It's the cold-weather reading thread!

Lily Fairbairn

Lily Fairbairn

Half-elven
So last week it was almost 80F here. Today it's barely above freezing and the weather forecasters are muttering about "wintery mix". Ah, winter in Texas! [crazy]

I'm reading a book of essays by the inimitable Ursula K. LeGuin, The Wave in the Mind. Some of the pieces are more interesting than others, but they're all so beautifully expressed I could read them for the prose alone. The next one up is about Tolkien's writing style and I'm am really looking forward to it.

On paper, I've just started the newest book in Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, Lies Sleeping, and am, of course, delighting in every paragraph. The mixture of fact, forensics, and fantasy is done superbly, as usual. However, I wouldn't recommend starting this one without a working knowledge of the rest of the series, since it promises to bring the "Faceless Man" cycle of stories to a close.

I'm listening to another brother Cadfael novel, Monkshood, by Ellis Peters. These are written so clearly they make good audio books, even if almost all of the books in the series follow a similar pattern---a murder, young lovers, herblore, and so forth.

I'd also like to recommend a brand-new book by a young friend. Molly was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 23, became an activist in the cause of cancer awareness, and is today celebrating 20 years cancer free! (Yes, the McMaster of her maiden name is the same one in Lois McMaster Bujold's name.)

https://www.amazon.com/One-Drop-Rai...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550588536&sr=1-1

So what have you been reading?
 
Thanks for the description of LeGuin's The Wave in the Mind. Looking it up on Goodreads and Amazon, I wound up re-directed to her Steering the Craft, which I'm looking forward to plunging into. I'm always fascinated by how her mind works and how that's revealed in her writing; not everyone exhibits such a strong connection.

Meanwhile, I'm dipping back into Tolkien's Letters. My latest favorite quote from him is this from #94:

But if lit[erature] teaches us anything at all, it is this: that we have in us an eternal element, free from care and fear, which can survey the things that in ‘life’ we call evil with serenity (that is not without appreciating their quality, but without any disturbance of our spiritual equilibrium).
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which stands up really well to repeated reading. It's a fascinating insight into human strengths and frailties and how both can be flaws in times of crisis.
 
I liked how the viewpoints changed each time and were substantially different--it didn't seem like the same person talking under a new character name each time.

And for some reason what sticks with me the most is the border guard, I think with China, who allowed a rich infected family to cross the border while bribing him, and his long, convoluted self-justification for taking the bribe and permitting the zombie plague to spread. He seemed a mix of near-apology, "it wasn't my fault or as bad as you say it is," and "anyone would have done the same." I wouldn't say he came off as a sympathetic character, but as a memorable one, someone who was a good stand-in for the Average Joe who thought less about the big picture and more about immediate personal gain, which is how most people are though they don't like to admit it.
 
The visit to Robbin Island is the chapter that has stayed with me. That development was disturbing, for more than one reason.
 
I'm about halfway through Lies Sleeping, number seven in the delightful Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch. As always, I'm enjoying the way he mixes mythology and magic with real-life locations and events. This time around, for example, he's picked up on a couple of recent, perfectly genuine, archaeological events in London.

I believe this installment should finish off the Faceless Man/Lesley arc, but I hope he goes on to explore new and equally imaginative territory.

One word of warning, though: Anyone who has a tattoo of the G-rune for Gandalf will never look at it in the same way again. [:P]

I've just started listening to Night Watch, another in Terry Pratchett's very fine Guards series. In this one, a freak magical accident hurls Sam Vines into the past of Ankh-Morpork, where he has to scramble for his footing. Pratchett seems to be setting up an interesting time-travel paradox. As always, his novels seem light on the surface but are actually built on a solid basis of keen social observation and characterization.

I also have a stack of magazines waiting for me.

What have you been reading?
 
Also known as the annual Dr. Seuss celebration. We've had various folks from the community come in to read to different classes, which the young kids enjoy immensely. There's also a "Stop, Drop, and Read" for ten minutes each day. So I'm using that to start on one of our recent junior-level acquisitions, "Fault Lines in the Constitution: the Framers, their fights, and the flaws that affect us today" by Cynthia & Sanford Levinson. I would subtitle this "Everything you never knew about the U.S. Constitution, but which everyone should be taught".

At home I'm reading "Hidden Figures", an excellent book which has a heckuva lot more than what's shown in the movie.

And I snagged the latest Smithsonian to read before putting it on the rack (I have those on the school's magazine order, along with Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, to encourage higher level reading among the middle-school kids).

I should get myself a subscription to Archaeology, from your mentions of it it sounds like a fascinating magazine!
 
I've subscribed to Archaeology for many years now, and while it's gone in the direction of shorter articles and more photos, as has everyone else, it still packs a good informative punch.

I've been taking Smithsonian many years, too, and the newest one is sitting here beside me. This issue looks less grim and dark than the last two or three. It was definitely time for a respite.
 
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