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Books I've read 2007
Not all of them, not by a long shot - just some that for one reason or another stands out.
Michael Atkinson: The secret marriage of Sherlock Holmes and other eccentric readings. Which puts an interesting spin on several of the old stories.
Steve Berry: The Templar Legacy. A Da Vinci-clone, which isn't really what I usually read. It lured me in by having a picture of the Round Tower on the front (and the first time I saw it was in the window of the bookstore across from the Round Tower :-) and being set partly in Copenhagen. Nothing special, though.
Mikkel Birkegaard: Libri di Luca. I really should stop reading the Danish novels that everybody says are great. I'm always disappointed. I mean, people able to do sort-of-magic by simply reading sounds like an interesting premise, but personally I found the magic creepy (the magic reading type people can either read your thoughts or brainwash you - but don't worry, they'll only use their powers for good (ie. promoting reading). Yeah right.) and the story dull.
Samuel R. Delany: The Einstein Intersection. Weird. Fun, but weird.
Arielle Ekstut: Pride and promiscuity - the lost sex scenes of Jane Austen. Basically, fan fiction that managed to get published. Silly and truth be told not that good, but I've read worse and the advantage with getting most of the books I read from the library is that I didn't actually have to pay for it.
Neil Gaiman: Anansi boys. Have owned for a while, finally got around to reading. Loved it. Especially the boys - Charlie finding himself in the chaos his life turns into and Spider, oh Spider. I rather like characters that are not really bad, just not able to understand the consequences their actions have, especially for other people.
Neil Gaiman: Fragile things. Well, I liked some of the stories. The Problem of Susan is quite good. A Study in Emerald is brilliant. Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire plays around with the gothic genre. Sunbird is clever. Monarch of the Glen is a pretty good take on the Beowulf story - plus it's nice to see Shadow again. Personally, my biggest complaint with this anthology was that I had already read too many of the good stories elsewhere...
Laurell K. Hamilton: Guilty pleasures, The laughing corpse, Circus of the damned. I kept hearing about other people having read the series with Anita Blake as teenagers. I didn't, the libraries didn't have them and I had to make do with what I could find. So far, I find them entertaining, if not exactly something to put on any "to be reread" list.
J.P. Jacobsen: Fru Marie Grubbe. (English: Mrs. Marie Grubbe). Because it felt like I ought to read it, before writing a story with the woman myself.
Carsten Jensen: Vi, de druknede. (English: We, the drowned). Novel about the sailors of the town of Marstal. Alas, not that good - it felt like the author had been so busy stuffing the book with information about sailors that he had not worked that hard on the plot. Was written in first person plural - a bit different, except not really...
Robert Kirkman: The walking dead. Comics about a zombie apocalypse type world. Pretty good, actually.
Ellen Kushner: Swordspoint - a melodrama of manners, The privilege of the sword & The fall of the kings (with Delia Sherman). The only thing wrong with this series is that there is no more of it! It's like someone mixed Alexandre Dumas and Jane Austen and then wrote fantasy with a world were bisexuality is the norm (at least for men). Swordspoint is my absolute favourite - the swordsman Richard St. Vier and his moody gentleman scholar Alec are such a fine pair, and the city they live and love and fight in is very well written. The privilege of the sword is fun too, but different. The fall of the king, on the other hand, is kind of creepy - well, most of the politics and characters are great, but the central pair and the whole thing with destiny and magic and wizards and kings is sort of, well, I don't like characters having their own control of their lives taken so completely away, and that's what was going on, so... Oh, but the world of these novels. I really hope Ellen Kushner will write more in it.
Mercedes Lackey: Magic's pawn, Magic's promise, Magic's price. Another case of "everybody seemed to have read it as teens, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about". Okay, I suppose, but a bit too much teen angst for my taste.
Leonora Christina: Jammersminde (english: Memory of misery). Autobiographical. Leonora Christina was a daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark. She managed to get caught up in the politics of the time and wound up spending 22 years in prison. It takes a bit to adjust to 17th century Danish, but while this isn't exactly heavy on action, then it's still an interesting read.
John Ajvide Lindqvist: Let the right one in. Surprisingly good Swedish vampire novel.
Regis Loisel: Peter Pan. A pretty creepy comic about how Peter Pan, his lost boys and Captain Hook all wound up in Neverland. And I mean creepy. Good, though.
Thomas Munch-Petersen: Defying Napoleon. The bicentennial of the Bombardment in Copenhagen caused a lot of books about it. This is the only one in English, though. Of course, it's hardly surprising that England shouldn't really try so hard to remember 1807 - they have so many glorious, unproblematic victories in this age, why draw attention to that unfortunate little story about unprovoked attacks on a neutral power and terror bombardments of civlians? Considering how history unfolded in Denmark, though, around here it's pretty hard to forget...
Rictor Norton: Mother Clap's molly house - the gay subculture in England 1700-1830. Interesting and quite good. But you already knew that, didn't you?
Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack S. Cohen: The science of Discworld. I think I actually learned something reading this. Or maybe I just like the idea that black holes are budding new universes...
Rick Remender: No grave but the sea & No quarter. Vampire pirates does sound like an interesting concept, but these comics aren't really that good.
Wilhelm von Rosen: Månens kulør - studier i dansk bøssehistorie 1628-1912. (English: The colour of the moon - studies in Danish gay history 1628-1912). Very interesting history book. Apparently, if official records are anything to go by, then before the middle of the 19th century, men in Denmark seems to have preferred fucking their horses rather than each other. A lot of the book is spent on the exceptions to the rule, which were few and far between and didn't usually get executed or anything similar, because the government had a policy of hushing up any cases, because they apparently didn't want the population to even know that homosexuality existed. The idea was something along the lines of, if they don't know about it, then they can't do it. The rest of the book deals with the gay culture that appeared in the city of Copenhagen in the mid-19th century, and there are the predictable chapters about Hans Christian Andersen and Herman Bang. Interesting book.
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Am I the only one who thinks that J.K. had just finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" when she wrote this?
Mark Salzman: The laughing sutra. Brilliant little novel involving a naive young Buddhist monk having to journey from China (in the 1970s) to the US to find a stolen sutra. He is accompanied by Colonel Sun, huge, wild and not exactly human or used to the 20th century. Ah, but the monkey king is one of my favourite tricksters.
Dan Turèll: Vangede billeder. Okay, so I listened to it as an audio book - how could I resist hearing it read by Uncle Danny? I mean, the man could write and the man could read.
Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the midnight hour. Werewolf girl with a radio show. Fun.
Anne-Marie Vedsø Olesen: Djævelens kvint. A rediscovered aria by Mozart brings the Egyptian god Seth to life in modern day Copenhagen, which causes all sorts of problems. I like Seth. It's hard to resist a character who spends most of the book enjoying life, dancing, laughing, shagging all the pretty boys and girls he can get. Actually, the book reminds me of some of Anne Rice's stuff. It's not great, but entertaining - oh, and it's the first in a trilogy, so I've got something to look forward to. Good.
Kit Whitfield: Bareback. Describes a world where 98% of the population are werewolves. The last 2% are at once pitied and feared - they aren't real humans, they lack something, but on fullmoon nights they are in charge of a world that hates them - but God have mercy if they manage to leave a single bruise on any of the huge slavering wolfbeasts trying to tear their throats out. A bit heavyhanded with the racism and bigotry parallels, but otherwise okay.
Steve Berry: The Templar Legacy. A Da Vinci-clone, which isn't really what I usually read. It lured me in by having a picture of the Round Tower on the front (and the first time I saw it was in the window of the bookstore across from the Round Tower :-) and being set partly in Copenhagen. Nothing special, though.
Mikkel Birkegaard: Libri di Luca. I really should stop reading the Danish novels that everybody says are great. I'm always disappointed. I mean, people able to do sort-of-magic by simply reading sounds like an interesting premise, but personally I found the magic creepy (the magic reading type people can either read your thoughts or brainwash you - but don't worry, they'll only use their powers for good (ie. promoting reading). Yeah right.) and the story dull.
Samuel R. Delany: The Einstein Intersection. Weird. Fun, but weird.
Arielle Ekstut: Pride and promiscuity - the lost sex scenes of Jane Austen. Basically, fan fiction that managed to get published. Silly and truth be told not that good, but I've read worse and the advantage with getting most of the books I read from the library is that I didn't actually have to pay for it.
Neil Gaiman: Anansi boys. Have owned for a while, finally got around to reading. Loved it. Especially the boys - Charlie finding himself in the chaos his life turns into and Spider, oh Spider. I rather like characters that are not really bad, just not able to understand the consequences their actions have, especially for other people.
Neil Gaiman: Fragile things. Well, I liked some of the stories. The Problem of Susan is quite good. A Study in Emerald is brilliant. Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire plays around with the gothic genre. Sunbird is clever. Monarch of the Glen is a pretty good take on the Beowulf story - plus it's nice to see Shadow again. Personally, my biggest complaint with this anthology was that I had already read too many of the good stories elsewhere...
Laurell K. Hamilton: Guilty pleasures, The laughing corpse, Circus of the damned. I kept hearing about other people having read the series with Anita Blake as teenagers. I didn't, the libraries didn't have them and I had to make do with what I could find. So far, I find them entertaining, if not exactly something to put on any "to be reread" list.
J.P. Jacobsen: Fru Marie Grubbe. (English: Mrs. Marie Grubbe). Because it felt like I ought to read it, before writing a story with the woman myself.
Carsten Jensen: Vi, de druknede. (English: We, the drowned). Novel about the sailors of the town of Marstal. Alas, not that good - it felt like the author had been so busy stuffing the book with information about sailors that he had not worked that hard on the plot. Was written in first person plural - a bit different, except not really...
Robert Kirkman: The walking dead. Comics about a zombie apocalypse type world. Pretty good, actually.
Ellen Kushner: Swordspoint - a melodrama of manners, The privilege of the sword & The fall of the kings (with Delia Sherman). The only thing wrong with this series is that there is no more of it! It's like someone mixed Alexandre Dumas and Jane Austen and then wrote fantasy with a world were bisexuality is the norm (at least for men). Swordspoint is my absolute favourite - the swordsman Richard St. Vier and his moody gentleman scholar Alec are such a fine pair, and the city they live and love and fight in is very well written. The privilege of the sword is fun too, but different. The fall of the king, on the other hand, is kind of creepy - well, most of the politics and characters are great, but the central pair and the whole thing with destiny and magic and wizards and kings is sort of, well, I don't like characters having their own control of their lives taken so completely away, and that's what was going on, so... Oh, but the world of these novels. I really hope Ellen Kushner will write more in it.
Mercedes Lackey: Magic's pawn, Magic's promise, Magic's price. Another case of "everybody seemed to have read it as teens, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about". Okay, I suppose, but a bit too much teen angst for my taste.
Leonora Christina: Jammersminde (english: Memory of misery). Autobiographical. Leonora Christina was a daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark. She managed to get caught up in the politics of the time and wound up spending 22 years in prison. It takes a bit to adjust to 17th century Danish, but while this isn't exactly heavy on action, then it's still an interesting read.
John Ajvide Lindqvist: Let the right one in. Surprisingly good Swedish vampire novel.
Regis Loisel: Peter Pan. A pretty creepy comic about how Peter Pan, his lost boys and Captain Hook all wound up in Neverland. And I mean creepy. Good, though.
Thomas Munch-Petersen: Defying Napoleon. The bicentennial of the Bombardment in Copenhagen caused a lot of books about it. This is the only one in English, though. Of course, it's hardly surprising that England shouldn't really try so hard to remember 1807 - they have so many glorious, unproblematic victories in this age, why draw attention to that unfortunate little story about unprovoked attacks on a neutral power and terror bombardments of civlians? Considering how history unfolded in Denmark, though, around here it's pretty hard to forget...
Rictor Norton: Mother Clap's molly house - the gay subculture in England 1700-1830. Interesting and quite good. But you already knew that, didn't you?
Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack S. Cohen: The science of Discworld. I think I actually learned something reading this. Or maybe I just like the idea that black holes are budding new universes...
Rick Remender: No grave but the sea & No quarter. Vampire pirates does sound like an interesting concept, but these comics aren't really that good.
Wilhelm von Rosen: Månens kulør - studier i dansk bøssehistorie 1628-1912. (English: The colour of the moon - studies in Danish gay history 1628-1912). Very interesting history book. Apparently, if official records are anything to go by, then before the middle of the 19th century, men in Denmark seems to have preferred fucking their horses rather than each other. A lot of the book is spent on the exceptions to the rule, which were few and far between and didn't usually get executed or anything similar, because the government had a policy of hushing up any cases, because they apparently didn't want the population to even know that homosexuality existed. The idea was something along the lines of, if they don't know about it, then they can't do it. The rest of the book deals with the gay culture that appeared in the city of Copenhagen in the mid-19th century, and there are the predictable chapters about Hans Christian Andersen and Herman Bang. Interesting book.
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Am I the only one who thinks that J.K. had just finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" when she wrote this?
Mark Salzman: The laughing sutra. Brilliant little novel involving a naive young Buddhist monk having to journey from China (in the 1970s) to the US to find a stolen sutra. He is accompanied by Colonel Sun, huge, wild and not exactly human or used to the 20th century. Ah, but the monkey king is one of my favourite tricksters.
Dan Turèll: Vangede billeder. Okay, so I listened to it as an audio book - how could I resist hearing it read by Uncle Danny? I mean, the man could write and the man could read.
Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the midnight hour. Werewolf girl with a radio show. Fun.
Anne-Marie Vedsø Olesen: Djævelens kvint. A rediscovered aria by Mozart brings the Egyptian god Seth to life in modern day Copenhagen, which causes all sorts of problems. I like Seth. It's hard to resist a character who spends most of the book enjoying life, dancing, laughing, shagging all the pretty boys and girls he can get. Actually, the book reminds me of some of Anne Rice's stuff. It's not great, but entertaining - oh, and it's the first in a trilogy, so I've got something to look forward to. Good.
Kit Whitfield: Bareback. Describes a world where 98% of the population are werewolves. The last 2% are at once pitied and feared - they aren't real humans, they lack something, but on fullmoon nights they are in charge of a world that hates them - but God have mercy if they manage to leave a single bruise on any of the huge slavering wolfbeasts trying to tear their throats out. A bit heavyhanded with the racism and bigotry parallels, but otherwise okay.