yet again

January:

1. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
2. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino
3. Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
4. The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood
5. The Official Lamaze Guide: Giving Birth with Confidence, by Judith Lothian and Charlotte DeVries
6. Knit Lit: Sweaters and Their Stories, ed Linda Rhogaar and Molly Woolf


February:

7. Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
8. News from Nowhere, by William Morris
9. The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
10. Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
11. The Time Machine, by HG Wells
12. We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
13. The Female Man, by Joanna Russ
14. The Utopian Reader, ed. Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent


March:

15. Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy
16. The Dispossessed, by Ursula LeGuin
17. Sweater Quest, by Adrienne Martini
18. Pacific Edge, by Kim Stanley Robinson
19. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler
20. The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
21. Unpacking My Library, ed Leah Price
22. Utopianism, by Krishan Kumar


April:

23. Parable of the Talents, by Octavia Butler
24. The Knitter's Book of Yarn, by Clara Parks
25. The Perfectly Imperfect Home, by Deborah Needleman


May:

26. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
27. Pegasus, by Robin McKinley
28. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen


I am getting a fair amount of reading done these days, and perhaps even more internet-tv-watching. There's only so many things you can do while nursing a hungry child. :-P

Jumping back to #26 ... this was an excellent nonfiction read, and I highly recommend it. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who died of cervical cancer in the 1950s. Her cells formed the HeLa line of cells, which were the first human cells that survived in a culture. Many huge advances in science have been made because of them, since they were pretty much the only human cells available--things like the polio vaccine, a much greater understanding of genetics, etc. But neither Henrietta nor her family knew that her cells were taken, until years and years after her death. The book raises all sorts of interesting ethical questions, as well as exploring who Henrietta was, and the impact of these events on her family.

_Pegasus_ was good. A slow, almost contemplative book at times, which made me a little impatient for the first few chapters, until I got in the rhythm of it. (Even then, I think the only reason I was impatient was because I wasn't able to sit down and read it except for brief moments at a time, which meant I'd go several reading sessions without much *happening*.) The ending was super abrupt and wrenching and left me unhappy, but I haven't decided if it's in a good or a bad way. I think it was precisely what McKinley intended, though ... which I suppose would make it good.

_Water for Elephants_ was disappointing. It wasn't bad, but I expected more, and the plot seemed fairly unoriginal--your standard love triangle, plus an elephant, a dwarf, and the fact it takes place on a circus train. Eh. This is the second novel I read that was "born" during NaNoWriMo--I think? Funny that they should both be circus books. I'd like to read more published NaNo novels, but this and _The Night Circus_ are the two better-known ones, I believe.

Currently reading the first eleven chapters of _Drowned Cities_ by Paolo Bacigalupi (it hasn't been released yet; this is a free Kindle preview); also on the Kindle are _Ship Breaker_ by the same author, and _Incarceron_ (on hold from Carnegie Library; yes, they lend out books to your Kindle--sweet!). I'm hoping to run to the library sometime this week and pick up a few more things.