing to my being a hunched-over ball of anxiety all day? Because it is really graphic and really convincing about abuse. But maybe I was anxious anyway and this just exacerbated it, I don't know.
30/07/13	Hope Mirrlees	F	W	Lud-in-the-Mist		Ooh I am SUPER enjoying this – it is political, and I am fascinated by off-hand remarks that... well, a lot has changed in terms of life expectancy, let us put it that way.
29/07/13	Django Mathijsen	M	W	Kaboom!		Flash fiction. V short. Eh. Well, I've read it!
01/08/13	Neil Gaiman	M	W	The Ocean at the End of the Lane		I wish I didn't find him so compellingly and comfortingly readable.
04/08/13	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	F	C	The Thing Around Your Neck		It is about loss, all of it is about loss, and it makes me quiet, a little, inside.
04/08/13	China Mieville	M	W	London's Overthrow		It is a love letter. <3
04/08/13	Rajnar Vajra	M	C	On the Bubble		I am actually super-endeared by the conceit. What a lovely short story.
05/08/13	Tom Lichtenberg	M	W	Snapdragon Alley		A nice enough snippet of speculative fiction, rather spoilt through having been left to marinade too long in sexism and ableism.
05/08/13	Val Griswold	F	W	The Sun Never Sets		No speaking named women (one Queen Victoria, unnamed Princesses, one girl who exists to be drugged and murdered); language completely wrong for Victorian England. Again, nice concept but shoddy execution.
07/08/13	Evelyn Waugh	M	W	A handful of dust		Gosh, this is all rather bleak and grim, and not even as beautifully written as I remember Brideshead Revisited being. Possibly due to poor conversion? IDK. Anyway er yes did not much enjoy.
08/08/13	Lauren Beukes	F	W	Zoo City		It has queer people. It has pseudo-academics about His Dark Materials. It has a trans sex worker, but she's not stigmatised for it, and the awful transphobia is from the tabloid press not authorical (or character) voice. I suspect I am missing awful racism but maybe I am not? Um.
09/08/13	John Scalzi	M	W	Agent to the Stars		Wow, that this is early largely unedited writing really shows. Not yet annoyed me as much as THAT WAS THE MILLENIUM THAT WAS. Also oh dear Scalzi you have got MUCH better at gender stuff and not writing dudebros as sympathetic characters since then.
10/08/13	Sabrina Vourvoulias	F	C	Ink		I REALLY LIKE THIS A LOT. In a sort of horrified way. Ended up weeping on the Cambridge->London train, in the best ways.
11/08/13	Daniel José Older	M	C	Salsa Nocturna		Yesss best ghost stories.
15/08/13	Ursula K LeGuin	F	W	Changing Planes		Oh right THAT'S why I'm so uncomfortable – quite apart from the Islamophobia in the new introduction, nobody visits “our” plane apart from Exceptional Natives, it sounds like. And people are talked about as “natives”. And given names by-and-large more in keeping with Austronesian than European languages, apart from the one planet that is all ~royalty~ and is very Middle European. So er. Nice snippets of travelogue but Oh Dear The Politics? There are queers... :-s
16/08/13	Piper Kerman	F	W	Orange Is The New Black		Because horror at how self-absorbed and self-important she is, that's why, and I hold out slight hope that she's actually going to demonstrate more personal growth/intersectional understanding in the book than the TV character does LET US SEE.
16/08/13	Sabrina Vourvoulias	F	C	La Gorda and the City of Silver		Yes good (I feel slightly bad about tagging this set of short stories separately as they came in an anthology [Fat Girl in a Strange Land], but I have no idea how else to do it that makes sense, and if I'd read them in isolation on a website I'd've included them, so. Separate it is.)
16/08/13	Lauren C Teffeau	F	W	The Tradeoff		Oh sweetie you are adorable, and also you have a volcano <3
16/08/13	AJ Fitzwater	F	W	Cartography, and the Death of Shoes		Yes this hits ALL of my favourite things :D
16/08/13	Josh Roseman	M	W	Survivor		<3 Friendship and taking care and Really Good Things.
16/08/13	Brian Jungwiwattanaporn	M	C	The Right Stuffed		Yes this is also nice. It is charming. I like it.
16/08/13	Katharine Elmer	F	W	Tangwystl the Unwanted		Hmm I think I am probably more into Sold for Endless Rue as a retelling of this myth.
17/08/13	Bonie Ferrante	F	W	Flesh of My Flesh		… um.
17/08/13	Rick Silva	M		How Do You Want To Die?		(okay seriously the inconsistent capitalisation and poor copy-editing is starting to get to me. this is mostly in re the last one but can be left as a comment here too.) But yes okay hello aren't you a nice lady and also a leader.
17/08/13	Nicole Prestin	F	W	Nemesis		Ahahaha yes ladyhero <3 Aren't you a nice lady <3 Aren't your attitudes to clothing endearing <3
17/08/13	Anna Dickinson	F		Davy		Child-stolen-away painting-is-gateway narrative. Endearing.
17/08/13	Jennifer Brozek	F		Sharks & Seals		Okay seriously I cannot get over how much I am adoring the series of badass fat ladies kicking arse.
17/08/13	Barbara Krasnoff	F	W	Marilee and the SOB		Hmm fairies and changelings.
17/08/13	Anna Caro	F	W	Blueprints		Yes I think I was fond?
17/08/13	Pete “Patch” Alberti	M	W	Lift		Hmm, so this is actually kind of exhausting in that they *all* deal with sizeism just in kind of unconvincing ways, a lot of the time? But o well was collection of short stories wot I have read.
17/08/13	AJ Fitzwater	F	W	Diamond in the Rough		[Here begins Menial] Preferred pronouns! Gender as non-binary! Dykes! And it's really sweet too, and deals with disability!
17/08/13	M Bennardo	M	W	Thirty-Four Dollars		Awww <3
18/08/13	Sean Jones	M	C?	A Tale of a Fast Horse		Dude I would be so much less uncomfortable with you if you weren't using “bitch” about three times a page.
18/08/13	Barbara Krasnoff	F	W	The Didibug Pin		You are about ladies and children and workplace health & safety I am fond.
18/08/13	Camille Alexa	F	W?	Sarah 87		… okay why is our viewpoint character (a) the only woman and (b) a creepy lesbian?
18/08/13	AD Spencer	F	W	Carnivores		… SENTIENT FISH. Also weird shit about learning disabilities.
18/08/13	Andrew C Releford	M	C	Urban renewal		Furries in a coffeeshop. Only it's really badly written. Also wow, dude, you appear to be an UTTER DOUCHE, I should not have searched the web for demographic info on you.
19/08/13	Matthew Cherry	M	W	Storage		… everyone is dudes.
19/08/13	Angeli Primlani	F	C	Snowball the Rabbit was Dead		… you are a lady?
19/08/13	Jasmine M Templet	F	W	Leviathan		Everyone is dudes. Everyone is dudes and you appear to be racists.
19/08/13	Margaret M Gilman	F		All in a Day's Work		Enthusiastic Bechdel pass! Everyone is ladies! Doing work! Hurrah!
19/08/13	Kevin Bennett	M	C?	The Belt		Duuuuuuuuuudes. 0 ladies.
19/08/13	Jude-Marie Green	F	W	Far, Far From Land		… ladycaptain who is busy screaming about dudecaptain on the other ship who is her husband. Possibly a Bechdel pass.
19/08/13	Clifford Royal Johns	M	W	Big Steel in the Sky		EVERYONE IS DUDES. EVERYTHING IS MACHISMO.
19/08/13	Sophie Constable	F	W	Air Supply		Hmm. Nice concept + playing w/ ramifications & peek at government priorities, but I am super-unconvinced by the bit where the only lady is the crazy lady.
19/08/13	Dany G Zuwen	M	C	The Heart of the Union		Yay politics! Boo creepy lesbians.
19/08/13	Sabrina Vourvoulias	F	C	Ember		Oh you are nice <3 And you feature a woman even if the majority of it is about dudes ugh.
20/08/13	Patricia McKillip	F	W	The Riddle-Master of Hed		Yes of course I like it it is McKillip. Even though it is all dudes. Also wow HOLY CRAP it has so many of the things I love! And it is so rich! And now I am hooked and am going to inhale the rest of the triology before the week is out, you see if I don't.
21/08/13	Patricia McKillip	F	W	Heir of Sea and Fire		Oh dear of course I am fond you are fantasy even though even when it is Just Ladies they are frequently talking about dudes. And they tend to be questing for dudes. But this one is mostly ladies!
22/08/13	Patricia McKillip	F	W	Harpist in the Wind		Oh dude why are you ignores lady's stated wishes when it comes to accompanying you on dangerous quest you douche. ON THE OTHER HAND wow I am invested in this series I am wanting fanfic and everything.
22/08/13	Zoran Zivkovic	M	W	Twelve Collections and the Tea Shop		Yes I am fond. Really lovely vignettes. Except EVERYONE IS DUDES, ugh. I think it is genuinely the case that the only women who have been mentioned so far have been mentioned because they are dead.
02/09/13	Jorge Luis Borges	M	C	Labyrinths		Hard work but dreamlike; I think I will have to return to it, and be glad of it. Nobody is ladies, but – eh, I will forgive it.
04/09/13	Naomi Novik	F	W	Blood of Tyrants		I know I am sorry. It was really bizarre to read this having apparently missed out a book in between, whoops? But I continue REALLY GROSSED OUT by Laurence “adopting” another set of boys from every country he visits on account of HE HAS DESTROYED THEIR EXISTING LIFE SO THOROUGHLY THEY CANNOT GO BACK.
05/09/13	Naomi Novik	F	W	Crucible of Gold		… plot-relevant queer characters??
06/09/13	Rainne			Draft		Pretty archetypal but eminently readable for all that. More detailed notes to R.
09/08/13	Bao Phi	M	C	Sông I Sing		Yes, yes, yes. Oh, but this was hard and oh, but I cried reading it, and oh – but it is perfect.
18/09/13	sahiya, lightgetsin	F		A Deeper Season		IT WAS TIME (yes, all of the series, not just that novel, though I skipped the AU because I didn't think I could bear it): and oh, but it has been important in thinking about love and trust and fear and... feeling, intensely, every day, because what else can be done.
23/09/13	Kelly Jennings	F	W	Broken Slate		… yes okay it is about geology that much I like (it has only made me howl NO THAT IS NOT HOW THE THINGS once). It is also about homosexuality and abuse and slavery and racism in very much the Greek mode.
27/09/13	Jeanette Winterson	F	W	The Stone Gods		Female protagonists! Queers! And... the kind of nested story structure I really wasn't in the mood for. – except then it went gender-bendy, and then it turned into something that MADE SENSE to me, so... perhaps I like it after all!
13/10/13	Amitav Ghosh	M	C	Sea of Poppies		V long but also v v absorbing; glad have read; moving on to the next...
24/10/13	Amitav Ghosh	M	C	River of Smoke		Good but again long & absorbing.
27/10/13	Seanan McGuire	F	W	Indexing		I squealed out loud with delight at least four times while reading this. It is GREAT.
31/12/13	Diana Laurillard	F	W	Teaching as Design Science		Good. Suspect need to dip back into.
05/11/13	Carol Ann Duffy	F	W	The World's Wife		Bits I liked, bits I smiled fondly over in recognition, bits I didn't especially feel. Good mix, though!
01/12/13	Kelley Armstrong	F	W	Bitten		TRULY DREADFUL WEREWOLF ROMANCE. I am torn between wanting to read the rest of the series and wanting to pretend this never happened to me.
01/12/13	Jorge Luis Borges	M	C	The Book of Sand & Shakespeare's Memory		Yesssss. And made it perfectly clear what my Word for 2014 needs to be.
31/12/13	Amal el-Mohtar	F	C	The Singing Fish		:-) Suspect needs rereading; enjoyed it.
31/12/13	Annette Curtis Klause	F	W	Blood & Chocolate	*	On the one hand, facepalm at my younger self. On the other, LYCANTHROPY AS TRANS NARRATIVE.

So that's:

• approximately 116 works
  
• of which approximately 10% were non-fiction
  
• by approximately 94 authors
  
• of whom 79% were female and 21% were male (ish)
  
• of whom ~26% were chromatic (this figure is approximate because I really, really didn't want to erase people; it's a lower bound)
  
• of whom ~18% are LGBT (ditto)

(This is a slightly smaller range of pre-crunched stats than I put together in 2012, but if you particularly want me to count anything up, let me know. I keep these notes (1) as a record of what I've liked or thought about what I've been reading, and (2) to prompt myself to reflect on what worlds and worldviews I expose myself to.)