This Girl's Reading Pile 2015

As I grow older, not taller my new year's eve shenanigans have become less fantastical to a point this year, that it was non-existence. I was deeply asleep by 11, unaware of the festivities bubbling up around me as my city approached the witching hour. Sitting by the tree on the 1st, coffee at hand, nibbling flat bread, I cruised through my favourite blog sites marvelling over the fabulous reading challenges that 2015 had inspired. Personally, I have learned to keep my challenge simple, a goal of 55 with 30 being exclusively SF/fantasy and of those, 5 from indie writers.

The beginning of this year finds me revisiting the eternal question of to buy or not to buy an e-reader. Some very nice people have sent me their books and although attempts have been made, filled with great intentions, two novels continue to sit on my desktop, radiating guilt. And so the low-tech geek who has yet to own a cell phone wonders if acquiring a device to make reading easier, would actually encourage her (basically me) to read more indie?  I know what you must be thinking, you don't own a phone? Having undergone numerous interventions by well-meaning friends regarding my phone-less state, I can honestly say that I have heard it all and while you may have some poignant arguments to contribute to the cell debate, this post is in fact about my 2015 reading pile. Clearly my new year's resolution excluded clarity and avoidance of meaningless mumbo-jumbo and side-bar commentary.

The ideal place to read the pile.....sigh

The pile of 2015 is a promising stack, ranging from operatic space insanity to zombies, not the vomit zombie, but the groddy walking undead type. Thus far I have only completed Seeds of Earth which has left me tempted to plunge right back into the Humanity's Fire series with The Orphaned Worlds but in all honesty, I don't believe my brain can handle the intensity.  Seeds of Earth was an unrelenting explosion of action which I thoroughly loved but needed a little something something to break-up the hammering of information being thrown at me; that something something happened to be Karen Lord's inaugural novel, Redemption in Indigo. Thanks to those two books, which just may be the strangest combination to read at the same time ever, I lost my entire will to write. Why bother mashing words together on Thank the Maker when I could be reading? 

Read of the Year: A Review of Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

In the final days of 2012 I finally found a book worthy to claim as the Read of 2012.   Among the alarming stack of books read there were some notable recommendations.   However there wasn't one book that screamed at me to scream at you to read it.  You must be thinking how can I even say that considering  I read Ready Player One.  Sure did, cannot argue that fact.    I am all for admitting that the book is cool.   So cool that I bullied quite a few friends into buying it.    But (tends to always be a but) when you think about it, would you read that book again?   The Read of the Year really is going to be something you want to go back to; what is the point of being blown away to never wanting to experience it again?  Because Ready Player One really is a hard copy experience of living/breathing/dying in the GAME, once you journey to the final level do you really need to experience that high again? I don't think so.    

That being said, what book knocked me over?  It is Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey.  Now this is where things get a little intense.  Not for the faint of heart, the book is SF at it's purest:  a truly operatic space adventure.  And what a lovely holiday it has been being riveted to the horror found within it's pages. Yes, I did type horror.   

The sub-category space opera has been used by me without fully comprehending it's meaning many a time.  Thanks to seeing the term splashed out in every single review of Leviathan Wakes I looked it up.   Apparently a book that exhibits romanticism or melodrama, usually between two warring factions is a space opera.  Oh, and all of this hububaloo must take place in space to make it legit otherwise you are holding in your hand Anna Karenina.  Now that would be something, Tolstoy in space.

Leviathan Wakes is turning out to be mega-long, keep-it-coming series.  Book two is out with the third to be released in the spring. Co-authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (James A. S. Corey is a sneaky pen name) created a universe in which humanity has expanded beyond the confines of Earth, and settled throughout the solar system.  Like The Unincorporated Series,  a percentage of humans have never lived on a planet, never seen blue skies, finds the idea of walking on Earth terrifying.  Politically you are either of Earth, Mars or the Belt.  The concept of being a Belter has drawn me into this story.  My imagination has come alive contemplating life in a hollowed-out asteroid.  The absolute of space has been wonderfully portrayed in Leviathan Wakes and it is this aspect that makes the book truly remarkable. There are not a lot of SF books that successfully draws you into a world that seems probable but also enviable   At least to a point, ignore the horror found in this book and you are all good.  I typed that word again, didn't I.