Books read in January 2018

[nou]

I decided to start listing books I've read here, so here's the first batch. (I was previously doing this over at bitesizedreading but decided I wanted an easier way of referring back — I thoroughly recommend the community though).

I'm not writing reviews or even mini-reviews, but just stating whether I'd recommend the book (yes/maybe/no), whether I decided not to finish it (DNF), whether it's a re-read, and whether I have any content warnings (cw). Please don't take the content warnings as definitive — most of them are done from memory and I may have forgotten some.

Recommend:

• Provenance, Ann Leckie
• Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
• Carry On, Rainbow Rowell
• A Matter Of Oaths, Helen S Wright

Maybe recommend:

• The Martian, Andy Weir
• git commit murder, Michael Warren Lucas (cw: fatphobia)
• Remnant Population, Elizabeth Moon
• Clocktaur Boys, T Kingfisher
• The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Meg Elison (cw: rape)
• My Dear Aunt Flora, Elizabeth Cadell
• Redemption In Indigo, Karen Lord (cw: eating disorder)
• Bethany, Adam Roberts
• An Unkindness Of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (DNF)
• The Small House At Allington, Anthony Trollope (re-read) (cw: racism)
• The Unbearable Bassington, Saki (re-read) (cw: child abuse, racism/colonialism)
• All These Earths, F M Busby (re-read)

Wouldn’t recommend:

• Past Mortems, Carla Valentine (DNF) (cw: fatphobia)
• All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai
• The Basilisk Murders, Andrew Hickey
• How To Understand Your Gender, Alex Iantaffi and Meg-John Barker (DNF)
• Tomb Of The Fathers, Eleanor Arnason (re-read)

Comments

[fred_mouse]

the title git commit murder had me snortling loud enough to get a Look from the person sitting next to me. (I have recently discovered git, and oh, I wish I'd been using it for years)

[nou]

It's a great title :) And quite a frustrating book, since I'd have loved it if it hadn't been for the main character's (completely unnecessary) internalised fatphobia.

I see git as the least worst version control system. It's certainly an improvement over its predecessors, but it's not exactly the most user-friendly thing I've ever used.

[fred_mouse]

I'd be tempted by it, if it weren't the fatphobia aspect. I'm so over all the -isms in crime fiction, to the point that while I love the genre, I don't read it any more, because nothing recent I've tried has been the kind of escapist reading I'm looking for (I stick with Agatha Christie, where at least I can write off the -isms as 'historical colour' and 'period appropriate').

Git is a great improvement on what I was doing before, and so useful in terms of looking at what my predecessor had done, at least on the documents that they had in git (it turned out that about 50% of the files I need were in git -- it took more than 2 weeks to find that out, if I count the time on the previous contract that was focused on one section of what the current contract is).

E.T.A. -- the thing about git is that once I worked out what the underlying ideas were, most of what I needed to be able to do was already in my head, because I've been working with unix-like syntax for most of the last decade.

[nou]

I'm pondering emailing the author to point this out, since he seems quite open to (sensible) feedback. The fatphobia could have been completely removed without affecting the plot at all. I do like his writing in general, and I'd like to be able to read more of it.