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Engelbrecht
Posted 2014-07-04 1:53 AM (#8076 - in reply to #8062)
Subject: RE: June 2014 Challege Roundup		Quote Reply



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June saw 11 books read with 59 YTD.  117 of 222 challenge slots have been filled, representing 6.3 months worth, so still pretty well on target.

Challenge Status:
  • 12 Awards 6/12
  • Masterworks 4/12
  • Short Fiction 12/12
  • Authors of Color 2/12
  • Women of Genre 12/12
  • Pick and Mix (lists) 9/12
  • Read the Sequel 6/12
  • Young Adult 0/12
  • Creature Feature 6/6
  • End of the World 7/12
  • Fantasia 9/12
  • In Translation 6/12
  • Mythopoeic 3/12
  • The 35 17/35
  • Guardian 2/7
  • Trilogies 6/9
  • Second Best 6/12
  • Bucket List 4/9
June Challenge books:
  • City of Dark Magic by "Magnus Flyte" (Christina Lynch & Meg Howrey) (2012) (8/10)  A good beach read - fast, fluffy & fun.
  • Witches on the Road Tonight by Sheri Holman (2011) (7/10)  Well written but disjointed.
  • After London: or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies (1885) (6/10)  In the kingdom of the lackwits, our halfwit protagonist, Sir Felix, declines the kingship in favor of, um, wandering about.  (He would really have been better named Sir Feckless).
  • The Firelings by Carol Kendall (1981) (7/10)  Precious invented mythology.  OK at first, but it got old fast.
  • Wake by Elizabeth Knox (2013) (7/10)  A middling tale centered about a hoary old trope.  Kind of fell off the cliff at the end.
  • Tainaron by Leena Krohn (2004) (7/10)  Much strangeness, but not much that resonated.
  • Sunshine by Robin McKinley (2003) (7/10)  A strong start, but it tapered off quickly.  At the end. I realized that every one of the characters, despite the attention to their surfaces, were all completely hollow - we hadn't gotten to know ANY of them.
  • The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (2013) (9/10) Finally, a great book that made up for all the crap I read this month.  Not really a good entry point for Priest though - you should probably have read at least one or two of his Dream Archipelago books before picking this one up.
Also read in June:
  • Modem Times 2.0 by Michael Moorcock (2011) (7/10)  The fiction was meh, but the interview was interesting.
  • James Tiptree, Jr.:  The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips (2006) (9/10)  Fascinating life, well illustrated by voluminous correspondance, the most interesting of which were the "Tiptree" exchanges with Le Guin and Russ.  There was much evidance of sexual frustration throughout her life, which Phillips suggests was due to unrealized lesbian tendencies.  However, I found myself leaning towards the theory that Sheldon was in fact transgendered, a theory well articulated by Farah Mendlesohn's review in Strange Horizons.
  • My Real Children by Jo Walton (2014) (8/10)  A simple what-if exercise, endlessly played out on the domestic front.  Well written, but not much there...

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