Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
16. Forever, by Judy Blume
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20. King and King, by Linda de Haan
21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
22. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
24. In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
25. Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
29. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney
30. We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
33. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
34. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
35. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
37. It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
38. Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
39. Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
40. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
42. The Fighting Ground, by Avi
43. Blubber, by Judy Blume
44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
45. Crazy Lady, by Jane Leslie Conly
46. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby: The First Graphic Novel by George Beard and Harold Hutchins, the creators of Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
48. Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
49. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
50. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
51. Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
52. The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
53. You Hear Me?, by Betsy Franco
54. The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
55. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
56. When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
57. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
58. Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
61. Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
62. The Stupids (series), by Harry Allard
63. The Terrorist, by Caroline B. Cooney
64. Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
65. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
66. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
67. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
68. Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
70. Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
71. Junie B. Jones (series), by Barbara Park
72. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
73. What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
75. Anastasia (series), by Lois Lowry
76. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
77. Crazy: A Novel, by Benjamin Lebert
78. The Joy of Gay Sex, by Dr. Charles Silverstein
79. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
81. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
82. Deal With It!, by Esther Drill
83. Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
84. So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87. Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
88. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
89. Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
91. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
92. The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
93. Bumps in the Night, by Harry Allard
94. Goosebumps (series), by R.L. Stine
95. Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
96. Grendel, by John Gardner
97. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
98. I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
99. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
100. America: A Novel, by E.R. Frank

Read a Banned Book!

Frequently Banned and Challenged

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
38. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
57. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
66. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

It’s Banned Books Week! Read a Banned Book!

The most challenged books of 2012:

Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie.
Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher.
Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James.
And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.
Looking for Alaska, by John Green.
Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
Beloved, by Toni Morrison

It’s banned books week. Read a banned book!

So what did I read in August? A pretty even split between fantasy and mystery.

As always, the book title will take you to my review of that book, the author name will take you to a list of books by that author, and Amazon links will give me a penny or two if you click through and buy.

Mystery
Death in a Strange Country (1993) Donna Leon
Dressed for Death (1994) Donna Leon
Death and Judgment (1995) Donna Leon
Acqua Alta (1996) Donna Leon
The Fencing Master (1988) Arturo Pérez-Reverte translated by Margaret Jull Costa

I love Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti and Venice and the food–ah the food.

 
Fantasy
Night Watch (1998/2006) Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew Bromfield
Day Watch (1999/2007) Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew Bromfield
Twilight Watch (2003/2007) Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew
Last Watch (2009) Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew Bromfield
Fade to Black (2013) Francis Knight
Evil Dark (2012) Justin Gustainis
Kitty in the Underworld (2013) Carrie Vaughn
Magic Rises (2013) Ilona Andrews

I love Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch series. For me, the second book is the weakest in the series, but it’s still quiet good, and one you have to read.

Carrie Vaughn and Ilona Andrews are both authors that I automatically pre-order, because I’m almost never let down.

 
Anthology
Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations (2013) edited by Paula Guran

I had this for awhile before I read it, mostly because it was a large, heavy book.

 
Comics/Graphic Novel
Fairest Vol. 2: Hidden Kingdom (2013) Lauren Beukes, Bill Willingham, Inaki Miranda

So that’s fifteen books, nine of which were re-reads, three of which were pre-ordered new releases.

I think for the first time this year, I read more paper books than ebooks, due entirely to the re-reads and the pre-ordered new releases.

Paperback: 6
Trade Paperback: 6
eBook: 3
Re-read: 9

As to the genre break down, fantasy won out this month, but just barely.

Fantasy: 10
Mystery: 8
Anthology: 1
Comic: 1

I have no explanation for this.

As an addendum of sorts to the previous post, have you been reading Doonesbury this week? It’s a rerun, but it’s one I felt was very well done.

Again, the whole strip is available on Slate.

You could say that rape isn’t a subject for a comic strip, except that it IS. Garry Trudeau is using his soapbox to bring the subject to the public’s attention. Because it IS a subject that most people do not want to talk about. It’s a subject that most people want to cover up, to close the door and walk by and pretend it doesn’t happen.

But it IS a subject that needs to be discussed and shown, and it is a subject that belongs in ALL genres.

I just had a shockingly visceral reaction to Will Shetterly’s piece on rape in fantasy. Why fantasists should not write about rape. Shocking because I did not expect to have any reaction to the piece.

Let me state something clearly first: I believe that a LOT of rape & revenge fantasy stories are awful.

But there are also some stories that contain rape, where that horrible action is integral to the story. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry. Mercedes Lackey’s Vows & Honor series. Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series.

He says:

But where is the metaphor in rape? In fantasy, something as mundane as rape is a failure of imagination.

I believe the word that pisses me off the most is “mundane.”

There is nothing mundane about sexual assault.

I mean, would you think it was reasonable to say, “But where is the metaphor in war? In fantasy, something as mundane as war is a failure of imagination.”

Where is the metaphor in war? Where is the metaphor in murder?

Rape is, for many many women, a life changing experience that can affect relationships and actions for the rest of their lives.

But more importantly, women–especially young women–who suffer the trauma of sexual assault shouldn’t be told that rape is something people don’t want to read about. To hear about. To learn about.

That rape is mundane.

To call a trauma that uncounted numbers of women (and men) go through mundane is to say that it’s not interesting, which leads one to infer it’s therefore not important.

Why would it fine for fantasists to write about murder and war, but writing about rape is “a failure of imagination”?

Rape is not mundane.

Those stories I mentioned at the beginning? They’re important not because of the rapes, but because we read about the resilience of the women who are assaulted. We see how different women get through the trauma in different ways–and that they can survive and go on and be okay.

Rape itself is a failure of the imagination. Writing about how people move on with their lives and have set-backs and recover may not be fantasy, but it is human, and it is something that many more people than are ever willing to admit go through.

But it is not mundane.

ADDENDUM the First:
Mr Shetterly came by and posted an explaination of sorts. I’ll add it here, but I would also like to note that Eric, Anne and I all had comments below that I believe are pertinent to the discussion.

I followed your link here. Sorry about the misunderstanding. I don’t know if this will help, but I added it as an ETA to the post: “Someone was upset by my choice of “mundane”. I was using it in the sense of the opposite of fantastical, like this dictionary definition: “of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one”. Fantastical literature has fantasy in it; mundane literature does not. That doesn’t mean one’s better than the other, just that they provide different possibilities for writers. If you’re going to write fantasy, use it to do what isn’t possible in any other genre.”

I commented on that below, as did Anne. (So far)

Studying?

Of course not.

Just marking some of my favorite passages.

Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew Bromfield

Yeah, I know, we’re halfway through August. Better late than never?

Book titles are linked to my review. Author names are linked to my page for that author. If you go to any review and click through to Amazon and buy a book, I get pennies for that purchase, so, you know, please do.
 
 
Mystery
Death at La Fenice (1992) Donna Leon
 
 
Historical Mystery
Lord John and the Private Matter (2003) Diana Gabaldon
Lord John and the Hand of Devils (2007) Diana Gabaldon
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (2007) Diana Gabaldon
The Custom of the Army (2012) Diana Gabaldon
A Plague of Zombies (2012) Diana Gabaldon
A Spell of Vengeance (2012) D.B. Jackson
Legacy of the Dead (2000) Charles Todd
 
 

Supernatural Mystery
Hard Spell (2011) Justin Gustainis
 
 

Historical Romance
Kitty (1979) Marion Chesney and M. C. Beaton
 
 

Anthology
The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (2011) edited by Mike Ashley
 
 

Graphic Novel / Comic
Walking Your Octopus: A Guidebook to the Domesticated Cephalopod (2013) Brian Kesinger
 
 

Audio Books
The Privilege of the Sword (2012) Ellen Kushner (Author, Narrator), Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Joe Hurley, Katherine Kellgren, Nick Sullivan, Neil Gaiman
Small Vices (2002) written Robert B. Parker narrated by Burt Reynolds
 
 
I read 14 books in July, taking me to 108 books so far this year.

Here’s the breakdown of what I read:
eBook: 10
Audio: 2
Paperback: 1
Hardback: 1

Multiple Formats: 3
Re-read: 8

Lots of re-reads this month, some of which are books I have in multiple formats. (I have The Privilege of the Sword in trade paper, audio, and eBook format. So yay for giving Ellen Kushner all my money!)
 
 
As for the genres I was reading:
Mystery:11
Fantasy:4
Anthology:1
Comic:1
Romance:1

Lots of mysteries. Half the fantasy I read were also mysteries, and the one straight-up fantasy didn’t have a lick of fantasy or a single supernatural creature in it.
 
 
And these are the books I rated 8/10 or higher (7/10 is a good and enjoyable book, but nothing special):

10/10
The Privilege of the Sword

9/10
Walking Your Octopus: A Guidebook to the Domesticated Cephalopod

8/10
Hard Spell
Death at La Fenice
A Plague of Zombies
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Lord John and the Hand of Devils
Lord John and the Private Matter
The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

There you have it, July’s reading.

I somehow managed to pre-order two copies of Magic Rises.

Anyone interested? If you are, leave a comment. I’ve got ONE book, so first response gets it.

On a related note, why the HELL do these books come out on a MONDAY? I received Magic Rises AND Kitty in the Underworld, but as I need SLEEP, I can’t read EITHER right away, because both are books I’ll almost certainly read straight through in one sitting.

Damnit.

And to finish up the abandoned series posts…

Charles Finch‘s Charles Lennox

The only reason I read the second, was because Grandmom liked the first so much. I may have bought the third for her, but not bothered to read it myself.

Lenox is a dabbler and a man of leisure, which is how he can afford to investigate crime as a hobby. He also has some ideals that seem far more modern than seems likely for the Victorian era and a man of his class. Not that there weren’t people at that time who held what I would consider to be modern ideals, I just find it strange that historical mysteries are simply littered with open minded men and women.

 
 
Sue Grafton

I didn’t abandon these as much as I just kinda stopped reading them, and then found the thought of going back and re-reading all the books to get caught up rather daunting.

 
 
Michael Jecks

I had such hopes for this series I bought the first three books. But the writing was terrible.

Okay, I give up. At least for now. Michael Jecks is a good storyteller, I will give him that, but his writing… The Merchant’s Partner was slightly better than The Last Templar as far as his writing style, but A Moorland Hanging is just as frustrating to read as the first book.

Point of view changes from paragraph to paragraph, and not always clearly, so once again I kept having to stop, to try to figure out who was thinking and observing. It served as a major distraction from what was otherwise a very good mystery.

 
 
Sara Paretsky‘s V.I. Warshawski series

I know a lot of people love the V.I. Warshawski, but I am not a member of that group. Mostly, I thought V.I. Warshawski was an asshole.

 
 
Arturo Pérez-Reverte‘s Captain Alatriste series.

I just could NOT get into the series, which is too bad, because I love most everything else he’s written.

 
 
Anne Perry

This is kinda complicated. I think it’s possible that if not for the internet I might have blissfully continued reading her books, but unfortunately, this is a case where learning about the author’s personal life ruined the books for me. (See also Orson Scott Card)

 
 
Kathy Reichs‘s Tempe Brennan series.

This series ran into an entirely different problem. I liked the mysteries a lot. What eventually drove me away from the series was Tempe’s personal life.

Break No Bones (2006)
First and foremost: Good GRIEF is this woman EVER going to get her love life settled?! GAH! I’m really tired of her relationship with Andrew Ryan–not because of him, but because she can’t make up her freaking mind. ENOUGH ALREADY! Poo or get off the pot already!

ahem.

Bones to Ashes (2007)
First things first, I have had it with Tempe and Ryan. Really, I would just as soon not read another word about the relationship.

Devil Bones (2008)
I am beginning to feel like the Ryan Tempe saga WILL NEVER END. The only good thing I have to say on that front is that I didn’t have to listen to endless descriptions of how good looking Ryan is this book. Unfortunately, that’s the only good thing I have to say about it.

I’m beginning to think they deserve each other, since neither of them seems to have an ability to commit. Or even have a clue what they really want, for that matter.

So GAH!

So, that’s why I stopped reading THAT series.

 
 
Randy Wayne White‘s Doc Ford

I read through Ten Thousand Islands (2000) and then just kinda stopped picking up books in this series.

Looking through mystery authors, there are several series that I really like, that I need to pick back up again. I just wasn’t in the mood to read mysteries for a couple years, and so lost track of the series. But I think I’ll try and get back into the following:
Elizabeth George‘s Thomas Lynley series
J.A. Jance‘s J.P. Beaumont and Joanna Brady series
And I need to START reading Steven Saylor I’ve read and liked several of his short stories, so I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
Peter Tremayne‘s Sister Fidelma series.

Continuing from the abandoned series: fantasy, here are some comic series I’ve abandoned. (This will be a LOT shorter, because comics aren’t my primary genre).

For the sake of simplicity, I’m NOT going to list a series I started and then gave up on because the series wasn’t for me.

 
House of Mystery

What I liked about the first volumes were the stories told by the various patrons of the House of Mystery. The subsequent volumes spent more and more time on the Fig story line, which I didn’t like nearly as well.

 
Jack of Fables

I love Fables so very much. And I hate Jack of Fables to almost the same degree.

 
Lucifer

I really like Mike Carey‘s writing, and I enjoyed the character of Lucifer in Sandman, but I just couldn’t get into the comic.

 
Runaways

This was one of my favorite series, until Brian K. Vaughn left. Then I just didn’t like it at ALL anymore, which I found VERY sad.

Huh. Guess I haven’t given up on that many long-running series. Most of them were read one and didn’t care to go on.

iO9 recently did an interesting article: When is the right time to finally give up on a series?

I’m of the school where I’ll rarely give up on a book, and that completist bit will keep me reading a series long past when I should give up–I keep going for the love I had of earlier books. But The fact I hate cliffhanger books makes it both harder and easier for me to give up on a series. (I have to know what happens, so I’ll often buy the next book to find out what happens, but if a series starts going downhill, I can abandon it in fear of the dreaded cliffhanger possibility.)

So, what series have I abandoned? As I am a voracious reader, this will probably be a long list, so for the sake of brevity, try not to list too many books where I read the first book and then gave up.

 
Piers Anthony‘s Xanth series.

And I almost gave up on the Incarnations of Immortality. Xanth just got inanely repetitive, to the point that even as a young reader I just stopped reading.

 
Jim Butcher‘s Harry Dresden series.

I might eventually get back to this, but when I got to Changes and Michael told me it was a cliff hanger, I said ‘screw it’ and gave up.

I really loved the early Harry books: he was struggling and kind and generous and had complicated friendships, plus: mysteries! But then, as the series wore on, the fun stopped making up for the fact that I knew that Harry was always going to win.

 
Rachel Caine‘s Weather Warden series.

I liked the idea of the fantasy, but waaay too much focus on fashion and boinking. Here’s what I wrote in my review of the last book I read (Chill Factor):

She’s gorgeous and dresses well and can walk in high heels. So what? Rachel Caine writes about this like it’s a good thing for a woman to be obsessed with fashion and looking good and remaining thin and spending all her money on clothes. All I can think is, “What a waste.”

 
Gail Carriger‘s Parasol Protectorate.

I loved the first book (Soulless) in this series so very very much. I read to the third book based on that initial love, and then just gave up. Here’s an excerpt of the last review I wrote.

All in all, I found Blameless disappointing. Most of the characters were flat, the bad guys were one dimensional, and there seemed to be a lack of logic in the way she was treated in Italy.

 
Karen Chance‘s Cassandra series.

This was where I started to discern that there was urban fantasy and there was paranormal fantasy, and the paranormal was filled with boinking, so I was going to have to be more careful about picking up books.

I mostly found myself annoyed with Cassie, and tired of the fact the she was constantly surrounded by hunky, gorgeous guys. Please. It’s as if absolutely everything in this story related in one way or another to sex. Either Cassie thinking about sex or sizing up every guy some comes across as a potential partner for boinking. Even when she was in danger she couldn’t stop thinking about sex.

Whatever.

 
Carole Nelson Douglas‘s Delilah Street series.

Book two ended with a HUGE cliffhanger, so I read Vampire Sunrise to find out what happened and then never went back.

 
Jennifer Estep

I’ve read two series by her, the Elemental Assassin series, of which I read one book, and the Mythos Academy series, of which I’ve gotten to Dark Frost.

The Elemental Assassin series was just chock full of boinking. So I read one book and gave up.

The Mythos Academy series I really really liked, even the last book I read , but I keep reading the synopsis for the next book and thinking, “Really? No.”

I know I shouldn’t base a book by the synopsis, but it just sounds so unappealing.

 
Yasmine Galenorn‘s Sisters of the Moon series.

This was a very strange one, because each book is written from the POV of one of the three sisters, and I really liked the books written from the POV by Delilah and Mennoly, but hated Camille so much that after Dragon Wytch I couldn’t read any more.

 
Charlaine Harris‘s Sookie Stackhouse series.

You knew this one would be on here, didn’t you?

I loved this series so very much for the first few books. And I was very much Team Eric.

(And I have to say that I’m a big Eric fan, since he’s one of the few who has always tended to see to her material needs when others have ignored or been blind to the financial difficulties their demands have placed upon her. [I always appreciated the fact that Eric had her driveway regraded. That sounds like something silly, unless you’ve ever lived with a gravel driveway, then you realize that he was interested in making her day-to-day life easier, not just impressing her.])

But then, it just became Too Much Too Much.

I have discovered that I no longer care what happens to Sookie.

This book didn’t enrage me with plot holes or issues, I just realized I do not care in the slightest what happens to Sookie or anyone else in the series.

And so, for me, here (Dead and Gone) the series ends. Wish it had lived up to the promise of the first few books, but the endless (and ridiculous) romantic entanglements just got to be too much, and the mysteries took a back seat to everything else.

So long Sookie.

 
Kim Harrison‘s Rachel Morgan series.

Michael really liked this series, and I tried, I really tried. But I found Rachel generally irritating, so after reading The Outlaw Demon Wails I never read another. I think I picked up the next couple books for Michael, but I’m not sure if he read them or not, and I decided if he wanted ’em, he could buy the rest for himself.

 
Naomi Novik‘s Temeraire series.

I loved the first three books, and even got my grandmother to read them, but after reading Empire of Ivory I gave up. The story wasn’t as good, the book ended on a cliff hanger, and I never went back. (Weirdly, I thought I’d read further than that, but, I hadn’t.)

 
Kat Richardson‘s Harper Blaine series.

I got to Vanished and then abandoned this series, despite my love for the first book in the series, Greywalker. Here’s why I gave up:

Now, Harper is not just a Greywalker, but a “special” Greywalker.

Bletch.

Can’t we have a fantasy heroine who isn’t all sooper special?

 
Michelle Sagara‘s Cast series.

I haven’t actually officially abandoned this series, I just can’t be bothered to go back and read anything after Cast in Chaos.

I guess since that was in 2010, and there have been three books published since then, that kinda counts as abandoned.

 
Thomas E. Sniegoski Remy Chandler series.

Here are my thoughts on the last book:

One other thing. Upon inspection, this is a really terrible cover. Every time I looked at the cover, I kept thinking Ben Browder was about to be attacked by mini-glowy-eyed hyenas and extra tall, extra skinny jawas. I know that a cover shouldn’t make or break a story, but I really hate bad fantasy covers. With covers like that, small wonder no one wants to take the category seriously.

So although this story does have much to recommend it, it is most definitely not my cup of tea, and in comparison to other books set in Hell or that deal with Lucifer, this was unfortunately a letdown.

And now I want to watch “Farscape.”

I’d forgotten how much I hated that cover.

 
F. Paul Wilson Repairman Jack series.

This is another that I didn’t actively give up on, as much as I failed to continue reading it.

Ah…. now I remember why.

Crisscross (2004)
Jack is still in the Repairman business, despite the fact that Gia doesn’t like the way she never knows if he’ll return safely from his fix-it jobs. And with Gia’s pregnancy (Despite the fact this is a multi-book pregnancy, Gia is only at 20 weeks. She might be pregnant for years at this rate)

Infernal (2005)
Also, Gia’s pregnancy must be the longest in the history of the world. Poor woman. Luckily for her she’s still barely showing. (Excuse me? Bogus!)

 
 
So, any mistakes in there? Anything in that list that got better after the nosedive in quality? Obviously, some series simply aren’t a fit for me (generally the ones full of boinking) but other series I gave up on because it felt like the quality of the series fell off, and I’d be happy to learn things got better in later books.

But I won’t believe you if you tell me the Sookie series got better. I’ve read the reviews.

And here’s last month’s reading wrap-up:

Fantasy
Tempest Reborn (2013) Nicole Peeler
Kitty Rocks the House (2013) Carrie Vaughn
Anansi Boys (2005) Neil Gaiman
Thieves’ World Book 12, Stealers’ Sky (1989) edited by Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey

YA Fantasy
The Raven Boys (2012) Maggie Stiefvater
The Privilege of the Sword (2006) Ellen Kushner

Historical Romance
A Proper Companion (2011) Candice Hern
A Change of Heart (2011) Candice Hern
An Affair of Honor (2011) Candice Hern
Desperate Measures (2011) Candice Hern

I read ten books, bringing my total for the year so far up to 94. That’s way above my normal average; we’ll see if this trend continues.

Typically, I read more fantasy than anything else.

Fantasy: 6
Romance: 4
YA: 2
Anthology: 1

Yes, that total is more than ten, because books belong to multiple categories.

As far as format goes, eBooks are continuing to outpace paper books of all sorts. And two of the paperbacks were new-releases I had on pre-order.
Paperback: 3
eBook: 7
Multiple Formats: 2
Re-read: 3

But I’d like to point out that I have two of those books in multiple formats. Actually, I have The Privilege of the Sword in three different formats: paperback, eBook, and audio book.