My year in books 2014

As I usually do at this time of year, I decided to review my year of reading in 2014, what books I've loved, what books I haven't etc. First thing I noticed is that it wasn't a big year for reading for me, only about 25 books read which I'm sure is half my total from 2013. I also picked up and put down a few more books this year. I think this represents general busyness rather than anything else.

I read quite a mix of books during the year, no surprise there but weren't all my usual type of books. I'll look at them genre by genre.

Sci-fi/Fantasy

My most read author of the year was Alastair Reynolds. I finished off his Revelation Space trilogy with 'Absolution Gap', and also read the companion book of short stories: Galactic North. I've also read the first two books in his Poseidon's Children trilogy (the third one is out in early 2015). My favourite book of his read this year though, and a contender for my book of the year was 'House of Suns'. Set in the far future, this was a brilliant, action packed and yet thoughtful and evocative book. It doesn't get much better than that.

I also read the first book in Peter F Hamilton's new duology, 'The Abyss Beyond Dreams', which was excellent. Also went to a book signing and talk in Liverpool, which was really really interesting and the first time I've met him. Really looking forward to the sequel.

Also in science fiction, I read 'Songs of Distant Earth' by Arthur C Clarke, a good classic novel, but quite slow and not anywhere near as good as say The City and the Stars. Also in the classic science fiction line, I read 'Dune' by Frank Herbert for the first time and have to say it was very good.

I've not read much fantasy in a long time, but I'm currently reading the first book in the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, and finding it a really good read.

I've also read a few science fiction short stories this year, but I've picked and chosen rather than reading whole anthologies (except for the Alistair Reynolds one noted above).

Contemporary

I only actually read one that I'd class as contemporary fiction, and that was 'Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore' by Robin Sloan. This is something of a book for geeks, being a mixture of really old books, secret societies and lots of stuff about Google and the internet. Really enjoyed this one.

Classics

I opted for the shorter classics this year, reading 'The Great Gatsby' by F Scott Fitzgerald. It was an interesting read, and did capture the late gilded age quite well. I wouldn't say it was a book I enjoyed, but then again I'm not sure I was supposed to.

I also read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens just before Christmas. I know the story of course (who doesn't?) but had never read the book before. I really enjoyed it, and found it quite witty in tone, which I wasn't expecting.

It should be noted here that I started reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller but gave up a few chapters in. I get that it is an important book, but I just couldn't be bothered. It is a long book and would have been a slog. I read for enjoyment, and this wouldn't have been enjoyable for me.

Non-fiction

I'm reading a lot less non-fiction than I used to, but did read several excellent non-fiction books this year. They were:

'Down Under' by Bill Bryson about his exploration of Australia and its history. This is Bill Bryson at his best, funny yes, but very informative. I learned a lot, laughed a fair bit and enjoyed every minute of it. It got the right balance for me, as if I don't learn much from one of his books, I find it quite empty. This though was great.

'Cider with Rosie' by Laurie Lee. Classic memoir of a young boy growing up in a Cotswold village in the early 20th century, before the modern world intervened. Beautiful writing, and a window into a world lost forever.

'Ancient Rome' by Simon Baker. The only non-fiction history book I read this year. I've been interested in Ancient Rome for a while, and this gave a really good telling of the various different Emperors, right up the the fall of the Roman Empire. Fascinating stuff but an easy read too.

'Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different' by Karen Blumenthal. A short biography, very interesting. I like tech and business history. No doubt much less comprehensive than Walter Isaacson's definitive biography (indeed it references and quotes this book often), but so much quicker to read!

Historic fiction

I started out by reading 'A Gathering Light' by Jennifer Donnelly which is a (somewhat) literary historic novel, based around a murder that took place in New York state around the turn of the 20th century, but also a young woman's coming of age story. It was recommended by my wife, and I really enjoyed it, which shifted my reading interests a little. I went on to read two Tracy Chevalier books 'The Last Runaway' about a young Quaker woman who goes to live in America, and 'Remarkable Creatures' about Mary Anning, a real life fossil hunter from Lyme Regis. Both really good books, really evocative of history. These introduced me to a different (and better) kind of historic fiction than I'm used to.

I also then read 'The Remains of the Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro, a truly amazing book about a butler in an old English country house (think Carson from Downton Abbey). Another contender for book of the year.

Also read 'Crocodile on the Sandbank' by Elizabeth Peters, the first in her Amelia Peabody series set in the late 19th/early 20th century. Light reading but quite enjoyable.

Oh and then there was Longbourn by Jo Baker, basically Pride and Prejudice but told from the perspective of a servant girl. Interesting, decent read.

Crime/thriller

Last but not least are crime thrillers of which I read several. 'First Daughter' by Eric Van Lustbader was a Kindle Unlimited read, which I really enjoyed. Would definitely read more about this character, federal agent Jack McLure. Also read Jack Reacher book 18 'Never go Back' by Lee Child. A good solid read, but not as good as his early books. Then there was 'Indigo Slam' by Robert Crais which is a decent Elvis & Cole novel but confess I don't remember any more about.

So that's a whirlwind tour of the books I've read this year. A lot of good books, and one or two outstanding ones. I expanded my reading tastes to include some literary books, particularly literary historical fiction which I enjoyed far more than I expected to.

Top three books of the year are:

'House of Suns' by Alastair Reynolds
'Remains of the Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro
'Down Under' by Bill Bryson

Later, I might look ahead to what I want to read in 2015. But that's it for now.

Blogging re-boot

Well I've been singularly useless at the whole blogging thing recently. When I see recently I mean like the last two months, since my last post was on 1st November. In my defence, I've had two of the busiest months ever for one reason or another, a lot of it to do with work. However I'm bang in the middle of two weeks off, so if I can't write a post now, I might as well give up permanently.

My last post (on 1st November believe it or not) was about a November writing challenge I set myself. Unfortunately I didn't achieve quite what I set out to, but the good news is that I did decidedly better than I did with blogging. I set myself the goal of four short stories during November. I actually wrote two, or three if you count the one I wrote at the end of October. Two were science fiction, one was a historical short story, set during the Christmas Truce of World War One, a hundred years ago this Christmas. That one was for a Daily Express short story competition. I didn't win, obviously, but it motivated me to write and finish in a short time scale, and actually edit and finish it, something I don't always manage. I might publish on here, or share the link, not decided yet though...

So what am I hoping to do with my Blog re-boot? Well it is coming up to New Year, and along with 'Being Less Busy' (which will give me more time to write) one of my resolutions is going to be to write more which includes my blog. Topics will probably vary, as is common with me but include my main areas of interest including books, science fiction, history, science, travel, knowledge & information generally, and also a bit of board gaming... I might do a bit of bookspotting too, as I do really enjoy that, but it is quite time consuming, researching all the books, writing and linking all of the posts etc.

I'm also not going to worry too much about really long or polished posts too, which should mean I post more, but also means I'm off for now. See you tomorrow probably. Byeeeee!

A November Writing Challenge

Sorry for the long delay - almost a month - since my last post. It's been kind of a busy October, packed weekends and my boss at week taking a three weeks off for a Caribbean Cruise leading me to be rather busy. Hopefully November should be different though...

I've done quite a bit of writing over the last few years, articles, blog posts and the like, but I haven't done any fiction writing for more than five years. It was a decision I took because I was mostly reading non-fiction at the time, and so writing non-fiction made most sense. However these days I'm mostly reading fiction, and I've been itching to get back to having a go at fiction again. It's November, and so I could do NanoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, for anyone that doesn't know, is a writing challenge each year where you aim to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. However, I don't think it is the best starting point for a return to fiction writing. Even if I achieved it, I'd have a half finished, really crap novel. I don't have any illusions about this. I wasn't a particularly good writer of fiction in the first place, I'm sure I'm a lot worse now. But with practice I can get better - I hope.

So for this November, I'm doing my own challenge. I'm going to try and write four short stories this month, one a week. Each story will probably be between two and five thousand words. This will help me get back into writing, and if by some chance I think any of them are half decent I can always submit them for publication (otherwise I'll probably just publish them on here). I've got a few ideas, but I've not fixed on all the stories to write yet, except that a couple of them will be science fiction, one or two won't be. I'm planning the first now, hopefully will start writing tomorrow. It's a historical fiction story for a competition. More details soon.

Bookspotting... A New Approach

Previously when I've wanted to do a spot of Bookspotting, I've set out in a morning to spot books and not seen ANY at all. But when I don't have time for a lengthy bookspotting post I see loads. So now I've got an Amazon 'wishlist' just for bookspotting so whenever I spot a book I go on my phone and add to the list straight away. I just hope no one looks on this list when buying me Christmas presents because not all are to my taste. Anyway, I've been doing this for a bit now and have enough for at least a couple of decent posts. So I'll start at the beginning...

Oh and if you're new to Bookspotting, here's my first bookspotting post which describes what it's all about.

'The Lives of Stella Bain' by Anita Shreve. I've not heard of the book before, but I have heard of the author. She used to be one of my mum's favourite authors (and my wife's as has just been pointed out), and I've bought more than one of her books as birthday or Christmas presents. I've asked my wife, Kate, and she describes Anita Shreve's books as 'evocative' and categorises them as women's fiction. They tend to either be set in the present or in a recent historical (i.e. 20th century) setting. The Lives of Stella Bain, published last year, is her first book since 2010. It features the title character Stella Bain, who has lost her memory after the trauma of surviving WW1 battlefields in northern France. A quote on the front cover describes the book as "Part Downton Abbey, part Atonement and part something else altogether."

'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro was next up. A hardback copy interestingly, despite having been out many years. I've only read one book by Ishiguro (Remains of the Day), but am keen to read more. This book is set in alternative present day (well, 1990s) England, part science ficiton but written by a master of literary fiction. This book was - deservedly by all accounts - shortlisted for the Booker Prize but is very readable and has received popular acclaim.

'Mercy' by Jussi Adler-Olsen is next, a book until now I'd never heard of. From the name of the author I guessed it was one of a growing crowd of Scandinavian imports and I was right as it is straight out of the Danish bestseller lists. 'Mercy' is the first in a series of 'Department Q' novels, following Detective Carl Morck (there should be a sort of accent thingy, but not sure if Blogger supports Danish letters...). He's been taken off homicide to run a newly created unsolved crimes unit (it's amazing how many literary detectives this happens to isn't it?). The book gets really good reviews and ratings on Amazon, and if you like police procedurals and Scandinavian crime this is definitely one to check out.

Clive Cussler is a name that has been on the bookshelves in your local bookshop/library for decades already, and appears to be still going strong. He is an American author who writes adventure novels and thrillers, while at the same time being a marine archeologist responsible for helping find over 60 shipwreck sites worldwide. Many of his books are maritime adventures which use his knowledge and experience of marine archeology, while also being considered techno thrillers with some alternate history elements. The book of his I spotted was 'The Thief' which is the fifth book in the 'Isaac Bell' series, featuring an early 20th century private investigator. While historical, it apparently features its fair share of cutting edge gadgets including telegraph, telephone and airplanes! 'The Thief' was co-written by Justin Scott, a prolific author in his own right.

Lastly for now is 'First Daughter' by Eric Van Lustbader. I first remember Eric Van Lastbader from my days of reading mostly fantasy fiction, but these days he's firmly in the thriller category, particularly known for taking over from the late Robert Ludlum and writing new Jason Bourne novels. In 'First Daughter' Jack McClure is a federal agent grieving after his daughter was killed in a tragic accident. When his daughter's best friend is kidnapped he is asked to help find her by the girls father... who is just weeks away from becoming President of the United States. This is the first in a series of political thrillers featuring Jack McClure. If you like books by David Baldacci, you'll probably like these books. And this book is available for free on Kindle Unlimited, in the UK at least, so I may just check it out.

Thank You Jeeves

If anyone follows me on Goodreads, they'll notice I've been quite lax recently and not posted any reviews of books I've recently read which is unlike me so it's time to play catch up.

I've never read any Jeeves & Wooster books before, or anything by P.G. Wodehouse and I've long thought this is a gap in my reading landscape which needed correcting. So I did my research and discovered that 'Thank You Jeeves' is the first full length Jeeves & Wooster novel published, so opted for that one. There'd been lots of short stories written before, but bypassed them for now as I tend to prefer novels.

For anyone who's not heard of Jeeves & Wooster, they are the main characters in a series of comedy books by P.G. Wodehouse. Jeeves is an extremely efficient, intelligent and long suffering butler to Bertie Wooster an upper class English gentleman of average intelligence and below average common sense.

'Thank You Jeeves' starts off with Wooster annoying the hell out of everyone with his latest obsession of playing the banjo. He gets told to leave his apartment as he is regularly disturbing the neighbours, and much worse, his butler Jeeves hands in his notice as he can't stand the banjo playing either. Wooster thinks he'll manage fine without Jeeves, but is soon more in need of him that ever when his former fiance suddenly reappears in his life, and a series of scrapes and mix ups ensue.

I enjoyed my first foray into Jeeves & Wooster. The inevitable disasters which befall Wooster are comical, even a bit farcical, as are some of the ways he manages to get out of them, usually with Jeeves help (even though Jeeves isn't in his employ for much of the book). I got on with it a lot better than I do with most 'comic fiction'. Wodehouse writes really well, never quite falling into the downright silly category, and there is good description and setting, interesting characters and a plot that mostly hangs together okay. My only criticism of it was that perhaps it was a little bit long. Now it isn't a long book by most standards, less than 300 pages, but there were a couple two many plot twists and the joke was starting to wear slightly thin in places. I always find comedic fiction feels a little longer than other books as the plot doesn't carry the reader through in the same way, maybe that's just me.

So the slight length issue aside, I really enjoyed this. I will definitely read more Jeeves & Wooster, possibly by reading some of the short story collections. I can see why Wodehouse wrote so many, as Jeeves & Wooster probably suit this length of story best.

Kindle Unlimited Comes to the UK

This week Amazon launched their Kindle Unlimited service in the UK, so I thought I'd take it out for a spin and see if it is any good?

So what is it? Kindle Unlimited is a kind of Netflix (or LoveFilm/Amazon Prime Video) for books. Subscribers can read as many books as they want for no extra charge after they've paid their subscription from a large selection in the Kindle Unlimited library (over 650,000 according to Amazon). You can get a free 30 day trial, and then it costs £7.99 per month.

Other companies, such as Scribd, have tried the subscription book model, but Amazon has the whole Kindle ecosystem to back it up, with millions of people already reading on their devices and apps. There's also a tasty extra in the form of Audio narration on some books, with Whispersync for audio as standard on these.

Hey, back up a minute. Whisper-what? Basically Whispersync is Amazon's own system whereby if you are reading a Kindle book on multiple devices, it will automatically sync to the latest page you are on, even if you most recently read the book on a different device. This is really good for when you don't have your Kindle with you and want to read for a few minutes on your phone when in the queue. Providing you've got an internet connection (Wi-fi or 3G), it works flawlessly.

Whispersync for audio takes this a step further. Say you've got the Kindle version of a book and the online audiobook version from Audible.co.uk (another Amazon company), you can listen for a few minutes on Audio, then switch back to the Kindle version to read it. Ideal for driving to work when you just have to know what happens next.  Now most people aren't going to buy two copies of a book just so they can do this. This, in theory anyway, is the great thing about Kindle Unlimited. If the book is labeled as 'Kindle Unlimited with Audio Narration' you get the Kindle book AND the audiobook to read free as part of your subscription.

I decided to give this a go. I chose 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel. It was marked as Kindle Unlimited with Audio Narration. So far so good. I clicked 'Read and Listen for free', which immediately downloaded it onto my Kindle. After loading up the Audible app on my phone I noticed that it had appeared at the top of there too (Although I'm not a current subscriber I have used Audible in the past - if you haven't you can download an Audible app for free from your device's app store). Superb. I started listening to the book while doing the washing up, then migrated to the sofa when I'd finished. Turning off Audible, I picked up my Kindle, selected the book and it immediately prompted me to go to the page I was up to from the audiobook. It worked flawlessly, as did switching back to Audible on my phone later. I was impressed.

That's all very well, but content is the key. Amazon says they have over 650,000 books in the Kindle Unlimited programme, but what does that actually mean? Well it has some impressive headline books including all the Harry Potter books and the Hunger Games trilogy. The reality though is that a large proportion of the books are either classics which would be free anyway, or self-published books from Amazon's own Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. What was also disappointing is that only about 2,000 books out of the 650k have audio narration bundled in free with it.

I was pleased and surprised though to see a good selection of books by Arthur C Clarke in the program. While these don't have free audio, you can add the audio for a discounted £3.99. For the digital and audio versions, this isn't a bad price.

So all in all this is not a bad addition to Amazon's range of services. While you can't search for a book and realistically hope it will be Kindle Unlimited, you can browse a wide range of books and can try lots of new and different books for free. You can also get free or cheap audiobooks as an add on, which can only be a good thing. Will I continue with Kindle Unlimited after the free trial? I'm not sure yet, but it is certainly tempting.

Five Star Reads? Choosing up book by its ratings

Not so long ago choosing a new book to read, particularly by a new or little known author, was pot luck. You might get a good one or you might get a real dud. Even established, popular or critically acclaimed authors are no guarantee you won't get an absolute howler. You looked at a book in the bookshop, read the blurb on the back cover and maybe if you were really dedicated the first few pages. That was usually all you had to go on though, unless there'd been a review in the newspaper or a friend was recommending it. Nowadays however there is such a wealth of information - books reviewed on blogs and websites, discussion forums for like minded readers, automated recommendation tools and more. One of the biggest and best resources to help choose a book though are the millions of customer reviews and ratings available on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. You can easily see what other people thought of the book, and what the average rating of a book gets. How much does this help you choose a good book though, and how can you best use this vast resource?

On its own, a random reader's review and rating might not be as reliable as a critics review. A critic will invariably go some way towards trying to offer a balanced review, if they are reasonably competent. An ordinary reader however reviewing a book on Amazon predominantly relates their own personal review, and their tastes might be very different from your own. What elevates reader reviews and ratings over critics however is when a large number of ratings are combined. This will include a large number of readers of all types with wide variation in tastes. Together, they will form an average rating that is arguably quite a reliable barometer of the quality and enjoyability of a book.

I admit that I often look at a book's rating before choosing whether to read it. Rarely will I start reading a book without a quick check and maybe reading a review or two. As something of a veteran peruser of customer feedback, here are a few pointers to help you better use them to determine whether you might enjoy a book.

1. Safety in numbers. If there are only one or two reviews they aren't that reliable. Those reviews/ratings could be the author themselves, their wife, best friend, next door neighbour, you get the idea. Authors sometimes even pay people to write positive reviews for them. If there are a large number of reviews and ratings however, it is much harder for the author to influence and will likely contain mostly genuine reviews.
2. Pay attention to negative reviews. These can often be more helpful then glowing five star reviews, as they will often explain why the reader didn't like the book. You can then sometimes judge whether you might me likely to dislike the same things.
3. Watch out for irrelevant complaints. There are always some people, particularly on Amazon, who give a 1 star rating which has nothing to do with the actual content or story of the book. This might be a complaint against the website itself because of poor service, or perhaps because there was once a temporary glitch in the system which meant the book was mis-described. I've seen multiple one star ratings because a book was published under one title in a the USA and another title in the UK. People buy the book then are unhappy because they've already read it...
4. Out of date/earlier versions. You sometimes get poor ratings for a particular version of the book, whether because of a poor binding or lots of typos and copyediting mistakes. This is particularly common with Kindle books. Amazon usually combines reviews for all editions/versions so these all get mixed together. Also, errors in early print runs and Kindle editions often get sorted out within a few months.
5. Sequel syndrome. If an author writes a book and then writes sequels or later books in a series, then ratings tend to get skewed. The first book has a broad reader base, and this is likely reflected in the reviews and ratings. Sequels and later books in a series are likely to be mostly read by people who have already read the previous books in the series and are already 'fans' of that author or series. So ratings of later books are often higher, unless the author starts to disappoint their fans. 
6. Not what was expected. The majority of authors write the same type of books each time, and their readership know what to expect. If the author then decides to do something a bit different, it might be very good, but could appeal to a different audience. This is often the case when an author, as most inevitably do, decides to write a children's or young adults book.
7. Jumping on the bandwagon or sheep readers... Each year, there are a few standout successes in the book world, shifting books in their millions. It will probably be the book everyone's talking about at the office and reading on the train home. There will be thousands of reviews on Amazon, most of them giving it 5 stars. People just don't want to be seen bucking the trend and criticizing the 'in book'. 
8. When the tough gets going... Some books are just hard work... Catch 22, A Brief History of Time, Ulyssess... Some reviews read, "On the fifth attempt I managed to get through this" and yet still give it 5 stars. If people really work at reading a book, they are almost compelled to look for the good in it, and don't want to think that their time and efforts have been wasted. They "know" it is good, so give it top rating even if they didn't enjoy or really even understand it.
9. The critics review. This is most common with genre books. The reader likes reading literary and mainstream books and for whatever reason decides to have a go at a Tom Clancy thriller or some epic space opera. Then they'll say things like, "the premise was flimsy", "it was so unrealistic", "it was full of complicated made up things" or "Or I just couldn't empathize with the main character (a little green alien from the other side of the galaxy). No, you don't get it, that's not the type of book it is. Oh never mind...
10. Look at other reviews by the reviewer. If they've written a bad review, but have reviewed very little else, then they could just be having a rant. If they have written lots of reviews, particularly of similar types of books and ones you like, their opinion could be worth a lot to you.

A final warning. Watch out for spoilers if you are looking through reviews. Most people do flag these up in their reviews so you can avoid them, but not everyone. So if you are the sort that can't bare to find out anything before you read the book, don't get too hung up on reading the reviews. Otherwise, they can really help weed out the duds and free up more time for reading good books you'll actually enjoy!