Reviews of the books I've read

Okay, wow, now we're talking. Back into the Expanse world, and back into the Holden future.

After the last Expanse book, I was very very hesitant to read this one. I hemmed and hawwed about it, wondering if I was going to dislike the next one as much as I disliked the last one, and oh, that would just ruin the series for me, because I read a series until 2 in a row are bad, and then, nope, you can't recover.

Oh boy did this one recover. Loved this one. This one might have been my second favorite of the series. We follow Alex and Amos and Naomi and Holden as they have their adventures. We learn about them, their pasts, their futures, their fears.

The book still doesn't (books still don't) convey time scale well, but I think it works. We don't see how the days are filled on a spaceship (always, always, always fixing things), or how long time passes, which is fine.

Really really really liked this book, almost as much as the first one. Wheeeeeee! Can't wait for book six!

This is, once again, one of those books that I'm unsure why I bought other than I heard about it from somewhere and thought, okay, this is a book that maybe I should read. The book is actually 7 short stories, the main one being The Yellow Wallpaper, and the reason I bought this book. This, I recalled, was the story I had heard about.

When I read the stories, I stopped after each of the stories to ponder them, get a feel for the message being sent, and well, to be honest, read the stories as if I were in English class in high school. I read them, asked the various questions, who, what, why, what is the context, what is being said, why is this important, how has the context changed over the last 100 years?

So, the seven stories:

1. The Yellow Wallpaper

   This is the main story of the collection and the one from Gilman is the most well known. It's the story of a woman who moves to a house and essentially isolated "for her health." It is a fascinating description of a woman's descent into psychosis, well written and more than a little creepy. It is also a commentary on the crappy system of isolating women "for their health" (isolation is considered torture these days), along with how society continually ignoring women's opinions in favour of men's "because men know better." I sat with the story for a bit before looking up the analyses on the story, and I hit the top two main interpretations. The other interpretations required a better understanding of Gilman's life, so I'm okay having missed them.

2. Three Thanksgivings

   This is the story of a woman who has two adult kids, each of whom want her to sell her gigantic house and move in with them. Problem is, both kids are selfish and neither wants what is best for the mom. To make things worse, the mom has a mortgage on her giant house, one coming due in 2 years, so she's running out of time to save her house, her huge house that she grew up in, raised two kids in, and loves. The story has a nice ending.

3. The Cottagette

   Nice endings seem to be Gilman's desire. Nice endings are definitely not life, but they are nice escapes from the ugliness of life. This story is about a woman and her friend who find peace and delight in a remote cabin on a boarding property, where breakfast is a short walk away, but the world is their own, with fields of flowers and forests to enjoy. Along comes a man the woman likes, and the woman, at her friend's insistence, begins changing to win the man over. She wins the man over, with a twist. And, of course, a happy ending.

4. Turned

   Okay, now this one hit me hard. Wife. Husband. Servants. Husband goes away, servant gets sick, author implies a bunch, things get weird. This one gave me chills, reading it.

5. Making a Change

   This one also gave me chills, but for a different reason. Still. Chills. A woman is clearly suffering postpartum depression. Her mother-in-law lives with her and her husband. The new mother is not an experienced mother, though trying hard to "do it all," having sacrificed herself, her dreams, and her desires for her husband and child. She hits the breaking point, gives her mother-in-law the child, and leaves to commit suicide. Her mother-in-law figures out what is going on before the new mother succeeds, and changes happen. Except not everyone is so excited about the changes: in a society where a man supports is mother and wife and children, he's less of a man if any of them have to work, even when said people want to work. An interesting contrast at how society has changed. Well, "changed."

6. If I Were a Man

   Okay, this one is obvious. A wife becomes her husband, sees the world through the granted privileges of being white and male, such power! She, as her husband, causes him to stand up for women, despite the full-on ragging about how daft and stupid women are. She comes away with less of a need to prim and buy shit, he comes away with an understanding that women are people, too, and any particular preening and primping that happens is because men insist on it happening.

7. Mr. Peebles' Heart

   Happy endings, right? Right. This story is about a man who has done his duty all of his life, and his "meddling" sister-in-law who sets him free. Said sister-in-law is pretty wonderful. I want to grow up to be just like her.

Well, that didn't take me long to read book two of The Expanse series, which is really unsurprising, given how much I enjoyed the first one.

Reading the second book of a series is often risky literary-wise. In trilogies, book two is usually the boring one. In a longer series, the author (or, in this case, the singular-pen-named authors) usually starts out strong with the first book, stumbles with the second book (*cough* *cough* Dobby, *cough* *cough* loup-garou), and hits a stride with the third (unless you're Jordan, then, well, book 8 is where you fall completely flat on your face).

This particular book two was just as exciting as the first. Without losing any continuity, we are immediately back with Holden and Naomi and Alex and Amos in the Rocinante, off on another "o. m. g. you have the most incredible, and highly plausible, luck imaginable" adventure.

"Adventure"

This is a space opera.

The time frames of the book are similar to those of the Saga of the Seven Suns, but the telling in the time frames isn't as jarring or as boorrrrrrrrrrinnnnnnggggg as that series. You still have days of travel, you still have death from and serious health consequences of high G forces, you still have the fear of immediate death beyond that thin shell of a hull.

This book is much faster paced, much more interesting and much more entertaining. I absolutely f---ing adore Chrisjen Avasaralad and hope we see her again in later books. I was also hoping Bobbie Draper might join the crew of the Rocinante (such a great ship name). We'll see if she shows up in a later book or two.

Zipped through this book as fast as I could. Started the next one, Abaddon's Gate, immediately.

Another book selected by my mom. I believe her selections are hit-and-miss. I really liked the Hole books (after the first one I read), and, well, am really meh about this one. As evidenced by the length of time between this book and the previous book I read, I found this one slow going (which is to say, if 10 days is a long time to finish a book, that's still 36 books read this year).

More to the book.

While the country is significantly different, the feel of this is similar to White Teeth: a long rambling story about people, with the climax coming right at the end, with no explanation of the "ever after" part.

The Folded Earth is a tale of a caste-adjusted young Indian widow who escapes the tragedy of her equally young husband by moving to a small town and taking a job as a teacher. She adjusts to the small-town life, and becomes a part of its landscape. We hear the tales of the illiterate cow girl who falls in love, the crazy animal whisperer, the drunk general, and the remaining story members, as the widow adjusts to life alone, and perhaps a resolution to her husband's mysterious death.

If this style of rambling story appeals, it could be an interesting book for you. It's not my style, so I struggled to finish it, though finish it I did.

It's going in the little lending library, it's not a keeper.

That's right, the seventh Harry Hole book, and, because I read these out of order, the last one in the series for me to read. This one is the first one optioned to be turned into a movie (optioned I think in 2014, though you can probably search and figure that out quickly). Of all the books, I have to say I agree that this one would make the best movie, though all of them would be good.

Having read the previous six and the subsequent three, I knew what was going on around this book. I knew how it was going to end, and I STILL didn't see all the twists. I knew a couple were false, but didn't really know that others were twists except for the fact I wasn't near the end of the book. That said, I was still deeply engrossed, reading fast, and agitated during the climax of the book.

All the expected characters were in the book. If you are reading them in order, then this book is an OH. MY. GOD. in its conclusion.

Having not particularly liked the first Harry Hole I read, I am somewhat delighted at now being a fan. Lots of gruesome, ahhhhh-cannot-unthink scenes, but Nesbø's twists and puzzles and misdirects are just way worth it. The broken hero story makes it more appealing.

This book is readable stand alone, but for maximum impact and oh shit revelations, read them in order.