Just reread Dorothy L Sayers Gaudy Night, and now I’m rereading S M Stirling’s Conquistador (a busy time and don’t feel like trying anything new!).
*Gaudy Night * is as enjoyable as ever with the development in the relationship between Peter & Harriet. Not much as a who-done-it but a good novel.
Conquistador I’m not so sure about. I’m a Stirling fan - okay I’m a sucker for easy reading alternative histories with a military bent - but, apart from the Draka books which I loath, this is my least favourite but I’m not sure why. It’s got all the normal ingredients but somehow it doesn’t show the same flair and breadth of imagination as the Peshwar Lancers, or the *Island in the Sea of Time * or *Dies the Fire * series.
Finished: Greenmantle–it was okay, but the part where Ali was at the bonfire thinking of a name for the horned god was beautiful. The story was good but it just didn’t click.
The Gold-Bug and Other Tales–I love Dover Thrift editions. Great literature for under $5.
Gave up on: Alchemy & Academe. As a reviewer on GoodReads put it “These were very seventies…and it seemed like so many of the authors were high - and not in a good way.”
This is why I tend to avoid fantasy/sci-fi short story anthologies. Except for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, which is consistently wonderful.
New books:
Charles de Lint’s Spiritwalk which is a sequel to Moonheart. I don’t see how, the first book wrapped up all the loose threads that needed wrapping up.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch because I’ve been craving some Victorian fiction in the worst way
Fabiola Cabeza de Baca’s We Fed Them Cactus because the title was intriguing. It’s about Mexican rancheros on the llano (desert plains) at the turn of the last century.
Holes by Louis Sachar. I enjoy a lot of YA fiction, especially when the author doesn’t talk down to me. I wish there’d been more books like this when I was a kid. Maybe they were around and I just didn’t know about them. Seems like all the library had for me was Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Oz. My kids got to read Blume, Cormier, Hinton, and Tolkien.
I’m almost finished with Pere Goriot by Balzac. Something I’ve never understood but have been fascinated by in historical fiction is finances – how people got and managed their incomes. Some people never touched a hard coin but managed to get by. Some folks had pensions (from who knows where) without working a day in their lives. Parents disinherited their children. Children put their parents in the poor house. Poor people sold their clothes and household items regularly. Some working people got paid once a year! It’s mind-boggling. I need to get that book about everyday life in Victorian London, but I’ve forgotten the title and author.
I’m waiting for some stuff from Amazon – epic fantasy by Joe Abercrombie, the first Elvis Cole book, the Evelyn Keyes bio, a Victorian murder mystery, and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.
Recently I was able to read On the Beach and Alas Babylon back to back and what I noticed was for two peer novels, how OTB got it so wrong. Twas weird.
A complimentary series for folks who like DW is Elizabeth Moon and her Serano series. Less info dumps , more politics and an even split of space opera and military action.
Mercator by Nicholas Crane. This book not only details the life of this great cartographer but vividly describes the perilous times he lived in. This was the 16th century where he not only had to contend with the plague, but also the whims of the Catholic and Lutheran churches. Both of this bodies could take exception to the “wrong” sort of information on a map. At one stage he was imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for “heretical” statements. He was lucky, some of his co-defendants (including a 75 year-old woman) were buried alive.
Was on vacation last week and got the chance to run through some of the stack of to be reads.
Finished Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost. The first in a new series of what my friend call Vampire Porn. I would contend it is a bit more like Vampire Action Romance but tomatoes tomahtoes.
Next was Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich. I really really love this series. She’s doing a good job of keeping the series with in her world set. No diversions to other locales, no stories that deviate wildly from the prior novels.
Read two CSI novels, CSI: New York: Four Walls by Keith R. A. De Candido and CSI: Nevada Rose by Jerome Priesler. These serializations are really good and an interesting way to be introduced to different authors and their styles.
I just finished The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. I liked it despite a fairly ridiculous plot. The writing is wonderful, but I’m not sure the author ever read any science fiction before she started this.
AuntiePam: (spoilers for Russell’s books in general)
She kills everybody off in this one, too, but at least this time you know about it from the beginning since the book begins with the expedition’s “lone survivor”. The woman is vicious.
Just finished Kockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock. Some minor spoilers follow.
I’m a bit ambivalent about this one. On the one hand, I certainly enjoyed the writer. He has a real “voice” which make his somewhat entwined short stories very interesting to read.
On the other hand, geeze louise the book is just so relentlessly depressing. Everyone but everyone in this place is a total fuckup. They are sometimes offered minor chances for redemption, but inevitably turn them down. There is no love in this place, it sounds very much as if everyone involved is living in hell (and mostly deserve it for their selfishness, vileness and stupidity).
I wonder how much the fiction resembles the place, given that the authour did in fact grow up in a town of the same name …
Chef’s Night Out: From Four Star Restaurants to Neighborhood Favorites 100 Top Chefs Tell You Where (and How!) to Enjoy America’s Best by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page
and
The Cradle King: The Life of James VI & I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain by Alan Stewart.
I’m reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. I’m halfway through the second book, The Subtle Knife. It’s interesting and well written.
I’ve read Frederica, it’s another of my favorites, along with The Unknown Ajax. I still have a big box of them to go through but I haven’t run across a bad one yet. I like the older heroines too. Heyer is one of those authors that I can’t believe nobody told me about sooner.
Finished Pere Goriot and decided to stay in the 19th century, so I started Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. I’m enjoying it very much, but I think Blazanov is a prick.
I just finished The Awakened Mage the second and last in the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker story. This is a mixed review. I enjoyed the ending, but strongly feel this could have been told in one book, not two. It has taken me a long time to finish this book and to be honest, the first 3/4 of this dragged horribly. The last 1/4 was enjoyable, but a good editor would have cut the two of them into one.
I’ve finally gotten the time to do a “Summer of the Classics”!
I’m in India, working in Microfinance for two months. The downside is that everyone here is terrified of letting the “poor little white girl” out of the house alone (or at all without a driver/chaperon). The upside is that I’ve discovered Penguin Classics go for 50 rupees a pop (that’s about a dollar) here.
So far I’ve read Frankenstein, Crime and Punishment, Candide, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (which starts out in Hamburg and Copenhagen, where I lived for 18 years! How did I never know?), and am almost finished with the Collected Sherlock Holmes. All have so far been excellent.
Sitting on my nightstand are Persuasion and Northanger Abbey by Austen, Dafoe’s Moll Flanders and Kipling’s Kim (highly appropriate, eh?)
Also, I just finished Rushdie’s new book, Enchantress of Florence. It’s pretty good, actually. I adore Rushdie’s style of writing, but I feel most of his books taper off around the middle (see: Midnight’s Children. Great premise that kind of choked and died halfway through. Yes, I get that that’s metaphorical for India’s unfulfilled promise and all, but 'cmon. Don’t make the same mistake again in Shalimar the Clown). But he seems to be getting better in Enchantress. Still a little disjointed, but if you’re into Mughal India/Renaissance Italy, you’ll probably like it. There’s a lot of “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” style in-jokes that are quite amusing, if you’ve done some reading on the respective periods.
Meridiana is an interesting book, especially if you’ve read John Keay’s The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named. Verne’s book seems to take the sam,e situation and apply it to Africa – what if, in 1854, Sir Everest and an Anglo-Russian expedition tried to surveuy an arc of the Meridian through South Africa? It seems to be the same Everest, although Verne never says so. But he des cribes the surveying procedure just as Keay does (Keay, for his part, doesn’t mention Verne or his book. I suspect he didn’t know about it.)
I’m on Le Superbe Orinoque now.
Just finished The Devil You Know by Mike Carey. I enjoyed it. I put it in a similar genre as Butcher’s Dresden series. It seemed a little darker to me, but I recommend it. The second one isn’t out, but is in the works. Butcher fans, give it a try.
I’ve just started Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. So far I’m not thrilled with it: the writing style is very annoying. I hope the content begins to compensate for that soon.