Hi! Well, I’m pretty late in this, but here’s a list of the books read last month.
Read less in July, and am on track to read much less here in August. Not sure how much of that is life getting in the way and what might be that I’m catching up with the too-long-denied need to be reading.
Um
Windswept
Dark Banquet
The Left Hand Of Darkness
To Kill a Mockingbird
I obviously miss my books. My books are all packed. The majority of them have been packed for over 2 years. All of them are now in climate controlled storage. I miss my books.
Well … Fort Collins opened a new library within walking distance of us. It opened when we were in the midst of moving decisions, but now that we’re settled in the new temporary space – and I have no reading materials at all – we’ve been going to the library a lot.
And I have been reading like a starving person. In May, of course, I posted on the first three books I checked out. Since there, here’s what I’ve read:
The 13th Element
Anecdotes of Destiny
The Vampire Lestat
Born Standing Up
Alex & Me
The Devil You Know
Flat Earth
Wesley the Owl
Well, I’m not going to do full reviews on any of these (unless anyone is particularly interested). Just summations.
OK, first, happy Odd Day to everyone.
Things to do on Odd Day: It’s a great day to do your odds ‘n ends, give a friend a high-five, root for the odds-on-favorite, read the Wizard of Odds, watch the Odd Couple, say aaaahd in the doctor’s office, look for sea odders, find that missing odd sock, and beat the odds
There’s a prize if you can out-odd that.
OK … now, since it was noticed, a report on Bonk.
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Of old was an age
when was emptiness
And then they published!
Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
The release party, including the book giveaways and conversation with Tom Shippey (who I don’t much care for as an author, but still) were all today. And I had to work. At home. Unsupervised.
Is AWFUL.
But, dashed out the second the conscience let me, and got my copy. It is pristine. It has perfect edges. And my book covers are PACKED so I can’t COVER it so I can’t READ it cause I would Mess It Up.
Is BEYOND AWFUL.
But I have the book. The lovely, lovely book.
And this weekend, I went to the library, and checked out 4 books, one of which I read (Bonk, every bit as good as Stiff, but even more viscerally disturbing in sections), one of which (Dracula, the original Bram Stoker one, and it’s really pretty good) I’ll finish tonight, and two I have left to distract myself with (biography of Edgar Allen Poe, and This is Your Brain on Music).
If the library is all I have to distract myself with, I’ll be at the library a lot. Or I’ll just go get a pair of white gloves.
This is kind of abbreviated … sort of already reviewed the book.
I’ve been reading the History of the Hobbit set. I’m not finished, but I’m all full of observations .. and it’s been a while since anyone posted anything.
But first, a total aside … Chris –
Some time ago, we lost the line saying who posted what. Mom wrote a question about that, and for some reason her post got put in with the links (under all our wish lists). And seeing it there is just one of those little details that has become overwhelmingly distracting to me. Could you move the post into the post space, out of the link space? And .. why doesn’t the authorship of each post show up any more? That was a pretty useful thing; not sure why WordPress would have gotten rid of it. Weird.
Anyway .. musings on book ..
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Well, here we are at another one of the multi book report posts. Do you guys prefer this digest form or is it better when I post just one book at a time?
You see, when I post one book at a time, I start feeling like all I talk about is books, and that starts feeling .. um .. very unsatisfying. I do have to do something with myself or I’ll go insane, but when I am forced to take that step back and realize that what I do is Read Books .. well, then I start feeling really pathetically useless as a human being.
But then I’ll read something I really want to share, or I’ll read many that I want to share a little, and it just reaches critical mass in my head and I’m posting a 3-book post. Again.
So, if you’d rather see one book, one report, let me know and I’ll get over myself. If you don’t mind the multi book reports, just let me float along as is and I’ll stop wondering if the multi-book format is acceptable.
I guess it would be more acceptable (in my head) if the three books had anything in common. But they rarely do … case in point …
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Well, yeah, there have been quite a few books that I’ve read. Began to feel like book reports were dominating the forum, though.
A notable good one was “Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar” – that one was fun. I enjoyed it for the jokes, but some of the philosophy actually managed to stick. Need to re-read it; I think more of the real stuff will stick the second time round.
Not so good was “The Book of the Courtesans.” It was good as a series of biographical essays, but they really tried to pull it into a different framework. They wrote a good book, but it wasn’t the one they said they were writing. And the little interludes between chapters were decidedly uneven.
“Maggots, Murder and Men” was good as long as it stayed on topic. Well .. good as long as it stayed on the topic that interested me. He was very direct in the beginning; this was his book, his memoirs, and when he wanted to talk about something else he was going to. So it was all expected. And some were interesting tangents, and some were not .. to me. But all the bits about forensic entymology were great. Many of the other observations were too.
Ramona tells me i should post book reports too. I tell her that the kind of books i read are not as worthy of being reported, but she says that doesn’t matter, so here goes.
I picked up a book i read years ago and kept because i enjoyed it so much i thought i would reread it one day. Rereading does not always work out well for me (my interests and reading tastes change) but this time the book was good the second time around.
Bond of Blood. This was the first book by Roberta Gellis I read, and it set me on a binge of her books. It is set in medieval times, the heroine a 15 year old heiress who is betrothed in the first few pages to a neighbor. It may sound like a typical romance, but it isn’t. The description of the times is graphic and, i believe, mostly accurate; the romance is sweet and not typical of the genre.
Then i read the other book by Roberta Gellis that i have kept with the intention of rereading, The Rope Dancer. This book, if you look at the cover, looks like a typical romance. It isn’t. The heroine is a rope dancer and proud of her calling, but without a strong protector she is pretty much helpless. She is found in a heap on the road by a troubadour and his dwarf friend/servant/fool and, of course, they end up forming a small troup of players and romance blooms. The story is, again set in medieval times with a good description of the times, and the romance is non-typical and satisfying.
Roberta Gellis has a masters degree in medieval literature. It shows in her writing.
When i looked to see if there were any more books by her in the library that i have not read, i discovered that she has been writing mysteries lately. I just finished my first, A Mortal Bane. What can i say, I like the way she writes. I read it in one day, though i should have been doing other things. This book was not, perhaps, as interesting a study of the times, though descriptions of attitudes and rules of society did play a part in the story. She has written 4 mysteries. I have a feeling i will wish there were more when i finish the last one.
Back to back book reports! Well, I got to do a lot of reading over the last two weeks.
Very high marks for this book. I’d seen it referenced on Amazon (it’s tangentially about Tolkien/Inklings, so it was linked from other books I was looking at). Then a person, a person in the Tolkien chat room whose literary taste I was willing to trust, really talked it up. And then my Amazon gift card points roughly coincided with this surgical down time .. and I decided to go for it.
So glad I did.