Happy Belated New Year!

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago to post in mid-January – and it had been a while since I had finished the books then….  Some parts of my life just feel as though I am wading through quickly drying mud.  A couple of weeks ago, I was going to title this posting as un-commonalities.  I like procrastination better because it’s actually a word.

What do Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, Cleopatra: a Life by Stacy Schiff, Fair Game by Patricia Briggs, and Alien Proliferation by Gini Koch have in common? Not much – as far as I can tell.

Three of them have women as main characters; two of them are science fiction.

The one thing that they have in common is that they were all read by me in past couple of months.  While I enjoyed Pirate Cinema immensely, I found myself reading it more slowly.  It seemed to take me a long time to get through it.  I was reading it at the same time as Cleopatra – which I struggled to finish in time for the book discussion.  It was a good book, but I could not read it quickly.  In retrospect, I should have tried the audio version.

The audio version of Fair Game was excellent.  I love Holter Graham’s take on the character’s voices – especially for Charles and the new character, Isaac.  And I love where Briggs is taking the series.  And the downloading process was painless – well mostly.  I have an older ipod, so I had to “manually manage” the process.  When I went to do this, I realized that itunes had changed dramatically since the last time I’d looked at it and it took me a while to find the box I needed to check.  After that, it downloaded smoothly.

Fair Game

By Patricia Briggs

Publisher & Year: Penguin Group US, 2012

Series: Alpha & Omega; 3

Format: Audio download

ISBN: 9781101538579

Audience: Adult

Duration: 9:58:09 {HH:mm:ss}

Setting:  Boston, MA

Time period: Contemporary

I think Pirate Cinema is a book that I’ll be thinking about for a while.  The story was realistically gritty with compelling characters.  It’s a wake-up call to change  copyright laws.  [sigh]  Things might not be quite as bad as they are in Doctorow’s story, yet.  They sure seem like they are headed that way, though.

Pirate Cinema

By Cory Doctorow

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Tor Teen, 2012

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780765329080

Audience: YA

Number of pages: 384

Setting:  London, England

Time period: Sometime in the future (25-40 yrs.)

The one thing that sticks with me the most from Cleopatra is – how does one lose a head?  I think it was Brutus’ head which was being brought back from a battle as a trophy object.  Apparently, it went missing somewhere along the journey back to Rome.  It fell off a pack horse and nobody wanted to touch it?  Stolen for some sinister purpose?  Fell into the hands of someone with a grudge?  Who knows?  I’m glad I’m not living during Cleopatra’s time.  Brutal time period.

Cleopatra: a Life

By Stacy Schiff

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2010

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780316001922

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 347

Setting:  Alexandria, Egypt, Rome, Italy and other locations around the Mediterranean.

Time period: 51-30 BC

Alien Proliferation was as funny and outrageously over the top as the previous books had been.  In this story, Kitty gives birth, learns she’s a mutant, and saves the world (again). It’s a fun series with lots of action, sex, humor, and heavy metal music.

Alien Proliferation

By Gini Koch

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Daw Books, Inc., 2011

Series: Alien Novels; 4

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780756406974

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 466

Setting:  Washington DC, Paris, France

Time period: Contemporary