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Uber User
Posts: 154
| I did pretty well this month I think.
Books read:
Children of God, Mary Doria Russell -- Sequel, 2nd best
The Ape's Wife and Other Stories, Caitlin R. Kiernan -- LGBT, short fiction
Burning Girls, Veronica Schanoes -- LGBT, short fiction, Faerie Mythology
The Three, Sarah Lotz -- EoTW
Unexpected Stories, Octavia Butler -- AoC, short fiction
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine -- Faerie Mythology
The Heavenly Fox, Richard Parks --Mythopoeic Award
Memory of Water, Emmi Itaranta -- EoTW
Women Destroy Science Fiction! -- no challenges
12 Awards: 5/12
LGBT: 5/12
Short fiction: 11/12
AoC: 4/12
Mythopoeic: 3/12
Creature Feature: 3/6
EoTW: 5/12
Faerie Mythology: 7/12
Read the Sequel: 4/12
2nd Best: 4/12
Standouts were The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Children of God, and The Three.
Edited by FeminineFantastique 2014-07-02 12:24 PM
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Uber User
Posts: 370
Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | June Reading List:
Brown Girl in the Ring - Nalo Hopkinson - 5 stars - LGBT/MasterWorks/WoGF
Darker Than You Think - Jack Williamson - 4 stars - GrandMaster/MW/Fantasia
Little Brother - Cory Doctorow - 5 stars - 12 Awards
Shadow of the Torturer - Gene Wolfe - 4 stars - GM/F/The Number of the Counting Shall be 3
The Cold Commands - Richark K. Morgan - 3 stars - LGBT/F/3/I Just Have to Read...
The Stainless Steel Rat - Harry Harrison - 4 stars - GM
also read The Hobbit for book club. 5 stars of course. The Cold Commands was a disappointment. Sequel slump. I'm hoping the third in the trilogy picks up.
My partner convinced me to read Little Brother, so decided to add 12 Awards in 12 Months. That way I could also include two more of the Gene Wolfe New Sun tetrology. That makes a trilogy, so I added The Number of the Counting Shall be 3. By adding those two challenges, I added 8 physical books to my list for the year. I now need 23 to finish (37 virtual books).
The stats:
I Just Have to Read... 12/12 
Grand Master 6/12
LGBT 8/12
MasterWorks 7/12
WoGF 9/12
2nd Best 8/12
Fantasia 11/12
Elizabeth Noun 1/3
12 Awards in 12 Months 5/12
The Number ...3 4/9 | |
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Uber User
Posts: 770
Location: SC, USA | Books Read in June 1 The Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson 2 Gathering Blue Lois Lowry 3 Somerset Dreams and Other Fictions Kate Wilhelm 4 Watership Down Richard Adams 5 The Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 6 Unnatural Creatures Neil Gaiman 7 The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories H. P. Lovecraft 8 The Thief Lord Cornelia Funke 9 The Freedom Maze Delia Sherman 10 A Stranger in Olondria Sophia Samatar 11 Ammonite Nicola Griffith This month’s standouts: Cryptonomicon, Watership Down and The Freedom Maze Pick and Mix 12/12 12 Awards/12 Months 9/12 Short Fiction 11/12 Authors of Color 1/12 The End of the World 8/12 Marxists, etc 8/12 The 35 25/35 Guardian 9/7 The Second Best 5/12 LGBT 8/12 Fantasia 11/12 The Bucket List 6/9 Read One More By 8/12 Translation Total: 6/12 Women of Genre Fiction 8/12 The Ones 10/12 Total Books Read 43. At this point 154 of 219 slots filled, with two challenges finished. I should finish Short Fiction and Fantasia in July. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 526
Location: UK | Watership Down? There's something in my eye. Sniff. 
Only three challenge books for me in June, since I was concentrating on my Hugo reading, and also sneaked in a crime novel.
The Snow - Adam Roberts
- Read More
- End of the World
The Stormcaller - Tom Lloyd
- Book Ones
- Fantasia
The Land of Laughs - Jonathan Carroll
- Masterworks (F)
- Pick and Mix (Modern Fantasy)
I finished my first challenge - The Book of Ones - and might finish another this month.
Edited by DrNefario 2014-07-02 4:08 PM
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 556
Location: Great Lakes, USA | I loved Watership Down! I borrowed it from the library in 7th grade and liked it so much that I bought my own copy and read it again. Definitely a classic!
Books Read in June:
Harbinger of the Storm - 4 stars - Sequel, Authors, Trilogy, 35
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - 2 stars - WoGF, Pick and Mix, Nebula
Wakulla Springs - 3.5 stars - Creature
The Mothers of Voorhisville - 3.5 stars - WoGF (totally random pick - found this on the Tor website while looking for Nebula nominated novellas)
A Stranger in Olondria - 2 stars - WoGF, Nebula, 35
I also read all the Hugo nominated short fiction. Six Gun Snow White, The Lady Astronaut of Mars, and Wakulla Springs would count for the Short Fiction Challenge, if I decide to add that. The Mothers of Voorhisville and Burning Girls, which I also read this month, would count as short fiction as well. I might add it since I will be reading the retro Hugo short fiction this month. I'll have to see how many of those are in the database.
Favorite Book of June - Harbinger of the Storm - 2nd in the Obsidian and Blood Trilogy.
Favorite Book of 2014 so far - Annihilation
Challenge Stats:
WoGF 11/12
Sequel 8/12
Masterworks 4/12
Trilogy 4/9
Killer Bs 0/3
Guardian 1/7
Authors 12/12
Elizabeths 1/3
Ones 6/12
Bucket 2/9
2nd Best 6/12
Pick and Mix 12/12
Creature 5/6
EOW 6/12
35 15/35
Nebula 6/6 (private challenge to read all of this year's Nebula nominees - I read Ancillary Justice and The Ocean at the End of the Lane last year.)
I'm 51% through Ash, so I will probably finish the WoGF Challenge in July. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 454
| June saw 11 books read with 59 YTD. 117 of 222 challenge slots have been filled, representing 6.3 months worth, so still pretty well on target.
Challenge Status:
- 12 Awards 6/12
- Masterworks 4/12
- Short Fiction 12/12
- Authors of Color 2/12
- Women of Genre 12/12
- Pick and Mix (lists) 9/12
- Read the Sequel 6/12
- Young Adult 0/12
- Creature Feature 6/6
- End of the World 7/12
- Fantasia 9/12
- In Translation 6/12
- Mythopoeic 3/12
- The 35 17/35
- Guardian 2/7
- Trilogies 6/9
- Second Best 6/12
- Bucket List 4/9
June Challenge books:
- City of Dark Magic by "Magnus Flyte" (Christina Lynch & Meg Howrey) (2012) (8/10) A good beach read - fast, fluffy & fun.
- Witches on the Road Tonight by Sheri Holman (2011) (7/10) Well written but disjointed.
- After London: or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies (1885) (6/10) In the kingdom of the lackwits, our halfwit protagonist, Sir Felix, declines the kingship in favor of, um, wandering about. (He would really have been better named Sir Feckless).
- The Firelings by Carol Kendall (1981) (7/10) Precious invented mythology. OK at first, but it got old fast.
- Wake by Elizabeth Knox (2013) (7/10) A middling tale centered about a hoary old trope. Kind of fell off the cliff at the end.
- Tainaron by Leena Krohn (2004) (7/10) Much strangeness, but not much that resonated.
- Sunshine by Robin McKinley (2003) (7/10) A strong start, but it tapered off quickly. At the end. I realized that every one of the characters, despite the attention to their surfaces, were all completely hollow - we hadn't gotten to know ANY of them.
- The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (2013) (9/10) Finally, a great book that made up for all the crap I read this month. Not really a good entry point for Priest though - you should probably have read at least one or two of his Dream Archipelago books before picking this one up.
Also read in June:
- Modem Times 2.0 by Michael Moorcock (2011) (7/10) The fiction was meh, but the interview was interesting.
- James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips (2006) (9/10) Fascinating life, well illustrated by voluminous correspondance, the most interesting of which were the "Tiptree" exchanges with Le Guin and Russ. There was much evidance of sexual frustration throughout her life, which Phillips suggests was due to unrealized lesbian tendencies. However, I found myself leaning towards the theory that Sheldon was in fact transgendered, a theory well articulated by Farah Mendlesohn's review in Strange Horizons.
- My Real Children by Jo Walton (2014) (8/10) A simple what-if exercise, endlessly played out on the domestic front. Well written, but not much there...
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Very slow month for me on the reading front but here we go.
12x12 - 7/12
Have to read more - 7/12
Masterworks - 6/12
Pick n Mix - 9/12
YA - 8/12
Creature. Feature - 5/6
Faerie Mythology. - .8/12
Fantasia. - 5/12
Book of Ones. - 8/12
Guardian list. - 4/7
Killer Bs.......1/3
Second Best. - 5/12
Bucket. List - 6/9
total slots......133
slots filled so far...79
books read.......34 (52%)
total different books....67
books read in the genres
L K Hamilton - A Shiver of Light
Neil Gaiman - Stardust
P K Dick - Man in the High Castle
Joe Hill - Heart-shaped Box
A+B Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
Christopher Fowler - Full Dark House
J R Ward - The King
Neil Gaiman - Brief Lives
Edited by dustydigger 2014-07-04 2:03 PM
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June 2014 Challege Roundup