Ben Saufley - Reading

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House of Blades

by Will Wight

Finished 2019-05-09
The Well of Ascension

by Brandon Sanderson

Finished 2019-04-30
The Bird King

by G. Willow Wilson

Finished 2019-04-15
No Time to Spare

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Finished 2019-04-10
The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

Finished 2019-04-09
The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

Finished 2019-04-01

I ran really hot and cold on this book. It reads very much like a familiar and kind of insufferable subgenre of literary fiction where white men pine for some timeless golden youth in Manhattan, and I didn’t like that. I also didn’t like the intro, which immediately flashes back in a disorienting way that indicated to me that we’d flash forward again… but we never did. The flashback was the book, leading back to the present. But by the end, I had been won over. It was pretty interesting and I wanted to know what happened. Which is why the ending, which doesn’t tell you what happens, and ends so abruptly I thought something was wrong with my copy , left me cold all over again. I’m averaging this out as a 3. I don’t regret reading it; I’m glad I did. But man. __ __ Update: something was actually wrong with my copy of the audiobook! There’s a whole chapter (1/12 of the book!) remaining. So I’ll update this once I’m done.
Age of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan, Marc Simonetti

Finished 2019-03-25
For We Are Many

by Dennis E. Taylor, Ray Porter

Finished 2019-03-18
In the Woods

by Tana French

Finished 2019-03-13
An Anonymous Girl

by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen

Finished 2019-03-01
Pandemic

by A.G. Riddle

Finished 2019-03-01
Artemis Fowl

by Eoin Colfer

Finished 2019-02-23
The Word is Murder

by Anthony Horowitz

Finished 2019-02-16

I enjoyed the story and I appreciate Horowitz’s meta approach but just because you’re talking about the tropes you’re engaging in (curmudgeonly male detective who just happens to be brilliant) doesn’t absolve you from engaging in them. And to see this will be a series … meh. I dunno, man. You say “if I were writing it I’d have chosen a different character.” You did write it. Why didn’t you?
Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

Finished 2019-02-13
To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey, James Mallory

Finished 2019-02-06

I enjoyed much of this book but the middle third of it falls into this really unsettling indoctrinating justification of genocide. Fantasy often walks a fine line with its many races and the wars between them but this one gets pretty brutal and doesn’t even examine that, basically at all. It’s taken as a given that the actual ethnic cleansing of a race of “tainted” elves from the lands is just and necessary, and it’s gross. It’s even weirder in a book that is otherwise so centered on kind of hippie principles—it even features the line “there’s no such thing as implied consent”, which, great! But that middle section … oof. I’m not sure I want to pick up the final book.

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#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } House of Blades

#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Well of Ascension

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#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } The Word is Murder

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#frontCover { fill: currentColor; } #spine { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 45%, #000 55%); } #backCover { fill: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 78%, #000 22%); } To Light a Candle

House of Blades

The Well of Ascension

The Bird King

No Time to Spare

The Clockmaker's Daughter

The Goldfinch

Age of Swords

For We Are Many

In the Woods

An Anonymous Girl

Pandemic

Artemis Fowl

The Word is Murder

Rosewater

To Light a Candle