Distrust That Particular Flavor, Gibson. Non-fiction. Gibson spends quite a bit of the introduction telling us that despite non-fiction not being his strong suit, people keep paying him to create it. I found the collection of short pieces less interesting than his fiction, though interesting enough to finish it. In particular, I perceived that Gibson was not shy about revisiting the same themes for different commissions. And, really, why not get as much mileage out of a thought as you can? Unless you are a bigger Gibson fan than I am, I believe you can skip this without feeling like you’re missing anything vital.

A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons; Martin. Yes. This series has been around for so long, and I have been only peripherally aware of it, so when I saw the four-volume paperback boxed set at Costco, I thought “Hey, I guess it’s complete; why don’t I just pick up a set?” Only to find later that not only is there a fifth volume recently released, but there are two more books to come. And each of the last two has taken more than five years in the writing! If you have seen the books, you have seen that they are not thin, either: each is in the neighborhood of 1,000 pages. So I hope that by the time I retire, I will be able to have the last volume beamed into my brain by whatever device Microamazoogle has created for that purpose, and that the embedded ads don’t give me a stroke.
But on to the books themselves. I like them. They do not have break-neck pacing (as you might expect just from the page count), but they did keep my interest (volumes three and four do suffer somewhat from middle-game syndrome: you have all these pieces to get into place for the end game, and it’s hard to keep all their movements vital and involving). Martin does a good job with more point-of-view characters than one customarily sees, though I think I could do without the fanciful naming he introduces in (I believe) volume four.
In some ways, Martin is the anti-Tepper here: where Tepper’s characters are sometimes tiresomely black or white, Martin’s are almost all shades of grey, and in many ways that was refreshing.
Now let’s hope that the success of the TV series is enough motivation to get the last two books out (and not so much motivation that the series expands again).

Cool, Calm, and Contentious, Markoe. Non-fiction. More personal than most of Markoe’s previous essay collections and correspondingly darker, if no less humorous.

The Light Fantastic: A Discworld® Novel, Pratchett. Yes. This is the most order-sensitive Discworld® novel I have yet run into, so I wouldn’t recommend starting with it. Closely follows The Colour of Magic. An early work in the universe, I feel like it gives hints of what the scope might have been without yet having realized the scope of what it ended up being.

Moving Pictures: A Novel of Discworld®, Pratchett. Yes. This is not one of my Pratchett supplier’s favorites, and it did strike me as a bit labored. It didn’t help that there were many, many typos (including, I believe, at least two occurrences of “vocal chords,” not apparently for playful effect). Still, not horrible.

An Uncertain Place: a Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery, Vargas, tr. Reynolds. Yes. I continue to be fond of Vargas’s hero, Commissaire Adamsberg, and the writing and (perhaps especially) translation are lovely, but I fear the plots are becoming more involved than I need. Vargas is not nearly on the thin ice that Tepper is, though.

Dead Mann Walking: A Hessius Mann Novel, Petrucha. Yes. Petrucha has created a unique (to my knowledge) first-person narrator in Hessius Mann. I am looking forward to the next installment to see if he can maintain the level of interest, given Tana French’s rationale in giving each of her Dublin Murder Squad books a different protagonist: it’s hard to justify life-changing events happening to the same person over and over. Some aspects of DMW resonate with another recent work I also enjoyed; I think it rather validates Petrucha’s vision that a different group of talented writers went in a similar direction given a related premise. The only passage that pulled me out of the narrative was the improper (and strained) use of “to coin a phrase.”

Reaper Man: A Novel of Discworld®, Pratchett. Yes. Again, Pratchett provides reliable entertainment. This one introduces a particularly entertaining minor character, and Death can always be relied upon to add that certain something.

Goliath, Westerfeld. Yes. Follows Leviathan and Behemoth. If you’ve read them, you know whether you want to read this; if not, I recommend you start with them. I noted no mechanical difficulties, most likely because the story was holding me captive.

The Tears of Autumn, McCarry. Yes. I’m tempted to believe that every aspect of the theory presented in this 1974 political thriller is true, it hangs together so nicely. The writing is also very good.