2017 Book list

I read. A lot. This year I hit a personal goal of an average of four books a week. I had wanted to draw way more book reviews. However, the one above is the only one I finished. Ah well, tomorrow is another year.

1. Forest of Memory - Mary Robinette Kowal. A great novella from one of my penpals.
2. Once Broken Faith - Seannan McGuire. 10th in a great series.
3. The Spaceship Next Door - Gene Doucette.
4. True Story #3 Muzzled - Gabriela Denise Frank. Chilling.
5. The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood. Creepy dystopia goes wrong.
6. Tides, Surges and Mean Sea-Level - David Pugh. Yay, tidal research!
7. The Reason I Jump - Naoki Higashida. Excellent book written by an autistic individual explaining life from inside their head. Highly recommend.
8. The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic - Emily Croy Barker. Horrible faery crossover.
9. Last Call At the Nightshade Lounge - Paul Krueger. Mixing drinks for magical powers. Chinese American protagonist. I hope it is the first in a series. I would definitely read more.
10. Creative Nonfiction #62 Joy.
11. A Laboratory for Art: Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America, 1900-1950 - Francesca Bewer. Back at the color research.
12. The Secret Language of Color - Joann and Arielle Eckstut. Reread for research.
13. Color: A Natural History of the Palette - Victoria Finlay. Reread for research.
14. The Brilliant History of Color in Art - Victoria Finlay. More color research.
15. Moriarty - Anthony Horowitz. Back inside the world of Holmes. Well written, yet somewhat unsatisfying. 
16. Vicious - V.E. Schwab. Superhero story with a great twist. Read it.
17. The Princess Diarist - Carrie Fisher. Audiobook read by the author and her daughter.
18. True Story #4 Juliet, Juliet - Joy Pope.
19. Archangel - Andrea Barrett. I love her writing. So good to have another book.
20. The Library, Where Life Checks Out - Carmen DeSousa. A haunted library, murder and such. Pretty damn horrible.
21. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr. Good writing. WWII, not of interest to me.
22. Opal Charm: The Path to Dawn - Miri Castor. One of the people I follow on tumblr, has a phd in biochem, the story is pretty good. Could have used a better editor.
23. Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel - Virginia Morell. Fun facts well told.
24. The Illustrated Compendium of Amazing Animal Facts - Maja Safstrom. Swedish illustrator with nice stylistic drawings. I could do something similar/better.
25. The Travelers - Chris Pavone. Like his other writing, intense, well done, just insane enough to to be believable.
26. Word Puppets - Mary Robinette Kowal. Yay, short stories!
27. A Conjuring of Light - V.E.Schwab. 3rd in a magical series.
28. Scrappy Little Nobody - Anna Kendrick. Audiobook read by the author.
29. Unkindness of Ravens - E.D. Degenfelder. Constantly shifts from Omniscient, to third person, to first person and back again. Avoid.
30. Unwanted Dead or Alive - Gene Shelton. Goofy western. A nice change from other genres.
31. True Story #5 How to Survive an Atomic Bomb - Edward McPherson
32. The Flinck Connection - Estelle Ryan. 4th in an engrossing series.
33. Woolgathering - Patti Smith. Beautiful.
34. The Embarrassment of Riches - Simon Schama. My latest obsession, the Dutch Golden Era.
35. Real Artists Have Day Jobs (and other awesome things they don’t teach you in school) - Sara Benincasa. Essays on life by a stand-up comic.
36. Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman. Like a lot of the books of myths I read in the late 90s, only from Norway.
37. Lincoln’s Bodyguard - TJ Turner. Lincoln survives and serves 3 terms; the Civil War rages on. We follow the bodyguard who saved Lincoln on a new, secret mission. 
38. Made to Kill - Adam Christopher. A sci-fi raymond chandleresque mystery. Fun!
39. The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman. 3rd in a series.
40. St. Patrick’s Gargoyle - Katherine Kurtz. Gargoyles protecting Dublin and the people they wind up interacting with. Plot moves slow.
41. The Bleak Door - Christian Baker. Five chapters in and I can’t tell if they are poorly written short story ideas, or supposed to connect. Bleh.
42. Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Adichie. Beautiful.
43. Henchgirl - Kristin Gudsnuk. Funny take on superheroes.
44. After She’s Gone - Lisa Jackson. Good writing. I never quite bought into the character motivations.
45. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles. Good ol’ Russian espionage. Slow.
46. Silence Fallen - Patricia Briggs. 10th in a series.
47. True Story #6 Wider than the Sky - Phyllis Beckman.
48. The Good Spy Dies Twice - Mark Hosack. More paranoia than espionage.
49. Wolverine (GR ultimate collection) - Greg Rucka & Darick Robertson. Good writer. I like how he made Logan short.
50. Wynonna Earp Vol 1 Homecoming- Beau Smith & Lora Innes. Glad I saw the tv show first. They are very different. Both good, just different.
51. A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 - Mariët Westermann. Yay, Dutch art!
52. Frozen Music: A Literary Exploration of California Architecture - David Chu ed. Collected bits. Some easier to read than others. Most are dry.
53. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day - Seannan McGuire. Another ghost story from a favorite author.
54. Three Days in April - Edward Ashton. Really fun in a messed up way.
55. Tulipomania - Mike Dash. Didn’t know they originated near Tibet. Huh. I love reading.
56. Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus - Mira Grant. Wonderfully weird.
57. I Still Dream About You - Fannie Flagg. I can’t remember if I’ve read this one already. Typical Flagg.
58. My Spiritual Journey - Dalai Lama. A very calming read.
59. When We Were Villains - M.L.Rio. Sucked me in fast. Spit me out happy.
60. Just one Damn Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor. Chronicles of St. Mary’s book one. Good ideas. Seemed like at least 3 distinct books, all unfinished, mashed together.
61. Ghost Talkers - Mary Robinette Kowal. Mediums who talk to ghosts of dead soldiers in WWI. Fun!
62. True Story #7 Take Your Son to Work Day - Andrew Maynard.
63. Geek Wisdom - Stephen Segal ed. Not very all encompassing. Could’ve used some Mae West quotes.
64. Post Secret - Frank Warren, compiler. The art is fun.
65. Kill the Dead - Richard Kadrey. Second in the Sandman Slim series.
66. Poe Must Die - Marc Olden. Dickens, Poe, a prize fighter, seances, the throne of Solomon & zombies.
67. The Courbet Connection - Estelle Ryan. fifth in the series.
68. Conspiracy of Ravens - Lila Bowen. second in the series. Read them.
69. The Bone Witch - Rin Chupeco. Either I missed something or a major plot twist unconnected to the rest of the book was thrown in in the last 3 pages. Definite disconnect.
70. Burning Bright - Melissa McShane. Interesting premise. Not enough time developing characters and why we should care about them before the action begins.
71. Creative NonFiction #63 How We Teach
72. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative - Florence Williams. Science studies proving what I (we?) already knew about walking/playing outside.
73. A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler. Schlocky family drama. Feels like something old people would read.
74. The Rock Warrior’s Way - Arno Ilgner. A friend is really into rock climbing. I don’t know much about it, so I did what I always do: I found books on the subject. Amazingly parallels #72.
75. Crosstalk - Connie Willis. Yay, new CW! Cell phones, telepathy, corporate secrets and excess communication.
76. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil Degrasse Tyson. Audiobook read by the author. He has a calming voice, so I am worried I am not taking in much of the content.
77. After Alice - Gregory Maguire. He writes well, but the stories get worse and worse. My sister has met him at conferences. He has said that Wicked was a labor of love. Everything else he approaches with the question, how much money can I make off this one?
78. The Custodian of Marvels - Rod Duncan. Third in the Gas-Lit Empire series.
79. The Shape of Ideas - Grant Snyder. I wish I could produce this many good comics. Awesome.
80. True Story #8 Rendezvous - Renee Branum
81. The Confessions of Jonathan Flite - Matthew J. Beier. Kid has memories of strange events that occured 30 years before he was born.
82. The History of Things to Come - Duncan Simpson. I don’t think I finished it. It was that unremarkable.
83. The Lazarus Gate - Mark Latham. Good. Too many pages at the end setting up for book two.
84. Stiletto - Daniel O’Malley. Second in the series. Just as weird and quirky as the first. Read them.
85. Queen of the South - Arturo Perez-Reverte. I love his writing. Lots of Spanish swear words.
86. The Evolution Underground - Anthony J. Martin. Critters surviving disaster by living in burrows, allowing evolutionary advantages. Super cool.
87. True Story #9 Resurrection - Rebecca Dunn-Krahn. Chickens, hope and crises.
88. Down Among the Sticks and Bones - Seannan McGuire. Oh so good.
89. Reading Like a Writer - Francine Prose. A might too heavy on the classics for my taste.
90. Object Lessons - The Paris Review. Various short stories previously published in PR. Not my thing.
91. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur - Reeder et al. Black girl superhero and a T.rex. What’s not to like?
92. Midnight Blue-Light Special - Seannan McGuire. Number two in the Incryptid series. 
93. Make Space - Scott Doorley & Scott Witthoft. Designing makerspaces, a guide for architects and other nerds.
94. Design Thinking - Nigel Cross. More ethnographic than how to.
95. Vertical Mind - Don McGrath and Jeff Elison. More on rock climbing.
96. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Good. Too long. I lost interest at the end of part 3 of 5. 
97. Lobster Johnson: Satan Smells a Rat - Mike Mignola. I can’t explain why I like this character, I just do.
98. Monstress: Vol 1 Awakening - Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda. Took me a bit to get into it, but this series is AWESOME.
99. Creative Confidence - Tom Kelley & David Kelley. Weird self-help motivational book about creativity.
100. Black Magick vol.1 Awakening - Greg Rucka & Nicola Scott. Cop who hides her witch-side from co-workers. Well done.
101. NOS4A2 - Joe Hill. Creepy good vampire temporal portal novel.
102. Heartthrob: book 1 Never Going Back Again - Christopher Sebela, Robert Wilson. Crime, romance and open heart surgery.
103. Kraken - Wendy Williams. Non-fiction about cephalopods. Yay, giant squid!
104. The Unsound - Cullen Bunn & Jack T. Cole. Creepy. 
105. One Continuous Mistake - Gail Sher. Writing advice from a Zen practitioner.
106. True Story #10 Tarot of Transformation - Sonja Swift.
107. Champions of the Dragon - Michael James Ploof. Trying hard to be Tolkien and Pratchett. Failing at both. Well written nonetheless.
108. Just Kids - Patti Smith. I love her writing.
109. Seriously...I’m Kidding - Ellen Degeneres. Audiobook read by ED. Helpful when doing boring tasks like alphabetizing rubber flooring.
110. I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This - Nadja Spiegelman. Memoir. Beautiful writing. Emotional without being trite.
111. Dreadnought - April Daniels. Recommended by a couple of book buddies. Very fun.
112. Schrodinger’s Cabinet - Adam K Childs. Weird espionage thing. 
113. Creative Nonfiction #64 Adaptation
114. Golden Treasury of Cul de Sac - Richard Thompson. A reread.
115. The Customer is Always Wrong - Mimi Pond. I like the colors and the layout (D&Qpress!), but the story is almost too similar to her last book. 
116. Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz. A book within a book with linked mysteries. 
117. The Clockwork Dynasty - Daniel H. Wilson. Robots, bearded Russian religious sects 
118. The Nest - Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. Family drama. Lots of drinking. Too familiar to be fun.
119. Sister Light, Sister Dark - Jane Yolen. Prophecies, goddess worship, by a master storyteller.
120. Hyperbole and a Half - Allie Brosh. Reread
121. Killing is my Business - Adam Christopher. Second in the L.A. trilogy
122. Venomous - Christie Wilcox. Nonfiction. Full of new vocabulary!
123. Boundless - Jillian Tamaki. Is there nothing she cannot draw/write about? So much to learn and absorb. Each page will have claw marks.
124. Half-off Ragnarok - Seannan McGuire. Third in the incryptid series.
125. The Old Guard, book 1: Opening Fire - Greg Rucka & Leandro Fernandez. Good. I seem to be reading horror comics a lot. Makes my life look less sad.
126. True Story #11 79 - Brian Broome. Sad, disturbing.
127. Wynonna Earp book 1: Homecoming - Beau Smith & Lori Innes. Waiting for season 3 of the tv show.
128. I Can’t Make This Shit Up - Kevin Hart. Maybe it was my mood, but I found this more sad than funny.
129. The Iscariot Sanction - Mark A. Latham. Like his last book, I feel I am missing character motivation.
130. Black Magick issues 6-9 - Greg Rucka & Nicola Scott. Individual issues now. 
131. Angel Catbird volume 1 - Margaret Atwood & Johnny Christmas. Good. A little on the facile side.
132. Monstress: Vol 2 The Blood - Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda. Still awe inspiring.
133. The Bookbinder’s Daughter - Jane Glatt. Magic, hidden knowledge, weird curses and river people.
134. Becoming Unbecoming - Una. Captivating. Disturbing.
135. Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun - Sarah Ladipo Manyika. I really liked this one. Read it in one sitting, I couldn’t pull away.
136. Lost Property - Andy Poyiadgi. Cute short on being an artist.
137. Jane - Aline Brosh McKenna & Ramon K. Perez. Story is predictable, what with the not-subtle Jane Eyre parallels. Drawing is nice/why I picked it up.
138. The Writing Class - Jincy Willit. Good writing. I didn’t like any of the characters.
139. The Reader book one of sea of ink and gold - Traci Chee. I like that almost none of the characters are white. Good world building, though I want a larger map with all of the cities/forests/ports labeled.
140. Shockaholic - Carrie Fisher. Audio book to get me out of a tiny reading slump.
141. Bombshells United Issues 1-4 - Marguerite Bennett & Marguerite Sauvage. Recommended by my favorite comic book shop.
142. The Wicked & The Divine: The Faust Act - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie. Intriguing.
143. Standard Hollywood Depravity - Adam Christopher. Third in the series.
144. If You Could Be Mine - Sara Farizan. Sweet tale.
145. True Story #12 Spinning - Jill Christman. Sad. Why are these always so hard to read?
146. The Hanover Principles - William McDonough & Michael Braungart. Designing for sustainability.
147. The Pucelle Connection - Estelle Ryan. Sixth in a series.
148. Sparrow Alone on the Housetop - Jean James & Mary James. Mother/daughter authors. Mary is an awesome banjo player whose songs are great stories. The book is ok too. Parts are a little one-dimensional.
149. Last Will - Ron Schwab. Old west era. Too many wills. Murder. Like Cabot Cove without electricity.
150. Black Women in Sequence - Deborah Elizabeth Whaley. Fantastic. Exactly what I needed to stumble upon at the library. 
151. Lady Castle - Delilah Dawson & Ashley Woods. The women take over the castle and support each other and the monsters they face. Adorable really.
152. Stumptown - Greg Rucka and Matthew Southland. A good PI story. 
153. The Wicked & The Divine: Fandemonium - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie. I like the theory of “just because you are immortal doesn’t mean you can’t die.” So many possibilities....
154. The Fainting Room - Sarah Pemberton Strong. Former circus performer and her architect husband take in a troubled boarding school teen for the summer. Better than I expected.
155. Alice - Christina Henry. Dark. Wonderland character names, magic, murder and insanity.
156. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter - Theodora Goss. Moves a little slow. Like we know you are using characters from other stories, stop trying to make it surprising. Describe what they are wearing and move on.
157. Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough & Michael Braungart. More sustainable design. Preachy. Oblivious to their first world privileged view point.
158. Going Into Town - Roz Chast. I have decided that all I ever need to know about New York/Manhattan is in this book.
159. Rose Madder - Stephen King. I’ve never actually read a novel of his before. Short stories, yes. His book On Writing, yes. Got bored around p.200. Didn’t finish it
160. The Unquiet Grave - Sharyn McCrumb. Intertwined stories. I really liked one and not the other. Unfortunately, the author downplayed the one I was interested in, and eventually subsumed it all together.
161. The Tick (2017) #1 - Cullen Bunn & Jimmy Z. Another reboot. All the sass I remember.
162. Scales & Scoundrels #1-3 - Sebastian Girner & Galaad. Fun adventure story. I like that I have trouble discerning the gender of the characters just by what they are wearing. Like life really.
163. The Mystery Society: The Definitive Edition - Steve Niles & Fiona Staples. I think I picked up the first several issues in VA, but never found them out west to finish up. Glad I have now.
164. Chasing Portraits - Elizabeth Rynecki. Nice premise. Great-granddaughter looks for info about painting ancestor. Images reminiscent of other impressionists. The story bits lean toward the saccharin.
165. How to Murder Your Life - Cat Marnell. The writing is really good. The full character of the narrator comes through warts and all. The subject matter made me want to use sandpaper on the inside of my skull. Repeatedly.
166. Creative NonFiction #65 Science & Religion 
167. Everything Was Goodbye - Gurjinder Basram. I like this one. I don’t personally agree with the decisions made based on culture over feeling, but then I’m not a 1st generation immigrant. It is nice to be in the head of one for a while.
168. New People - Danzy Senna. The former suite-mate of a friend of mine. I saw her read a couple of years ago. Mellifluous voice. Good writing. I like this story better than the last one I read.
169. Rabbit Run - John Updike. I picked it up from a little free box while walking the dog. I think I was thinking of John Irving when I nabbed it. Writing is still good even if it not what I expected.
170. Infectious Madness - Harriet A. Washington. Looking at how bacteria and viruses can cause what are thought of as genetic diseases. Fascinating. A little creepy. All true.
171. The Wicked & The Divine: Commercial Suicide - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie. Having a hard time remembering which character goes with which name. Found a website to help. Will likely reread.
172. Grandville: Force Majeure - Bryan Talbot. The forth or fifth book with Inspector LeBrock.
173. Coco Butternut - Joe R. Lansdale. Found this novella at the library. Turns out it is the funniest, down-to-earth mystery I have read in a really long time. Add this guy to your list of authors to read!
174. The Last Librarian - Brandt Legg. Post-apocalyptic utopian/dystopian tale. A few world building disconnects. Character from whose point of view the book is from dies 50 pages from the end leading to another disconnect.
175. The Wicked & The Divine: Rising Action - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie. I am nearing the end of collected sets.
176. Atomic Robo Issue #1 - Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener. Fun. 16 pages is not enough to grasp the story quite yet.
177. Pocket Apocalypse - Seannan McGuire. Fourth in the Incryptid series.
178. We Were Eight Years in Power - Ta-Nehisi Coates. Essays from the Atlantic with added content. I love his writing.
179. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline. Audio book started to make a plane ride go faster. Good, though I may need it in paper form to finish.
180. Abigale Hall - Lauren A. Forry. Creepy and slightly predictable. Though connected to WWII London (one of my least favorite time/place to read about) it does it from the point of view of separated families and those lost in the cracks. Their only connection to the war is that it altered their lives without their willing participation.
181. United States Gypsum: A Company History - Tom Foley. Got it from a sales rep, but am enjoying this kind of off-the-wall history. They invented sheetrock for gosh sakes.
182. Wynonna Earp volume 2 Legends - Beau Smith. I think if I read the liner notes correctly Tim Rozen and Melanie Scrofano co-wrote some of this collection
183. The Family Trade #1-2 - Justin Jordan & Nikki Ryan. A family of assassins secretly keep the peace on a floating island nation. Awesome. Cool watercolors.
184. God Complex Dogma issue 1-2 - Paul Jenkins & Hendry Prasetya. Trying a new series. It has potential. Though the protagonist is a mopey asshole.
185. Rivers of London: Cry Fox #1 - Andrew Cartmell, Ben Aaronovitch & Lee Sullivan. I picked it out for the cover art. I intend to look for earlier stories in the same series. 
186. Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft vol.1 - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez. I’ve read others by this dynamic duo. Locke & Key has won awards and shit. About time I read some of it. 
187. Self-Reg - Stuart Shanker and Teresa Barker. Reading books that might have tips to help make my life with teenagers less of an argument-fest.
188. True Story #13 Beasts Among Us - Erica Berry.
189. Preternatural - Margaret Wander Bonanno. Really weird sci-fi. There is a writer. There are characters plotting something. They talk about the writer and what they think she knows. Who is writing whom? And why? Stays really good even through the kinda sappy ending.
190. Moresukine - Dirk Schwieger. Guy in Japan asks his readers to give him assignments for to make comics. Fun.
191. Sherlock Frankenstein and the Legion of Evil #1-2 - Jeff Lemire & David Rubin. Daughter of a vanished super hero tries to find her dad by interviewing the evil villains in prison. 
192. The Wicked & The Divine: Imperial Phase Part 1 - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie. I did not expect the first half to be more book-like and less comicky. Fun.
193. The Ultimate Guide to Raising Teens & Tweens - Douglas Haddad. This one did nothing for me.
194. Ending the Parent-Teen Control Battle - Neil Brown & Donald Saposnek. Sense of humor in that the control battle is referred to as The Beast. Has not told me anything new.
195. Panda-monium - Stuart Gibbs. Recommended by a friend. Funny. 
196. Tumbleweeds - Louis Psaltiras. A great premise by an author that does not understand segues, commas, timelines, cause/effect, or any number of other writing tools. Avoid.  
197. Icequake - Crawford Killian. Cooler than I expected, but the scale of things is hard to wrap the brain around.
198. Roots - Tara O’Connor. Nice drawing. Thought it would talk about Irish history. Was disappointed.
199. Some New Kind of Slaughter - M.Mann & David Lewis. Weird. Half a dozen water destruction stories chopped into bits and strung together in random order with no attempt at introduction or transition.
200. X’ed Out - Charles Burns. Crisp drawings. Story is weird. Glad I got it out of the library.
201. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes - Dan Egan. Not being too into fish, there were some things I didn’t know. Other bits I vaguely remember from the news when I was 5 or 6. Good writing.
202. Josephine Baker - Catel Muller and Jose-Louis Bocquet. They reduced her bisexuality to one line in a crowd scene. Hmph.
203. Norweigan By Night - Derek B. Miller. Almost a comedy of errors as an 80yo ex-marine in Norway escapes a murder scene with a 5yo Syrian boy. 
204. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore - Matthew Sullivan. Sucked me in. Hard to put down. Ending a bit predictable.
205. A Study in Scarlet Women - Sherry Thomas. Gift from a friend. First in the Lady Sherlock series.
206. The Trials of Solomon Parker - Eric Scott Fischl. I get the mod he was trying to build, but using fuck 3-4 times per sentence wears like a lack of imagination. 
207. The Life She Was Given - Ellen Marie Wiseman. I’m a sucker for a circus novel. Last chapter a disappointment. Too much, oh well that was the past forgetaboutit, have an unrealistic happy ending, bye!
208. True Story #14 The River of no Return - Debra Gwartney.
209. The Bedlam Stacks - Natasha Pulley. As good as her first. Read her books. 
210. Cthulhu, Private Investigator- Dennis Liggio. Lovecraft meets Hammett. What's not to like?1
211. Fracture - Megan Miranda. Girl dies in ice. Comes back to life. Tries to deal. Sappy and heterosexual.
212. The One Memory of Flora Banks - Emily Barr. Books about memory always make me confused about what is real and what is not. This one more so than it should’ve.
213. The Brightest Fell - Seannan McGuire. Eleventh (I think) in the series. Have you read it yet?