Wow! That’s not a book, it’s an extended sf bibliography.
They’re my era, so it’s fun reading what she thought of them as a teen. This book is to some extent about her own teen years.
Recently finished:
Fire, by Kristin Cashore. This is the 2nd book in a YA fantasy series, I enjoy the series overall a lot even though I have some quibbles with it being a little too needlessly sexy.
Casual Vacancy, by J.K. Rowling. I enjoyed reading this (a big multi-family saga is right up my alley), but I don’t think this would be getting this much press if it was written by anyone else.
I’m almost done with The Brides of Rollrock Island, by Margo Lanagan. It’s another YA novel, this is about selkies. I like it, but it’s pretty dark and melancholy. Between this and Casual Vacancies, I’m going to need to read a book about happy ponies next.
If you’d like more selkies, treat youself to the movie The Secret of Roan Inish. I’m trying to remember the name of another book about selkies that I liked…
Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I spent last Saturday napping… I guess when you celebrate your birthday with a day-long nap you really *have *reached old age.
Finished Cold Days list night and really enjoyed it. Will start Trapped tonight (although I may start the Sherlock Holmes book Mom got me for my birthday - she likes when I tell her I’ve read her gifts and if I put it in the queue I will forget to tell her. I won’t forget to read it, but I’ll forget to tell her.)
I liked it a lot, and think it would make a neat little movie. There were several subplots that needed to be wrapped up – at the mall, at the same time. I wondered how Cook would manage – he did fine. This would be something you could give a pre-teen. Only one use of the F word, the violence wasn’t gratuitous, and all the characters got what they deserved.
I’ve been reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books after seeing them mentioned here several times. Not perfect, but I’m enjoying them. I’ve also learned some new Scottish English words that will come in handy in Words with Friends. 
Another movie in which selkies are an issue: Ondine (film) - Wikipedia
Thank you! It’s on Netflix streaming too. =D
Just Finished The Great Salem Fire of 1914 and am plowinging through arthur, King of Britain, a book I’ve been looking for for decades. It’s a collection of primary texts about Arthur, with criticism. Since I started looking for this book, though, I’ve already read most of those primary texts elsewhere.
I’ve also finished reading three different translations of Beowulf (as well as watching a stack of movies based on it). I think i have to re-order my preference of translations.
I’ve been trying to read Robert Forward’s return to Rochworld and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house of Seven Gables, but I just can’t get into them.
I just finished The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. I really enjoyed it, found it very eye-opening. The author has a website associated with his research called yourmorals.org.
I also finished the second Concrete collection by Paul Chadwick. I’m going to start the third next. My library apparently only has the first three and the sixth. Ada or Ardor by Nabokov is also in the queue.
I am about to start this:
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
I am fascinated by the Great War, and by the story of Mallory and Irvine and the unsolved mystery of whether they made it to the summit of Everest. So, yes, let’s combine the two into a massive book. I am looking forward to this one very much. I loves me some English explorers coming to tragic but heroic ends.
As an Australian of Scots/Irish ancestry, my feelings toward the English are a bit mixed, but - credit where it’s due - they know how to die like gentlemen. Stiff upper lip. Oh yes.
I finished “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern, which I really liked. Over the weekend I did my annual reading of “A Christmas Carol,” which was magnificent as always. Now I’m back to reading “Florence and Giles” by John Harding. I started this one a while back but was dragging so I switched to “The Night Circus.” I’m hoping it picks up a little.
I finshed “making Money” By Terry Pratchett on Friday. I’m very sad thinking I only have four more Discworld books to read! 
I started “Withering Heights” by Dorothy Cannell. As usual, I anticipate a quick, enjoyable read this time with a gothic setting.
I finished On the Night Plain by J. Robert Lennon, about brothers on a struggling sheep farm in the American West just after World War II. It was OK but not great. The prose was plain and spare, even to a fault. I’m almost done with Hitler Victorious, a pretty uneven collection of alt hist short stories edited by Gregory Benford, and have now also begun Report to JFK by Richard Neustadt, an interesting collection of papers about the 1962 Skybolt Crisis in U.S.-British relations.
Now I’m reading Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, by Mara Hvistendahl. Fascinating stuff. Through the use of sex-selection abortion (and a few other methods) over 160 million girls haven’t been born. Now, as the “classrooms full of boys” the author describes have grown up, they’re searching for wives, with more and more difficulty. There are some profound other changes and problems, too.
Does it focus on China, or is that a problem in other countries, too?
The author says it’s also a problem in India, Albania, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and in the Balkans. It also was a problem in South Korea, although according to the book, it’s less so now. The book was published in 2011.
I’d really quite like to read The Night Circus, but I bought it as an Apple ebook and for some reason the books app won’t load it. Grr.
I finished my audiobook, the prequel to the Maze Runner series by James Dashner. This series was not very good. The first book set up a pretty interesting situation, and although it soon became clear that Mr. Dashner had written himself into a corner, I kept going through the series in hopes of some redeeming crumb, and finally just out of stubbornness. Alas, this prequel was one of the most atrocious things I’ve ever read, a monotonous series of fight scenes all strung together, and nothing added to the overall story. After listening to it for a while, I’d find the Itchy and Scratchy theme song stuck in my head.