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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Jun 5 2018, 2:59pm
Post #1 of 4
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It's the three-in-one reading thread!
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Can't Post
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Yes, I'm deserting my keyboard for a while. Since the boards are moving so slowly these days, I hereby decree that this thread will be good until Tuesday, June 26. 
On paper, I finished Susanna Kearsley's The Winter Sea. I found it entertaining and very well done, even if it never rose above that been-there done-that level. I should say it's fine example of a part historical, part modern-day, romance, with very careful research into the historical parts.
Since the historical heroine, Sophia, is an ancestor of the modern-day heroine, Carrie, and the latter is channeling the experiences and emotions of the former for a novel she's writing, it was very hard for Kearsley to build up any tension until the very end. That's when she explained a discrepancy in what Carrie knew about Sophia's life in a clever and positive way.
Annael, I thought this novel was resolved much better than Kearsley's The Shadowy Horses. If you decide to read it, please let me know what you think.
In audio I'm listening to Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, by Simon Garfield. Garfield's writing is delightful, and is narrated by Gildart (Gildart? I've never heard that name before) Jackson in a wonderful, clearly enunciated, BBC accent.
Yes, the subject material is fonts, type design, graphics, book covers, etc. I occasionally find myself tempted to open a word-processing file just to check out one of the fonts he mentions, but since I'm passingly familiar with them, I'm not too badly frustrated. I don't know if the paper book has the fonts illustrated or not, but it should.
Y'all play nice while I'm gone, read lots of books, and be sure to let us know what they are, for good or for bad!
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow....
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Attalus
Lorien
Jun 5 2018, 9:25pm
Post #2 of 4
(608 views)
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Just got Giant Days, Volume 5 in the mail. I'll read it when I am a little less busy.  Still working on Nemesis by Lindsey Davis. I don't know why the Amazon reviewer got his panties in a wad about, I am about 1/3 way through, and am enjoying it immensely.
We are the fighting Uruk-Hai! We slew the great warrior! Well, yeah, first he killed a bunch of us and another whole lot of Mauhúr's lads, and we had to shoot enough arrows into him to drop a Mûmak. But we got him!
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Annael
Immortal
Jun 5 2018, 11:51pm
Post #3 of 4
(600 views)
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And yes, the resolution works better than most of the others of hers that I've read. The Rose Garden is my favorite, but I'd rate Winter Sea next.
I've been gobbling up Anne Cleeves's "Shetland" murder mysteries. I rarely guess the murderer, I'm getting very fond of the repeating characters (and still mourning the one she killed off), and she evokes the Shetlands so beautifully I feel like I'm there. Plus she gives you interesting history bits, like the one about the flagship of the Spanish Armada that got blown all the way to the Shetlands and wrecked on Fair Isle (of the famous knitting patterns), leaving a genetic legacy there, or the Shetland Bus, the covert operation between the Shetlands and occupied Norway during WWII. (Someone needs to write an historical romance about the true story of the Norwegian who fell in love with the Shetland girl, married her, and stayed in Shetland - Lily?).
I'm also working through Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series, but she's gotten a bit formulaic, and there's too much action and not enough description for my taste. I mean, if your premise is that there are hundreds of alternate worlds, spend a little time showing us how different an individual world is, why not? And a little less time in breathless chases through the streets that don't move the plot forward or show us anything more about the characters' abilities than we already know.
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Kelly of Water's Edge
Rohan
Jun 15 2018, 7:05pm
Post #4 of 4
(499 views)
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Still going on the Masters of Rome series.
[In reply to]
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Can't Post
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This time I've just finished Caesar's Women, which focuses on the Roman Republic's brief time on life support between Sulla's dictatorship and Caesar pulling the plug by beginning the Imperial period.
The sprinkles of foreshadowing are slightly haunting whenever you're reminded in historical hindsight that a whopping 5 of the major characters of this novel (at my count with only knowledge of the period's basics) are destined to be murdered - and that's without the characters both introduced and so far just mentioned who will eventually suicide. The War of the Roses is the only comparable period in western world history which springs to my mind as far as the collective imagination of the general public.
Caesar himself proves to be a bundle of contradictions - wonderful to the Vestal Virgins at his mercy yet misogynistic, genuinely indignant at oppression of the masses yet merciless towards those he feels needs to be put in their place, serially adulterous yet hypocritical regarding his wive's reputations, a good friend yet coldblooded if turncoating is necessary to his rise.
Looking forward to continuing.
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