{"id":2226,"date":"2010-01-02T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-2226.html"},"modified":"2010-01-02T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T15:00:00","slug":"2009-in-review-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2010\/01\/02\/2009-in-review-books\/","title":{"rendered":"2009 in review: books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2009 was the year of the re-read for me, and in particular the <em>series<\/em> re-read.  I love diving into a series and living in the same world as the characters for weeks on end.  At the start of the year I couldn&#8217;t find any new series I wanted to start on, so I went back to some old favourites:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Roger Zelazny&#8217;s <i>Amber<\/i> series<\/li>\n<li>Neil Gaiman&#8217;s <i>Sandman<\/i> books<\/li>\n<li>Lois MacMaster Bujold&#8217;s <i>Vorkosigan<\/i> series<\/li>\n<li>Julian May&#8217;s <i><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saga_of_Pliocene_Exile\" title=\"Saga of Pliocene Exile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia\">Pliocene<\/a><\/i> and <i><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Galactic_Milieu_Series\" title=\"Galactic Milieu Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia\">Galactic Milieu<\/a><\/i> series<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have read the first three series several times before already, and they are always fresh, and always fun. For a change, I read the Vorkosigan books in chronological order (although I started with <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0671720872?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0671720872\" title=\"Shards of Honor: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\">Shards of Honor<\/a><\/i>, rather than <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0671653989?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0671653989\" title=\"Falling Free: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\">Falling Free<\/a><\/i>), and in rapid succession.  The early Miles books (<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0743468406?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0743468406\" title=\"The Warrior's Apprentice (Vorkosigan): Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\">The Warrior&#8217;s Apprentice<\/a><\/i> and <i><a href=\"ttp:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0671720147?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0671720147\">The Vor Game<\/a><\/i> are still my favourites, and it turns out that <i><a href=\"ttp:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0743436121?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0743436121\">Diplomatic Immunity<\/a><\/i> isn&#8217;t as bad as I remembered it.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The Julian May books were less of a pleasure.  If it weren&#8217;t for the &#8220;I&#8217;ve got this far so might as well keep going&#8221; sunk-costs argument, I would (should) have stopped about fifty pages into <i>The Golden Torc<\/i>.  I remember waiting eagerly for the publication of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0330322990?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0330322990\" title=\"Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy): Amazon.co.uk: Julian May: Books\">Diamond Mask<\/a><\/i> and <i><a href=\"ttp:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0330323059?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0330323059\">Magnificat<\/a><\/i> in the mid-90s, but now I just find the characters overly self-absorbed and melodramatic; I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be re-reading them again.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061139076?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061139076\" title=\"Beguilement (Sharing Knife): 1: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2009\/12\/beguilement.jpg\" alt=\"Lois McMaster Bujold - The Sharing Knife, volume one: Beguilement\" class=\"left\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061139068?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061139068\" title=\"Legacy (Sharing Knife): Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2009\/12\/legacy.jpg\" alt=\"Lois McMaster Bujold - The Sharing Knife, volume two: Legacy\" class=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Staying with Lois McMaster Bujold, 2009 saw the publication of the fourth and final book in her <i>Sharing Knife<\/i> series.  I bought the first book, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061139076?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061139076\" title=\"Beguilement (Sharing Knife): 1: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\">Beguilement<\/a><\/i> when it was released in 2006, but didn&#8217;t read it at the time.  I knew it was only the first part of a single big story, and having been burned by Peter F. Hamilton&#8217;s <i><a href=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/quickreviews\/001566.html\" title=\"Peter F. Hamilton - Pandora's Star [Legends of the Sun Pig - Martin Sutherland's Blog]\">Pandora&#8217;s Star<\/a><\/i> the previous year, I didn&#8217;t want to start on the tale, only to have to wait three years to get to its end.  But when the fourth part, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061375373?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061375373\" title=\"The Sharing Knife, Volume Four: Horizon: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\">Horizon<\/a><\/i> was published in February, I grabbed it and started from the beginning.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061375357?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061375357\" title=\"Passage: Sharing Knife 3: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2009\/12\/passage.jpg\" alt=\"Lois McMaster Bujold - The Sharing Knife, volume three: Passage\" class=\"right\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>The Sharing Knife<\/i> is a fantasy romance &#8212; not a combination that normally leaps off the shelves at me.  But I trust Bujold to write characters I care about and a story that interests me regardless of my genre prejudices, and that is exactly what she has done here.  The world she has created has more of an American frontier feel to it rather than a pseudo-medieval European vibe: prairies and riverside trading towns rather than dark forests and castles.  Lakewalkers patrol the land on the lookout for malices, creatures that rise from the earth and feed on the life energy of everything nearby, and are capable of devastating entire towns.  The malices are an ancient menace, but thanks to Lakewalker efforts over the centuries, a rare one now. So rare that many farmers don&#8217;t even believe in them any more, which causes tension when Lakewalkers come to town and require their aid.  Because of the apparent safety, and the particular magical means by which Lakewalkers fight the malices, farmers have grown likely to fear and mistrust them, and call them witches, rather than heed their warnings.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061375373?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061375373\" title=\"The Sharing Knife, Volume Four: Horizon: Amazon.co.uk: Lois McMaster Bujold: Books\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2009\/12\/horizon.jpg\" alt=\"Lois McMaster Bujold - The Sharing Knife, volume four: Horizon\" class=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The main characters are Fawn, a young farmer woman who has run away from home, and Dag, a grizzled Lakewalker veteran.  They fall in love despite the large cultural gap that separates them.  The books follow them as, outcast from their families and communities, they try find a place for themselves in the world, and to somehow reconcile these two parallel but highly interdependent societies.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and fight evil!  The book covers may <em>look<\/em> all sweet and pastoral, but the plot is driven forward by the ongoing and very real threat of the malices.  While I wouldn&#8217;t characterize the books as adventure stories, there is no lack of action.  Bujold strikes a masterful balance between the clash-of-cultures love story and edge-of-your-seat thrills, and I can highly recommend the whole series.<\/p>\n<p>(Just make sure you read the first two books, <i>Beguilement<\/i> and <i>Legacy<\/i> together, because it is really one book split in two &#8212; even the covers are two halves of a single piece.  Three and four make up &#8220;part two&#8221;, but they are a looser pairing.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0441006159?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0441006159\" title=\"Book of Jhereg (Vlad Taltos): Amazon.co.uk: Steven Brust: Books\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2009\/12\/jhereg.jpg\" alt=\"Steven Brust - Jhereg\" class=\"right\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Throughout November and December I also caught up on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steven_Brust\" title=\"Steven Brust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia\">Steven Brust&#8217;s<\/a> Vlad Taltos series (including an advance copy of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0765312085?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0765312085\" title=\"Iorich (Vlad Taltos Series): Amazon.co.uk: Steven Brust: Books\">Iorich<\/a><\/i> thanks to Patrick at <a href=\"http:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/TorForge.aspx\" title=\"Macmillan :: Tor | Forge\">Tor<\/a>).  I know that I had read <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0441006159?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0441006159\" title=\"Book of Jhereg (Vlad Taltos): Amazon.co.uk: Steven Brust: Books\">Jhereg<\/a><\/i> before, and I&#8217;m pretty sure that parts of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0441944566?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0441944566\" title=\"Yendi Jhereg #02: Amazon.co.uk: Brust Steven: Books\">Yendi<\/a><\/i> were familiar; what I can&#8217;t figure out is why the hell I would have read the first two books, but not gone on to devour the rest of the series, because it&#8217;s <em>awesome<\/em>.  They are (for the most part) hard-boiled fantasy detective novels, not dissimilar in tone to some of my favourite contemporary detective series (Spenser, Elvis Cole, Myron Bolitar, et al.)  The &#8220;detective&#8221; may be a witchcraft-using assassin, and his sidekick a miniature dragon (jhereg) on his shoulder, but the mean streets of the city are still mean, and when tough talk fails, knocking a few heads together often shakes loose the information required.<\/p>\n<p>That only really describes the surface appearance of this series, though; the underlying world is rich and complex, full of Gods, Great Weapons, ancient sorcery, discrimination, social unrest, and peasant revolutions.  Another thing that appeals to me about the books is that they are <em>short<\/em>, in the 200&ndash;300 page range.  Steven Brust says what he wants to say, and then moves on.  I like that.  (Unfortunately his writing style in the other Dragaeran books has the opposite effect on me.  I haven&#8217;t been able to get past the first few pages of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0765319659?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0765319659\" title=\"The Phoenix Guards: Amazon.co.uk: Steven Brust: Books\">The Phoenix Guards<\/a><\/i>.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061438294?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061438294\" title=\"What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-reading People: Amazon.co.uk: Joe Navarro: Books\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2009\/12\/whateverybodyissaying.jpg\" alt=\"Joe Navarro - What Every Body Is Saying\" class=\"left\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally, some non-fiction.  I have been interested in non-verbal communication since I picked up a copy of Allan Pease&#8217;s <i>Body Language<\/i> in the mid-eighties.  In fact, this is one of the reasons I dislike working remotely.  Phone calls strip out all the visual cues I use to pick up on the mood of the office, and to gauge unvoiced concerns in a meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent with a background in interrogation and deception detection, and <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0061438294?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0061438294\" title=\"What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-reading People: Amazon.co.uk: Joe Navarro: Books\">What Every Body Is Saying<\/a><\/i> pays a lot of attention to reading the signals people emit during conversation.  Navarro emphasizes that this is not about being able to tell whether someone is lying or telling the truth (although that does make for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/B002AKIR58?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=legenofthesun-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B002AKIR58\" title=\"Lie To Me - Season 1 [DVD] [2009]: Amazon.co.uk: Tim Roth: DVD\">good TV<\/a>), but rather about learning whether someone is confident or holding back, relaxed or stressed.  When you understand that, you can try to guide the conversation to figure out <em>why<\/em> they are feeling that way.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, this has significant use in usability testing.  One of the tenets of usability testing is that you pay attention to what people <em>do<\/em>, rather than what they <em>say<\/em>.  People are often reluctant to criticize, preferring instead to tell white lies about things they dislike.  By studying their posture, gestures, and expressions during a test, and in post-test conversations, you can gain a much better understanding of their emotional state, and where problems lie.<\/p>\n<p>This is definitely one of my top picks of the year.  It&#8217;s very clearly written, and sprinkled with good illustrations, and not only does it make an excellent introduction to the subject of non-verbal testing, but it also rewards repeated reading and bite-sized dippings-into.  Very excellent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2009 was the year of the re-read for me, and in particular the series re-read. I love diving into a series and living in the same world as the characters for weeks on end. At the start of the year I couldn&#8217;t find any new series I wanted to start on, so I went back &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2010\/01\/02\/2009-in-review-books\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2009 in review: books&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}