The second Steven Saylor mystery, Arms of Nemesis, was great. I couldn’t find a local copy of the third one, Catilina’s Riddle, so I’ve had to order it. I bought the fourth one but I feel compelled to read a series in the order in which the books were published.
Meanwhile I’ll start on the second Flashman book, Royal Flash.
I hate it when I pick up a book from a series and the list inside the front cover doesn’t list the books in order. Why do they sometimes list them randomly? Or if they are in the correct order, they sometimes omit the book you have in your hand so that you can’t tell where it fits into the sequence.
Last night I finished the second of a two book series by Patricia Briggs–Raven’s Strike.
In hindsight, I’m astonished at how much story Briggs packed into two books. I think a lot of fantasy authors would have extended the series, and not for the better.
I’ve just finished (actually, just started & just finished) Henry James’s Daisy Miller, which I found rather more accessible and interesting than Turn of the Screw. I’ve also started two seminal English novels, one which I had already once begun: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I owe Ms. Bronte an apology – I’m much more hooked on her story than I thought I would be, and it’s by no means chic lit, as I thought it might be. It’s actually very engaging, and I have to say I like Rochester and Jane very much, although I’m not too far into it yet. Tristram Shandy I also enjoy much more now, the second time around, simply by skipping over parts that bore me to tears, like the Yorick’s sermon.
I’ve also lying around open around here, indicating I must at some point in the past have been reading it, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett and A Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff, a history of the American Revolution up to 1787. Only somewhat good, I must say – it’s barely annotated and sometimes hard to follow for a lack of subdivision. Within the Oxford History of the United States, it just can’t beat Battle Cry of Freedom. which was brillant, lucid, dense and readable at the same time.
Early this morning I finished *Grendel * by John Gardner, to which I’d been led by recently reading Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. *Grendel * is quite a visceral read – I really, really liked it. I’ve read parts of Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, and I’ll definitely look up some more of his works.
I also recently finished Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, the first of Ms. Wharton’s novels I’ve read. I think that, like Henry James, she works better in smaller doses; e.g. her short stories, of which I’m a huge fan (especially her ghostly fiction), but I’ll definitely give The Age of Innocence and maybe The Buccaneers a try.
Now I’m on Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockden Brown, which I’m enjoying quite a lot (and its readability has surprised me, considering it was published in 1799). I read CBB’s Wieland several years ago and liked it as well.
Adhering to my apparent theme of epidemic-centric literature (Arthur Mervyn features an outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia), I’m also really liking Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez – a writer who is new to me but of whom I certainly look forwarding to reading more. I like his method of going back and forth in time while describing the interactions of the three main characters.
Last night I started The Bonehunters, the sixth book in Steven Erikson’s Malazan series. 900 pages, new gods, new threats, new characters.
Then today Pat Barker’s new book arrived – Life Class – she’s back in WWI again. I wasn’t blown away by the Regeneration Trilogy, but that was my problem. I couldn’t keep the characters straight – it seemed that they looked alike and sounded alike. Life Class isn’t as ambitious, so maybe I’ll have better luck. Barker’s one of my favorites. Nobody writes like Barker. She just cuts.
Finished Essays in Satanism which was extremely good. I’m now reading Q by Luther Blissett which is a historical drama set in the Reformation. I’m kind of enjoying it, each chapter moves backwards and forwards on the timeline the book is set in so it took me a while to work out who people were and what’s going on. I’m 1/6th of the way through now and it’s coming together a bit more, although I wouldn’t say it was rip-roaring.