Books
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Body Double by Tess Gerritsen is a Rizzoli and Isles mystery. A woman is killed in a car and she looks just like Maura Isles. Naturally, she’s shaken by this and responds by investigating the case. Isles is adopted and so it’s entirely possible the victim is related to her. In the course of finding…
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A palimpsest is a manuscript page that has had the original text scraped off so it can be used again. Palimpsest by Cathrynne M. Valente is a gorgeous, sumptuous fantasy; reading it is like taking a luxurious, candle lit bubble bath. Palimpsest is a fantasy city populated with weird and wonderful creatures that is entered…
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I’m steadily working my way through Toni Morrison’s books. I’ve every intention of reading them all. Sula is about a part of a small town in the US in the interwar period. It’s not so much a story as a series of interconnected character illustrations that Morrison uses to illuminate some really big social issues.…
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The Republic of Thieves is the third book in Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards cycle. To say I have been eagerly awaiting this book is quite the understatement. The Lies of Locke Lamora was one of the books that got me back into reading fantasy. I read almost entirely fantasy and science fiction when I was…
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I was reading articles about worldbuilding on Fantasy Faction and one of them mentioned Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey. It was an example of how changing something in your fantasy world has ramifications that ripple through the whole society. In this case, a religion that sees sex as a sacred act, as a way to…
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A mindset is a collection of beliefs, assumptions and methods we have about how to do things and what things mean that is so established that it provides a powerful driving force for our decisions and choices. In Mindset: How you can fulfil your potential Carol Dweck looks at the impact on success of a…
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I’ve read some of Neal Asher’s Polity novels and enjoyed them, so I thought I’d try the first in another of Asher’s series, The Departure. In a near-future dystopian version of earth, a totalitarian world government is hoarding resources and allowing the vast population to starve. Dissidents are dealt with by torture and scientists are…
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I have a sort-of-new job at work and so I have had a spate of reading business books. First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman is about how great managers get the best out of people. I’m a manager and I think I’m pretty good at it, but I can do…
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Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been on my shelf for a while. I was leant it by a friend and have been feeling bad about having kept it for so long. Lately, I’ve seen Adichie’s name mentioned in a lot of the media I read and it inspired me to…
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I’m terribly aware how heavily skewed my reading is in favour of white men. It must have an impact on my writing, and my language, and my worldview, and I’d like to have more diversity in my reading. I read widely in terms of genre, but not so much in terms of author. There are…
Boudica Marginalia 