Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Books

Commuting on BART requires a few things:
  1. Patience.
  2. Flexibility.
  3. A poor sense of smell.
  4. Tolerance for the eccentric behavior of one's fellow human beings.
  5. A strong immune system.
What the hell does this have to do with books? Well, points 1, 2, and 4 are all greatly-assisted by having reading material on-hand. I could load some books on my phone and read, but I'm not a fan of burning through my phone's battery unnecessarily. Plus the screen is kinda tiny. I could get an e-reader to replace my dead Kobo, but I haven't yet decided on what I want or how to deal with my excessive number of epub e-books (largely ruling-out Kindle).

So dead trees it is.

I got "Clariel" by Garth Nix, back in November and burned through it a little too fast. It was a nice prequel to his Abhorsen series, though a little choppy for me in parts.

I also got "The Slow, Silent Regard for Things" by Patrick Rothfuss. While I enjoyed it, I found myself irritated that this distracted from book three of his Kingkiller Chronicles.

I'm kind of an entitled ass when it comes to my entertainment. I've come to accept that and am somewhat glad that nobody really cares all that much about my whining.

So I found myself at loose ends on reading material and splurged a bit to get "The Red Sword" by Miles Cameron and gambled on its sequel, "The Fell Sword".

I'm a bit over 150 pages into "The Red Knight" and am enjoying it. Cameron is clearly someone with an SCA background and is a little too in-love with describing medieval armor components and attire, but he is solid at world-building and I'm really enjoying his characters and setting. The story is interesting and the magic system intrigues me. I expect good things from this.

After those two are done, I plan to go to "Half a King" by Joe Abercrombie. I like Abercrombie's work, but I didn't want to read one of his books before Xmas. His bleak stories tend to depress me.

After that is "Words of Radiance" by the ever-awesome Brandon Sanderson. That's a fat book and will take me a good long while.

I need a bigger bag. Sigh.
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1 comment:

Aaron Britton said...

You should check out Ben Aaronovitch's PC Peter Grant book series. Think rookie beatcop that starts to become a magician cop in London after talking to a ghost witness. Really fun stuff.

Stephen Erikson has a new book, Willful Child, that is a spoof on the original star trek. Got it at the library and it is pretty funny.

Also Tom Holt's Doughnut is very good mind bender. Trying to get his other two books, When it's a jar and The Outsorcerer's Aprentice. All happening in the same world he has created, but separate reads at the same time.

If you want a slow very thoughtful read I recommend Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy. Annihilation: A Novel starts it off.

December 18, 2014 at 8:22 AM

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