The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, Book 2) Kim Stanley Robinson Hugo winner - 1994 Premise: Sequel to Red Mars . Scientists, settlers, and their children fight over the future of Mars. For better and for worse, this was more of the same from the book before. In other words, different sections follow different characters, and together the stories show the next stage of Martian technology and politics. The first two sections introduce two new central characters. The first is Nirgal, the son of some of the original scientists. His section started interesting - being raised in a hidden colony by a group of geniuses will make your childhood trippy - but I got bored with him before the end of his section. The second was Art Randolph, a Terran sent from one of the super-powerful corporations to try to make an alliance with the underground. This story might have been better if I'd cared at all about him. Ugh, this book is hard. Not hard to read, but hard to be compelled by. It ex...

Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, Book 1) Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, 2015 Read Harder 2018 Challenge: The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle-grade series Premise: When a remote mining colony is attacked, teenagers Kady and Ezra are among those picked up by a rescue ship. Before they can reach a civilized part of the galaxy, though, they'll have to not only outrun their pursuers but also deal with whatever is causing problems with the warship's AI. I really wanted to like this book. It's so pretty! The gimmick is that the book is a dossier put together after the fact, chronicling an "incident." Said incident involves an attack on a remote mining facility by a rival corporation. The documents follow the specific experiences of Kady and Ezra from their initial interviews after the attack to psychological assessments to their communications with each other and with others onboard their respective ships, and the story is expanded with other perspe...

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America Edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding, 2017 Read Harder 2018 - an essay anthology Premise: Twenty-three powerful, intersectional perspectives on feminism and women in America today. Last year I tried reading a few books of reactions and essays on the current political situation, and I kept getting bogged down in things I already knew or perspectives I didn't appreciate. This is the book I was waiting for. I don't agree immediately with every point that every author has to say, and some of them contradict each other. On some level, that is the point. This is a book that personalizes a broad cross-section of women's experience, including women of every color and creed. Women who are afraid for their healthcare and women who are afraid for their children. Women who work in global health or reproductive rights. Women who face racism, misogyny, or transphobia personally, or try to...

Jane, Unlimited Kristin Cashore, 2017 Premise: Jane is grieving the loss of her Aunt Magnolia, the woman who raised her. She dropped out of college and doesn't know what to do with her life. Maybe that's why she accepts when an acquaintance invites her to stay at her family's creepy mansion. But eventually she'll have to make a choice. Wow. This was a very unique book, and very well-written, and intriguing. I didn't love all of it, but I did find it extraordinary and striking. I have to talk about the plot in order to explain. The first part of the book is lovely. It's dreamlike. Jane stumbles around the big strange house observing the strange behavior of its various inhabitants. There is clearly something going on. People sneaking around in the dead of night, oblique references and whispers in the walls, none of the family members or friends seem to like each other that much, a dog that won't leave her alone but doesn't like anyone else. ...