Finished my lother books. Now I’m reading George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons that was a gift on Father’s Day. I’m also reading The Epigrams of Martial when I need a light book to carry. I’m still finishing Verne’s North and South on the Nook, when I can get it away from the rest of my family. But I also purchased Clark Ashton Smith’s Stories on Nook. I’ve read many of his stories, especially the Hyperborea and Zothique stories that Lin Carter collected and published under the Ballantine Adult Fantasy label around 1970, but I’ve never been able to find a copy of Poseidonis, Smith’s Atlantis-themed stories. And Carter never did publish a collection of Smith’s Averoigne stories, set in a fictional medieval (or later) French province. The Averoigne-based “Colossus of Ylorgne” is probably my favorite Smith story.*
*Part of the fun of these stories are Smitgh’s made-up French names, which seem to be festooned with superfluous letters.
Made it thru William Gibson’s Zero History - I think I would have enjoyed it more had I re-read Pattern Recognition and read Spook Country first, The plot (such as it was) seemed both complicated and kinda skimpy - they’re investigating who created a line of clothing & it’s somehow connected with a mercenary group? One of my GoodReads friends called it “The ‘Where’s Waldo?’ of trousers” and I think that fits rather well. I did find Hollis and Milgrim’s characters to be interesting - would like to know more of their backstories. (Were they in Spook Country?) I’ll probably tackle it again after reading the other 2 Blue Ant books in order.
I revisited Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford in audiobook format, narrated by Feodor Chin. I’d learned of this book back in 2009, when I heard it on NPR’s Radio Reader program. As with several of the books featured on that broadcast, I got impatient and started reading it on my own.
We meet Henry Lee, second-generation Chinese Seattle resident who in the modern day (circa 1986) is mourning the loss of his wife to cancer. A local historical discovery takes us back in his memories to the early 1940’s. Henry goes to a school on a work-study program, where he is the only Asian student, until Keiko Okabe, a third-generation Japanese girl joins him in the lunch room.
Their story of friendship, set during a time of tension between the white and Asian communities (and, we discover, between the Chinese and Japanese as well) is very moving. The plot is based on true events (as far as the internment and discovery of artifacts) and the characters are very well-drawn. I’m not sure why the story was set in 1986, as there’s some minor technical anachronisms that grate a bit; perhaps with only 40-odd years inbetween now and then, it allows for a happier ending? Now I want to learn more about the Seattle jazz scene as well as internment camps…