84, Charing Cross Road

by Helene Hanff

Why You Will Like This Book:

• These are real letters, sent back and forth between an American woman and the employees of a British bookshop during the post-WWII period.
• For book lovers especially, this is so sweet and cozy. It's filled with references to awesome books, and a proper appreciation for their covers and binding.
• And it's just a really sweet story, although a little bittersweet as well.

And Why You Might Not:

• I can't really think of any reason, especially since it's so short that it'll hardly take any of your time. I guess if you're too young to enjoy a story where nothing really happens?

Let Your Life Speak

by Parker J. Palmer

Why You Will Like This Book:

• It's beautiful, poetic, true, unusual.
• But with all this, it's very easy to read (and short).
• And I think it's ideas might be very important indeed for our modern life, where people forget their human nature.

And Why You Might Not:

• It's not Catholic, and often not specifically Christian. Some could be put off by this, because the ideas, though (I think) terribly important and true, could easily be misconstrued without the understanding of Christian moral theology.
• And that's my only criticism, because it's beautiful.

RED Book Awards 2015

So I'm really late as usual. But frankly, I don't care anymore. I'm learning to let these things go. Yay for personal growth!

Also, yay for awesome books! They are so good, that I can`t simply make do with a Top Ten (Or So) list of favourite covers or favourite books. I've got to celebrate the best of a whole bunch of different categories, and a whole bunch of different kinds of awesome. And what better way to celebrate than my very special RED Book Awards of 2015:


Favourite Central Female Character: Winter from Winter. She is literally crazy, and how often do you get YA heroines with actual mental illnesses? (It was a fictional illness caused by something in the scifi world, and I'm not sure if it represented mental issues very accurately. But I appreciated it all the same.) Unfortunately however, despite also loving her other attributes, I felt she was a little short-changed. Unlike the other Lunar Chronicle heroines, she only got one book with her point of view. And that book was taken up with so many other characters, that she didn't get nearly as much focus as I wanted her to.
Runners Up:  >>Crescent Moon "Cress" Darnel from Cress and Winter: a hacker and fellow computer-girl, plus very unique among YA heroines for her timidity and romanticism. >>Ada Byron from The Case of the Missing Moonstone: she's brilliant and strange, plus she's based off Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer and one of my heroes. >>Cinder from the Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter): a stubborn princess/mechanic who's also a cyborg. >>Knife from Knife: for her name, her tiny ferocity, her pretty hair, and the beautiful cover that goes with her book. >>Isobel Lanley from Enshadowed and Oblivion: her devotion and firmness of purpose carry you through all the vagueness and poetry of the Poe-like dreamscape she travels through. >>Agatha and Sophie from The School for Good and Evil: Agatha is terribly grumpy and insecure, and looks a bit like a female Snape; Sophie is self-assured, self-centered, and sociable; together, they complete each other.

(Also, wow, this category did so much better than last year. Eight women versus three, and all of them great.)


Favourite Central Male Character: a tie between Maia Drazhar from The Goblin Emperor and "Captain" Carswell Thorne from Scarlet, Cress, and Winter (though he was more of a secondary character in Scarlet).
Maia is an unusual male protagonist for fantasy. Introverted, compassionate, socially awkward... I can't even explain him properly, but I love him dearly. His growth into one of the best rulers his country has had is FANTASTIC.
Thorne is as opposite to Maia as you can be. He's a scoundrel and a rogue in the style of Han Solo or Mal Renolds, but his cockiness is without the kind of knowing arrogance that drives me crazy. And he's so funny.
Runners Up: >>Drizzt Do'Urden from Homeland: it's all in the struggle against his evil heritage and the awesome fighting skills. >>Alexandre, called "Sand", from The Castle Behind Thorns: I don't remember him too well by this point, but I remember loving his determination to mend things. >>Joel Saxon from The Rithmatist: I didn't love his character, but I really, really appreciated his Ravenclaw attitude and wish it appeared in so many more characters.



Favourite Secondary Female Character: Iko from Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. She is just so funny. And she's an AI. As a computer programmer, I have quite a fondness for fictional androids.
Runners Up: >>Vierna Do'Urden from Homeland: I can actually hardly remember anything about her by this point, except that she was probably the most interesting character in the book, being a great moral shade of grey. She seemed to feel actual love for people, unlike pretty much everyone else, but she was still tragically influenced by her culture's violence and hatred. >>Myrtle Sunderly, Faith's mother, from The Lie Tree:  I can hardly remember her either, unfortunately. But I found her complex and interesting as well. And there was one female on this Runner Up list, which was just too weird, so I had to add a second.

(It's interesting that this isn't nearly as awesome a set of people as the Central Female Character category.)


Favourite Secondary Male Character: The servants of the emperor from The Goblin Emperor: Deret Beshelar, Cala Athmaza, and Csevet Aisava. Beshelar and Cala are a lovely study in contrasts, both fiercely devoted to their emperor, but in such different ways. And Csevet is just awesome all on his own, so clever and dedicated. And...I'll have to read it again to remember more. I know it seems that if I liked them that much, I'd remember them. But you are not giving my lack of memory enough credit! It really is bad!
Runners Up: >>Lord Byron from The Pirates! In an Adventure With the Romantics: all the characters are hilarious and awesome in this book, but I'll use Byron to represent all of them, since particularly surprised me with his funniness. >>Lieutenant Lockwood from Illusionarium: he toed the line between being almost too much for me, and not being enough. I wanted more developed relationships with the other characters, but he was still extremely charismatic, and that made up for a lot. >>Heckleck from Tin Star: very alien, which can be a bit unusual for YA books. He was also a good enough character that the author wrote a special short story all about him, "Useless Wings". >>George Cubbins from The Hollow Boy: he's been on this list every single year so far, because he's that awesome. He has many obvious faults, like fatness and crabbiness, but they just make him more appealing to me. Plus he's delightfully sarcastic and quite Ravenclaw. These books always make me wish they could be all about him and his research, and less about the adventurous members of the group.

Favourite Ensemble: The hilarious bunch of outlaws from The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw. Each so individually funny. Each awesome in their own special way. And everything just that much better when they're interacting.
Runners Up: >>The whole gang from the Lunar Chronicles--Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter: despite the fact that I loved these people as a group (only group that  reminded me a bit of Joss Whedon's ensembles), I was a bit disappointed that they didn't appear together as a group more often. In the later books, this caused a bit of a fractured feel, because there were so many characters doing so many different things in different places.

(Not many good ensembles this year, which is sad because they're one of my favourite things to find in books/TV. I was thinking of adding the great group of ghost hunters from The Hollow Boy, but the rivalry between Lucy and Holly annoyed me a lot, and was an essential part of the group dynamics.)


Favourite Romance: Tula Bane and Tournour from Tin Star. Spoilers for the books ahead!
I have a thing for unusual romances, and the fact that Tournour was an alien was quite cool to me. Unfortunately, there was too much time spent on the love triangle, and not enough on their relationship for my taste, particularly in the sequel. But part of the reason why this annoyed me so much was because I did feel quite a lot for the two of them as a couple. Though, as is often the case with romances, I haven't totally been able to figure out why (other than the aforementioned unusualness). Perhaps it's because of the lack of passionate attraction and the presence of friendship and protection instead.
Runners Up: >>Cress Darnel and Carswell Thorne from Cress: they might have won this category except that a) I didn't like the conclusion of their romance in Winter as much as I was hoping, and b) this series has swept the awards too much, and I think other books deserve some love. But they still were adorable and very nearly won anyway. >>Maia Drazhar and Csethiro Ceredin from The Goblin Emperor: this might have won too except that it was such a tiny part of the book. But what there was, was wonderful, quiet, and complex. >>Isobel Lanley and Varen Nethers from Enshadowed and Oblivion: I didn't like the romance nearly as much as in the first book, Nevermore. So part of this is just in honour of the first book, and the elements of it that were still present in the second and third books. But I also wanted to honour Isobel's tenacity and Varen's suffering, which were displayed even more in the second and third books, and made me love their relationship despite the sad lack of time in each other's company.

(This wasn't a great year for romance. There were only two proper romances that I really felt something for, and both of those were lessened a bit for me after reading the sequels.)


Favourite Bromance: And another Lunar Chronicles/Goblin Emperor tie, between Linh Cinder and"Captain" Carswell Thorne from Scarlet, Cress, and Winter; and Maia Drazhar and his nohecharis, Deret Beshelar and Cala Athmaza, from The Goblin Emperor.
Cinder and Thorne are possibly my favourite relationship of the series. You don't get many male/female friendships between two young, attractive, and eligible people. These two end up quite a lot like siblings, with their squabbling and casual affection. I love it.
It's the growing of respect and love towards Maia by his servants that's one of my favourite things about their book. That one scene near the end... sigh. So good.
Runners Up: >>Agatha and Sophie from The School for Good and Evil: their relationship was central to this book, where other books might focus on the romance. It's rare for a friendship to be so concentrated on, and even rarer for that friendship to be female. I have had bromances with other women myself, so I appreciate it. >>Ada Byron and Mary Godwin from The Case of the Missing Moonstone: more female friendship! Both remarkably clever! And they have such great adventures together! >>Tula Bane and Heckleck from Tin Star: their relationship was the primary one for the first half of the book, and it's one of the main reasons why I liked the book so much. As a bonus, it grew from a mentor/student relationship, which is another of my favourites. They helped each other grow as people and to understand their distinct alien cultures.


Favourite World: The Goblin Emperor. This one wins by a landslide. Language, culture, politics, expressions and emotions and physicality--it's all unique and excellently built and seems as real as any actual society. I loved it so much.
Runners Up: >>The Rithmatist: I procrastinated like crazy on reading this book because the cover and description made the world-building sound boring. But it's so not! I can't explain it well except to say that it's the world-building that made me want to read everything Sanderson's ever written, and I'm not even someone whose primary focus is the world-building. >>Steelheart: The same author as The Rithmatist. Sanderson obviously has talent in this area. Superheros have been done to death recently, be he manages all these clever little twists that make the world fascinating. >>The Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter): more fun than brilliant, but so much fun. Marissa Meyer took inspiration from Firefly and "Star Wars", and you can tell (thought it is not derivative). >>The Cracks in the Kingdom: The living colours are fascinating and poetical. >>The Forever War: bleak, but really interesting. What would a war with extreme time-dilations look like?

Favourite Surprisingly Good Book: Homeland. I was so very surprised at how much I enjoyed this. I'd seen Salvatore's books all over the place, and I assumed they were what was meant when people talked about derivative fantasy. And I suppose it was a little derivative in some ways, but I enjoyed the world and some of the characters so much more than I was expecting, that I can forgive a few cliches.
Runners Up: >>Cinder: this wins over Homeland in the "Good" part, but not the "Surprising" part quite as much. I thought it was going to be standard YA fare, because it was a retelling of Cinderella, but I'd heard some really good things about the sequels. So I was surprised, but only somewhat, when this series turned out to be a lot of fun. >>Tin Star: like Cinder, I thought this was going to be more a stereotypical YA book. And there was still a love triangle that bugged me. But there was also an unusual romance I loved, some survival through learning alien cultures and setting up a trading business, and some great secondary characters. I really liked it. >>The School for Good and Evil: people said it was good. But there was just something about the cover and the presentation that turned me off, and I didn't believe them. Turns out I was quite wrong. It was lots of fun and much more well-written than I expected. (Though the sequels did lessen my enjoyment a bit.)


Favourite Book Not Getting Enough Awards: The Uninvited Guests. I actually really liked this book, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm pretty sure the cover and feel of the paperback helped a lot. But I also found the characters and the weirdness and the creepiness endearing. A strange little book, but I want to have it on my bookshelf and admire it all the same. So it deserves a bit of recognition.
Runners Up: Firefight: I liked this book almost as much as the first book, Steelheart. Sanderson is a wonderfully entertaining writer. But for some reason it didn't stand out in my memory as much, so it hasn't been mentioned in these year-end summaries. >>Gay and Catholic, Making Habits, Breaking Habits, You're Never Weird on the Internet, Arriving at Amen, Opening to God, Fluent in 3 Months, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores: the RED Awards are mostly about aspects only applicable to fiction, but I read a bunch of really great nonfiction this year, and it feels sad not to include them. So here's a small shoutout to them!


P.S. See also the previous years awards: 2013, 2014.

Top Ten (Or So): Books Read in 2015

I'm going to call 2015 "The Year of the Slightly Disappointing Sequels". Oblivion, Stone in the Sky, Winter, A World Without Princes and The Last Ever After... Most of them weren't bad--in fact, some, like Winter, were quite enjoyable and I read them at a break-neck pace. But all of them lessened my excitement of the series to a certain extent, changing it from one I'd want to run out and recommend to everyone to one I still liked, but that was tinged with a slight "meh" feeling.

Amazing fanart by shiftingpath of one of my new favourite books

And yet, it was a pretty good year all together. I found a couple new books to add to my all-time favourites (see illustration to right). I found a new author--Brandon Sanderson!!--and I want to devour every single thing he wrote. I spent many hours on blogs and Goodreads, finding new reading avenues to explore based off my favourites from this year (lots of adult speculative fiction and religious non-fiction coming up next year, I think*). Any disappointment comes not from it being a bad reading year, but just not being the best year ever!!, which at one point during the year, I thought it might be.

Anyway, partly because of this, I only have six real favourites. Which isn't enough for a top ten list, so I added the best of the runner ups. They were still great, great books, sometimes more enjoyable for me in some ways than the ones I actually chose as favourites. Plus, my opinions are so fluid and difficult to pin down that by the time I write next year's top ten list, my favourites could all have moved around. (In fact, I'm already starting to think of some changes already... but it's too late now! I have to stick with something eventually.)

So without further ado, in sort-of approximate order from least to most favourite, are some of the best books I read in 2015:

Section Three--the "probably should have been in the runner up section, except I needed more main entries" section:

--The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell. A beautiful children's book that made me want to take up blacksmithing. It's about mending things: physically, mentally, emotionally... Although a little slow at first, once I got into it, it was just lovely.

--Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci. Super fun YA scifi. Really liked the heroine, Thula, and her survival among the many alien cultures of the space station was gripping. Plus, there was a somewhat surprising romance that I actually liked!

--Arriving at Amen by Leah Libresco. The only reason why this isn't in Section One or Two is because I've heard many of the ideas she writes about here on her blog as well. So my enjoyment of it was not quite as high. They are splendid ideas, though, so well suited to me in particular, and to any pretty geeky Catholic who is trying to become more awesome. Plus it has an amazing cover.

--Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. The twists are great, from the central conceit (all superheros are evil) to all the (spoilery) twists on tropes that happen throughout the book. Sanderson gets at the reasons behind things and either explains or subverts them in a way I haven't quite seen before in this kind of book. Plus it's just written in a really entertaining style. (Artwork to the left from squeegood on DeviantArt.)

--Opening to God: A Guide to Prayer by Thomas H. Green, S.J. Practical but deep, a book that made a distinct and positive difference to my life. Fr. Green was a spiritual director for a long time, and it shows. I would recommend this to any practising Catholic looking to really start their spiritual life.


Section Two--the section with my actual favourites of the year:

--The Pirates! In an Adventure With the Romantics by Gideon Defoe. Soooo funny. Seriously, this is one of the funniest series I've read. Plus you get all those awesome Romantics as characters (Lord Byron!).

--Gay and Catholic by Eve Tushnet. Friendship has always been something I've loved to read about, and this is not so much about homosexuality (although it is a lot about that too) as it is about community and friendship. An important book, I think! No matter what their relationship status, humans need community, and modern times isn't very good at providing it.

The amazing Lunar Chronicle characters, from lostie815 on DeviantArt

--Cress by Marissa Meyer. The Lunar Chronicles series was such immense amounts of fun, and I think this was my favourite. Cinder and Scarlet and Winter were great, but Cress had the hilarious faux-captain Thorne, unlike Cinder, and the adorable hacker Cress, unlike Scarlet, and the not quite as overwhelmingly large a cast of main characters as Winter.

--The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson. The lack of hand-waving when it comes to the magic system is so refreshing. He actually tries to make it make sense! And not boring! At the same time! There is a love of knowledge at the heart of this book and of many of the characters that I adore. Plus the writing is very gripping and entertaining. I can't wait to read everything else Sanderson has written.

Just one of many cool and informative illustrations found in The Rithmatist

Section One--the new additions to my all-time favourites:

--This Is How You Die ed. by Ryan North. Also including The Machine of Death, because they're basically two volumes of the same book. TIHYD is the one officially listed, though, because I found it more inventive and twisty than the first. But both are fabulous. These are short stories of my favourite sort, playing off a single idea in as many different ways as possible. What with To Be or Not to Be's co-win last year, Ryan North is obviously now someone I have to read as much as possible.

The Dinosaur Comic by Ryan North that started it all

--The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. This book is so good. So, so, so good. I can't even... The main character and his growth, the secondary characters and their relationships, the language, the politics, just everything. This easily became one of my favourite all-time books, and will gladly recommend it to almost anyone.


Runners Up (In No Order Whatsoever and Possibly Missing Some Good Ones Because I'm Really, Really Bad at Making Up My Mind)
--Fluent in 3 Months. Helpful, easy to read, inspiring; about the fascinating thing that is language.
--The Case of the Missing Moonstone. Young Ada Lovelace! Young Mary Shelley! Adventures!
--The Uninvited Guests. Weirdly appealing. Also just weird in general.
--The School for Good and Evil. Female friendship and backwards fairytales.
--Homeland. Dark but interesting world and some surprisingly complex characters.
--The Forever War. A gritty and realistic look at the horrors of interstellar war.
--Making Habits, Breaking Habits. So much useful information.

P.S. See also the Top Ten (Or So) lists from previous years: 2012, 2013, 2014.

* In fact, weirdly enough, I'd thought I'd read so much adult speculative fiction this year as well. Till I looked at the list of books and realized how many children's and YA scifi/fantasy there were. I think the fact that I'd done so much Goodreads research mixed up my brain somehow.

Top Ten (Or So): Covers of Books Read in 2015

I love book covers. A really good one makes me very tempted to buy the book, even if I already own it. Even if I already own it with that very same cover. And if they are beautiful or unique and fit the beautiful and unique content inside, they fill my heart with warmth and pleasure.

So here they are--in only approximate order--favourite to least favourite, the best covers of the books I read in 2015. These first three are in a group by themselves: my favourite favourites. They are all pretty much equal in my mind, and the ordering is basically random. (Note that I am not in any way an artist or designer or anything, so these are based purely on what I like in book covers.)

Arriving at Amen. It's a rosary in the shape of an atom superimposed on a galaxy. What combination could possibly be better? Plus I just really like the colour scheme.

As you can tell by Knife, by Arriving at Amen above, and by a couple covers mentioned below, I have a tendency to like more monochromatic and minimal covers, especially when they're blue. Add to that the fierce but delicate stance of the title character, and you get an awesome cover indeed.

There is just such distinctiveness in Cinder's cover: the striking single image, made more striking by the eye-catching red shoe; the faint strangeness of the mechanical insides that you don't see until looking closer; the vaguely steampunk feel given by the single-word title text. I always noticed this cover in stores or blogs, and it's simplicity appealed to me. Note: I am including a nod to the rest of the series here as well (Scarlet, Cress, and Winter), because the series as a whole has has a lovely consistency in colour scheme and noticeability (Scarlet especially).


Now here are the rest, which are also really good, but distinctly not as enjoyable to me as the first three. But like the first three, they are fairly equal in preference to each other, the ordering depending more on mood than anything else.

Another favourite kind of cover, besides monochromatic ones, are covers with well-depicted character illustrations. The first two books in this series were on the favourite cover lists of their perspective years, and The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw follows their lead. All the characters are so decidedly themselves and so different from each other, and it just looks so fun. The same artist illustrated the inside of the book as well, and it was one of my favourite parts of reading this series.

Steelheart is another beautifully monochromatic cover, but in grey this time. I also love the contrast the bit of blue/green text makes with the grey, and the swirly bits with the more angular buildings. It looks really nice beside the other Sanderson books by same publisher. (I bought this from the UK Amazon despite heavy shipping fees, because Sanderson's UK covers are WAY better than the US ones.)

The horse, the cloak and dress, the golden sunlight, the dragon in the distance. Handbook for Dragon Slayers is the kind of illustrated cover I love.

The light!! The Castle Behind Thorns cover is all about that beautiful, golden sunlight for me. Although the illustration is very nicely drawn in a similar way to the other Merrie Haskell book above (I'm presuming it's same artist), Handbook for Dragon Slayers has more interesting content and this one has the best light.

The Hollow Boy cover is creepy in a good way and has nice shades of green. I like the image of the pale mask sitting on the chains. It also makes a lovely set with the previous books in the series.

I'm not sure if the cover of The Goblin Emperor appeals to me aesthetically very much (thus being last on the list), but it is definitely a distinctive and interesting cover. Like Cinder, it would always pop out at me in bookstores or the internet. I like how heavy the weight of the city-crown looks, and the goblin underneath it, mostly hidden and peeking out.

Runners Up (in No Particular Order): The Forever War because of the light and the green and the single person who stands out in a lonely way; The Machine of Death because it's interesting and makes you wonder what on earth the book is like; Cruel Beauty because I like how the rose melds into the stairs, and also the swirly shape of them; A Wicked Thing because, even though I don't normally like covers with real, non-illustrated girls in frilly princess dresses, something about the colour scheme really appeals to me; Gone Girl because it's one of the only movie tie-in covers I've ever liked the look of; Illusionarium because of the clockwork around the edges and the pretty clothes and how nicely it fits with Heather Dixon's other book, Entwined; The Uninvited Guests because... well, actually, I have no clue why I liked it, I just know I really liked that part of the experience of reading it (similar to my feeling on the book itself, actually); Making Habits, Breaking Habits because it's clean cut and has that little, lone, orange juice at the bottom-right.

P.S. See also my previous lists: 2012, 2013, 2014.

Making Habits, Breaking Habits

by Jeremy Dean

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Full of lots of helpful ideas & thoughts to get you to effectively change your life.
• But unlike many "self help" style books, this is backed up with many, many scientific studies.

And Why You Might Not:

• Sometimes he presents the studies in a way that is too generalized for my taste. (Academic studies are often misread in this way, I find. People misunderstand how specific these sorts of results are supposed to be.)

To Hold the Bridge

by Garth Nix

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Charter magic! Gloriously competent bridgemistresses! Beings of terrible power! Sherlock Holme's odd cousin! An annoyingly invasive Rapunzel!
• Basically, a collection of short stories both original and fun, with some fascinating worlds and splendid characters.

And Why You Might Not:

• There are a lot of stories in this book, and sometimes reading too many short stories by the same author in a row makes each story loose its distinction.
• Some individual stories were less good or enjoyable than others, of course, although you'll get that in any decently large collection like this.