While the Wife's Away...

.. the husband reads.

Not that I wouldn't be reading anyway, but last night and today have been petty much dedicated to reading with only a slight break for a run for comics.

Last night, I finished Kim Harrison's Black Magic Sanction. I like that her character Rachel Morgan is no longer defined by making stupid decisions every third chapter. She's grown, and the book was wonderful to read. And of course, is set up for the next sequel.

This evening, I just finished Kelley Armstrong's Frostbitten. This one is back with the werewolves, especially with Elena as the main character. It read faster than the Harrison book, but was smaller. Still also a good femme-fantasy romp.

And now I'm on to Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner's Destroyer of Worlds. I read the dedication and the dramatis personae.

The dedication: To Werner Heisenberg - Maybe

And the dramatix personae makes me near giddy to begin reading; it mentions the Pak.

And More Reading

Burning through the books lately, but then these have not been really difficult reads.

I read the supernatural short stories, and they were good. It's always nice to have additional Kelley Armstrong and Jim Butcher stories to read.

Two additional books I read this weekend were recommendations from Dian.

The Adrian Mole Diaries by Sue Townsend is a fun book written in diary form by a boy who begins the book at age 13 3/4. It's very British, with dry humor, and kind of sitcom-ish with the way things are misunderstood. There are two other books I have requested at the library, so I look forward to seeing how the tale goes.

Candy Freak by Steve Almond is a book written about the candy industry, focusing on the small candy producers. It turns out that I have a few dark chocolate bars from one of the plants that he visits. It wasn't a great book, but it was informative. It does make you crave candy while reading it though.

Other Reading

Okay, so Donnerjack really hasn't been keeping my attention of late. I've had some books come in from the library, and then built a list while I was in Seattle, and got a new stack of books from the library that I have to work on now.

While in Seattle, I finished Princeps Fury, which was a very good read. The momentum was such that I ended up staying up late reading Sunday night.

Also Dian had a fun book she had been given that I devoured while I was up there. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is almost a graphic novel, but is more like a novel with storyboards interspersed in it. It tells the tale of a boy and his serendipitous time living in a train station.

I also read a couple tales from My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding. Which had a Harry Dresden story in it as well as a story by Kelley Armstrong. Both were fun little tales, good for tiding me over until the next full length book comes out.

And finally, although it was a complete book, Backup would barely qualify as a novella, and is really just a bound short story. It's another Harry Dresden story, but this time told from his brother Thomas' perspective.

And then this evening I just finished the first of a new group of books from the library. This one was Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and its' about an old man remembering his time in a traveling circus during the Great Depression. Totally not my normal thing, but very entertaining. And quite the fast read. I got it at the library yesterday, and just finished it.

Now I'm on to another couple collection of supernatural short stories with tales by Jim Butcher and Kelley Armstrong again. And tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day!

A Visit to the Library

Sunday night I finished Living with the Dead. It was good, but not up to Kelley Armstrong's usual.

I tried to read Inside Inside by James Lipton, but as wonderful as it is to hear him speak, I could not handle his writing style. The sentences are too long, and I kept skipping around. It brought back what it was like to read Charles Dickens, and I hate Dickens. I will continue to watch Inside the Actors Studio and hear Lipton speak, and be happy with that.

Today I burned through David Gerrold's The Martian Child which is an account of his adoption of an 8-year-old boy. It's very good, and significantly different from the movie.

Then I read the last Berkeley Breathed book that I know of: Pete and Pickles. It's silly, but a fun little kids book that is beautifully illustrated in typical Breathed fashion.

And now I am on to Karen Miller's Empress. We shall see how it goes. I am hopeful.

Well, that's over with...

The Holidays are over.

My time game-mastering is over for a while.

I'll likely have no field work until February.

This is a real lull.

I do have a lot of books set to read, because of course books come from the library in swarms.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

Living with the Dead - Kelley Armstrong

Empress - Karen Miller

The first is an easy choice, Neil is always good. The second is a continuation of Armstrong's "Women of the Otherworld" series. The third was a referral I got from some webpage or another. It's an alternate world where the land masses are the same, but the names and events are different. We'll see.

And another thing...

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you...



I finished The Name of the Wind Thursday night. I liked it so much, that I've ordered a hardback version from Amazon, and will be collecting all subsequent books in hardback.

Ask John... I don't do this.

I'm cheap. Books come out in hardback, and I read friend's copies or the library's and then if I like it I'll buy the paperback. The only exception to this so far has been Terry Pratchett and his Tiffany Aching books. WFM. HFoS. WS.

And now Patrick Rothfuss.

If you want to feel how his writing style moves, go to the book store and read the single page first chapter. It is practically prose poetry.

The first paragraph got Jennifer hooked.

And I have to wait until April 2009 for the second book.

I did get a cool book from mom on Sunday though. It's an anthology about vampires. There are a lot of short stories in it, but I'll probably only read two of them.

One is by Kelley Armstrong and is about her female vampire Cassandra.

The other is by Jim Butcher, and is about Harry Dresden's brother.

And before John goes racing for Borders...



Oh yes, I forgot to tell you...



This is a galley. One of mom's friends is somehow connected with the writing community, and she gets galleys from publishers.

I promise that after Jennifer has read it, I will pass it along to John. And if he asks nicely, maybe then on to Jay.

But is there any food?

So today I finished the latest Harry Dresden book by Jim Butcher. And they just keep getting better.

The entire series is a fun read. The internal "physics" of magic is great. It has just about anything a person reading supernatural could want. There are necromancers, demons, faerie/sidhe, holy warriors, fallen angels, vampires (three kinds, yet), and of course wizards.

Harry has become such a well defined character. And even though there is a continuity along the stories, it's not so ingrained in the overall story that Butcher feels the need to rehash all previous events at the beginning of a new book. You don't even get a description of Harry Dresden in this new book for at least 50 pages.

Now, while I know there were problems with the Sci-Fi Channel's TV series, I did find it entertaining, and I do tend to picture Harry like that actor, and I hear Bob's voice from the show when he speaks in the books. Beyond that? Not so much. The show is a fun watch if you haven't read the books, and they would make me want to read the books once I had seen it, but they have less to do with the books than the movie Jurassic Park did with the book.

So now I get to move on to reading the latest Kelley Armstrong. I got a hint of what Hope (the half-demon protagonist) will be like from reading Dates from Hell, a collection of four short stories by different female authors of modern supernatural. I'm hoping (seriously no pun intended) that she is as fun in the book as she was in the novella.

Cincinnati of the Damned and other vacation locales

Right now I'm about half through Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series. I've been en joying the stories and have to agree with my friends who have also read them that Rachel is constantly doing stupid things, and that the background characters are usually more interesting that Rachel is. But I'd still recommend it for people who like a little romance/modern fantasy.

I also like it because the local home for non-humans (vamps, weres, and witches) is across the river from Cincinnati, and that's where I was born.

For other books in a similar vein (sorry), I like Magic Bites the first of the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews.

But the best of all is Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld. It's almost a scientific modern fantasy series. There are werewolves which are covered in the first two books and I think the sixth, and then witches, warlocks, demons, vampires, and necromancers are slowly introduced. The characters are captivating and you can really feel their emotions as you read.

And now, I have to admit that aside from the old Thieves' World series, I don't usually read women authors. I think I got a bad taste in head over them from Lynn Abbey and Janet Morris. Morris always wrote of violent men and aloof and/or helpless women. Abbey, just never thrilled me. And so I was very surprised when I read my first book by Kage Baker.

I read a collection of short stories called Mother Aegypt, and I had never had my emotions played with so much while I read. So I started her Tales of the Company, and thoroughly enjoyed it, both the full length books, and the short story collections. And the Anvil of the World was a great fantasy world.