Books Read April/May

Still attempting to read at least 60 books this year, and I'm well on my way to surpassing it. Here's books 22 through to 39.

22. Shatter the Bones – Stuart MacBride (4/5)
This is the seventh instalment of MacBride’s Logan McRae series of crime novels set in Aberdeen. (Unlikely for anybody to have heard of them if you are to Scottish, but you never know, they could be selling well down south for all I know).
I always find these books amusing, and this one more so for the Doctor Who references, which always float my boat. And DI Steel, who has to be the best lesbian ever written. Well, probably not, but her character amuses the hell out of me, she’s like a female version of Gene Hunt.

23. Mockingbird – Walter Tevis (4/5)
I've got a backlog of sci-fi novels and this one has been sitting on the pile for longer than most. An interesting read about a dystopian future where humans spend their days in narcotic bliss, where humanity's continued survival rests in the hands of a suicidal android.

24. Xenocide – Orson Scott Card (4/5)

25. Children of the Mind – Orson Scott Card (4/5)
I enjoyed the first two books in the Ender series a lot, but there was something about these two books (which are really just one book split into two) that bothered me. There was a lot of religious undertones in Xenocide and Children of the Mind, which I found hard to swallow in series that is essentially a space opera. I guess the atheist in me finds it hard to accept that when the human race finally has such scientific advancements that they can travel in space between hundreds of worlds that they would still believe in a God.
That aside, these two instalments of the Enderverse were good, and for completeness sake I would recommend them if you have read the first two.

26. London – Edward Rutherford (3/5)
London is an ambitious book, telling the history of the city through the generations of interlinking families. All of Rutherford’s novels are historical fiction (last year I read New York, which was, funnily enough, about the founding and history of New York City), and you get a real feel that they have been well researched. An interesting read.

27. Shada – Gareth Roberts (5/5)
Douglas Adam’s uncompleted Doctor Who story now in novelised form. Normally, I don’t buy hardbacks, but this was Four/Romana, and well… my inner Whovian needed it immediately. Gareth Roberts does a good job of channelling Douglas Adams; the feel and style is very similar to that of Hitchhikers, and the novelization does the story justice. It’s still a shame that it was never completed back in the day.

28. 2001: A Space Odessy – Arthur C. Clarke (4/5)
Another book that's been lying in the to-read pile for ages. A good read, even if I was floundering a bit at the end and wasn't quite sure what was going on. Haven't seen the movie yet or read any of the sequels.

29. Night of the Living Trekkies – David Anderson (4/5)
Star Trek fans and zombies, what more could a girl ask for?

30. Time-slip – Graham Dustin Martin (2/5)
Another dystopian sci-fi novel, this time set in Scotland.

31. The Time Machine – H. G. Wells (4/5)
I'd been wanting to read this for ages. It was good, considering it was probably the first time-travel story ever written, but the story felt very rushed at the end.
32. Utopia – Lincoln Child (2/5)

33. Flashforward – Robert J. Sawyer (3/5)
I watched the TV show when it aired a couple of years ago. The book is very different; instead of the flashforward showing everyone 2 minutes of a couple of months in the future, it was twenty years.

34. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (5/5)

35. The Restuarant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams (5/5)

36. Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams (5/5)

37. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams (4/5)

38. Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams (4/5)
The first four of these were re-reads after I realised I hadn't read Mostly Harmless. Still as awesome as ever.

39. Hellhole - Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (2/5)
Brian Herbert is the son of Frank Herbert, author of Dune. I began reading this book with high expections and was dissapointed. The writing is weak (a result of two authors, perhaps?), the character growth limited. Plotwise, the story was okay, but I won't be rushing out to buy the sequel.

Recommendations: Shada if you’re a Doctor Who or Douglas Adams fan.