Books I've Read 2017

I am not a big reader, it’s one of those things that I’ve always wanted to improve about myself but seemingly never do. My desires to read can come in very sporadic bursts, I remember about 5 years ago I was in sixth form college, having no friends and insanely bored I decided to just go to the library whenever I was free and just read. Within a year and a half I read roughly 20 books, including all of A Song of Ice and Fire and boy howdy are they looooong books! But ever since then I’ve read maybe a couple of books a year. However this past year I noticed myself improving and reading roughly a book a month, now this is nothing to boast about as some people out there can read over 100 books a year, but still, for me, this was a pretty good consistency and I hope to continue it into 2018-if not improve it-so, I thought I’d celebrate by giving quick mini-reviews of all 12 books. Also remember, I am not a book reviewer, so if my analysis seems uninformed or repetitive…well that’s why. Let’s go!

Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire – Derek Landry

The second book of the Skulduggery series, I was recommended these books by my two best friends and after reading the first one last year and enjoying it a fair amount, it had highly creative, had witty dialogue, likeable characters and a unique fantasy world, I was looking forward to the sequel, which my friends told me was even better. Which, they were right. It continued the great traits of the first book, that being the entertaining characters and dialogue but improved upon them, giving our protagonists more depth, particularly with our main character Stephanie/Valkyrie and her slow estrangement from her own family; as well as dealing with darker themes and having better described action sequences. My only real quarrel is that the main villain is basically the same as the one in the last book only…eviler, because reasons. But in my mind this was an improvement of an already good first book and I’m told each book in the series just gets better and better, I’ve already purchased the next two books in the series so hopefully I’ll be reading at least one if not both of them next year.

The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett

I have never read a single Terry Pratchett novel, everyone always says he’s one of their favourite authors, so I felt it important for me to get round to him sooner rather than later, starting with his most iconic series, the Discworld books. With just the one book I can instantly tell why Pratchett is often chosen by people as their favourite author, the man seemingly has endless creativity, his craftsmanship for the medium is impeccable as these are stories that can only truly be told in book form (Though apparently the adaptation isn’t half bad). His worlds are distinct, his writing is funny, and if it wasn’t for the fact that there are over 40 books in the Discworld series (Not including spin-offs by other authors) I would love to read more of the series. I probably will return to it sometime in the future, but it’s a bit too daunting for me right now. Nevertheless if this book showed me anything, it’s that Pratchett certainly had a talent and deserves the praise he got.

Nerd Do Well – Simon Pegg

Something I discovered about myself this year is that I really love autobiographies, particularly in audiobook form. They have such a vulnerability to them as people reflect on their lives and have to try and structure random and interesting events into some form of a narrative, and in order to do that they have to truly dig deep into themselves and expose the good and the bad. Simon Pegg does this through a spy parody taking up half his book to create somewhat of a funny narrative that reflects on the difficulties writing a book of such magnitude; and the other half is delivering on said promises. Though if I’m being honest, it’s been nearly an entire year since I listened to the story so I’m struggling to recall particular events that stuck out to me, I just remember how I felt, and how I felt was comfort. Comfort in someone I could connect to through pop-culture and nerdy goodness while also having him describe it in such an intellectual and sophisticated way. I remember chuckling at the silly anecdotes of this dorky comedian and his deadpan delivery, proving to me that audiobook was definitely the way to go.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Phillip K Dick

Blade Runner is one of my all time favourite films, however my main reason for loving it is mostly due to its visuals, not necessarily the plot, meaning reading the book it was based on, which is no visuals and all plot, I was a tad worried. I’ve stated before that stories that question intelligence in robots is a boring subject for me because often they all feel the same and ironically feel quite soulless. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is actually a fantastic book. Unlike a lot of stories that tackle this subject matter, Dick was able to personalise the story, have his audience connect to the characters before introducing the themes, even if you can see it coming from a mile away. While there are certainly a lot of differences between book and film, I don’t think they’re differences that hinder either product, but rather elements that aid one might not aid the other. In this case its having a second protagonist who suffers from physical and mental disabilities and is completely changed for the film, even though in the book he’s sympathetic and makes for a good read, but I can understand why they left him out of the film. Another example-and one of the best chapters in the book-is the torturing of a spider, a moment that is told in such excruciating detail that it was uncomfortable to read, and frankly I find it much more challenging to write about that than to show it, as a moment like that visually could come across as exploitative. It also strengthens the film’s narrative, it has you sympathise with the androids by asking why there lives are worth less than that of a crippled man or an animal, but never lets you forget, their main flaw is a lack of empathy and that makes them dangerous. I’m comfortable saying I love this book almost as much as I love the film and highly recommend it.

Mass Effect: Revelation – Drew Karpyshyn

Continuing the trend of exploring more work of things I love, Mass Effect: Revelation, written by acclaimed sci-fi author as well as writer for the first two Mass Effect games Drew Karpyshyn makes for a good companion piece to the main series, if you heard of Anderson’s history with Saren and wanted to learn more about it. It’s a fairly short read and has a fairly simple plot to follow, but it’s not meant to be the bulk of the series, just the equivalent to a side story. If you’re not a Mass Effect fan, don’t bother, even though they try to explain the world for any potential newcomers, this is clearly a book meant for people who are already fans. As a fan, I enjoyed it enough, like I said, it’s nothing too heavy to wrap your head around, so it was worth the read.

Where Am I Now? – Mara Wilson

I was never really a fan of Mara Wilson, I really liked Matilda as a kid but as an adult I mostly just liked her because she has a funny twitter account. She was never someone I cared much to learn about her life story, but boy was I glad I read it (Or listened too it, again audiobook). Hearing the stories of a child star and how being in the limelight can shape a person, it’s no wonder so many child stars go down a dark path and it’s a miracle that Mara never did. She also has such a way of recapturing her exact feelings during important moments of her life that I fully felt like I was there, both the good and the bad. My only real issues are that I found the structure of the book to be confusing, rather than telling the story in chronological order, or by topic she seems to just jump around at random, making it difficult to put everything into context at times. Also the amount of times she uses phrases describing how she started to cry become rather stale, I know it seems cheap to criticize things like that when she’s just telling the story of events how they happened, but the overuse of it weakened the effect for me.

Backwards & In Heels – Alicia Malone

Alicia Malone is someone I’ve admired for a long time, she’s always been very knowledgeable about film and has a clear passion for women in the industry, so it makes sense that her debut as an author is a book all about women in film. The book covers dozens of stories of some of the most prolific and important women to work both in front of and behind the camera, making for some fascinating stories that could probably take up an entire book, but putting them all back to back shows just how much these people helped shape the industry as a whole and often their work goes unrecognised, or even when it does the amount of personal issues they suffered along the way in order to get there. While granted having the book segmented like this does lead to some stories not being as interesting as others, also some of the stories I already knew about, but that’s not really something the book can account for. Overall if you’re interested in learning about an important part of both film history and issues still facing modern day female filmmakers then I’d say this is definitely worth the read.

The Martian – Peter Weir

This book can pretty much be split into two parts: The funny parts, and the science parts. The funny parts are great because-well-they're funny, no deeper insight needed there, funny is funny. The science parts are more hit and miss. They're hit when they're both interesting and educational-even though I have no idea which parts are accurate, they certainly feel accurate. They can also be quite intense, something goes wrong for our protagonist and you're not sure how he'll fix it, but of course he fixes it with science! Unfortunately, this gets repeated numerous times throughout the book that it became kind of boring and repetitive and by the end I just found myself going "Oh my god! Will things stop going wrong and get off this stupid planet already!". Which is also what the main character is feeling so...I can't honestly decide if that's a good thing or not. I'm sympathising with Mark Whatney, but at the same time, feeling frustrated is not usually a good thing you want to be with a story.

Turtles All the Way Down – John Green
John Green is someone I absolutely love, I think he and his brother Hank have some of the best YouTube channels, podcasts, merchandise, etc out there that you can expose yourself to; but I'm not a big fan of him as an author. Don't get me wrong, when I first read The Fault in Our Stars I loved it, but after reading several of his books since then, they all feel very samey and uninspired. One thing I do like about his work is that his stories become less romanticised and more emotionally vulnerable as they go along. The best scene in TFioS most would agree is the gas station scene, and this book has several moments just like that, seeing the protagonist hit rock bottom, will full humiliation and consequences that come with it. It's also his most personal book, being familiar with him as a person through Vlogbrothers, I could see which parts of the story were based on his own life, everything from the location to the mental illnesses the protagonist suffers through. All of this certainly makes the book feel very honest and realistic, but the typical John Greenisms are still prevalent. The angsty teen protagonist who sort of loves and is belligerent to those closest to them, the awkward obsession over a romantic interest. If you don't mind those cliches then I completely get it, they're just personally not tropes or styles that I find particularly enjoyable. If you like John Green's other books then you'll like this one all the same, if you're like me then there will definitely be parts of this book you really enjoy, and others that are kind of a drag. Also I know they were always just a metaphor, but as a turtle enthusiast I am severely let down by the lack of turtles in this book.

A Life in Parts – Bryan Cranston

Well, out of all the autobiographies I read this year, this was certainly my favourite. Bryan Cranston-like many-is an actor I adore, he's been in plenty of things I love, most notably Seinfeld, Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad, so hearing him discuss his time on those shows was certainly the initial draw; but it was everything I didn't know about him that I found to be the most interesting. Whether it be his discussion of his personal life and all the fascinating things that happened to him, including travelling the country with his brother, dealing with a psycho ex-girlfriend and saving a man's life after attempting suicide. Even more so was his analysis of his craft; he never took a job for granted, and never half-arsed it, he always tried to give a performance something unique to him. He never believed he was too good for anyone, and likewise never thought he was beneath anything, he was a man that you'll never hear the words "I can't do that" be said aloud. There are plenty of autobiographies that I can say are interesting, but there are few that I can say were inspiring. This book was genuinely motivational, endearing to read and made for what is possibly my favourite book of the year.

Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
It shows how far I've come as a reader, the first Alice book-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland-despite being a short book, I read through roughly 2 years ago and it took me about 2 weeks to read. Through The Looking Glass however only took me 2 days. In typical fashion, the book doesn't stick to any traditional narrative, or even carry on plots, ideas or characters from the first book (Minus Alice) and is very much just Alice going to Wonderland, talking to different people in Wonderland, and then leaving Wonderland. Now granted while the first book I found to be rather enjoyable, this one for some reason dragged. It's hard to say why, it could just be because the concept was getting old at this point, or maybe the characters Alice interacted with weren't as interesting as a whole as the ones in the first book. Now there were certainly some characters that were entertaining, The Red Queen and Humpty Dumpty stand out in my mind, overall the charm of the first one just sadly didn't carry over into it's sequel.

So those were all of the books I read (Or listened) to in 2017, overall they were mostly good, some great, and my hopes are for next year to read even more, don't know how many exactly, but at minimum 13 would be a good number.

-Danny