It's Tuesday, so time to tell us what you've been reading

NottaSackville

NottaSackville

Valinor
I finished Foundation and Empire, the second book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. In this book, the Foundation - originally established as a scientific haven at the edge of the Galaxy, expands in power until it becomes a threat to the Empire, the original but decaying rulers of the entire Galaxy. And then Foundation itself is threatened by the rise of a new power, a man known simply as the "Mule". Most of this second book tells the tale of a small band of Foundation citizens who try to thwart the Mule from overtaking both the Foundation and the Empire.

The books are good, but I wouldn't call them great and I'd never rank them #8 on the all-time SciFi/Fantasy list like NPR readers did, but I'm still enjoying them. I'm on to Second Foundation, the story of the OTHER Foundation established on the opposite end of the Galaxy from the first Foundation. This is the last book of the Trilogy and I expect probably the last of the Foundation books I'll read (there are more beyond the Trilogy), but hey, you never know - maybe it'll catch my fancy and I'll decide to continue.

What's got your fancy (or at least your reading time) this week?

Notta
 
I think I must have been in my early 20s when I read those. Time for a reread 25 (ouch) years later!

I'm deep in YA with few signs of getting out soon, having had my daughter finally get Tamora Pierce into my hands. I'm reading Bloodhound now, and she picked up Mastiff at the bookstore on the weekend, so that will be next. The combination of fantasy and detective fiction works well, and as an adult reader of YA I appreciate that this world has actual sex in it (nothing graphic in the books, but you know it exists, openly acknowledged and not seen as bad). People of a conservative bent might want to shy away from giving it to young readers, but personally I'm really happy that my daughter gets a really positive fantasy model in which women can kick ass and sleep with men and women before marriage. Pierce's stories in this series at least are of a young woman (16) in an adult world. The Not-So-Geeky Husband has picked up the first in the series and was up late with it last night, I think.
 
I watched the first movie yesterday, and it got me to thinking of the books again. I've only read them each once, maybe twice for a couple, but probably once, so it's gotta be years since I read the first one. I'll probably be working through them for the next while, I never read the last one either, so it gives better reason to go through again.

Regardless, this is fun, casual reading. It'll be a nice break from a lot of the heavy stuff I've read over the past while. [:P]
 
Although one of them was a very quick read: Breathing Underwater, by Margaret Emerson.

This is a sort of memoir by Emerson, a California artist and tai chi practitioner, about the latter. It's a pleasant read, very New Agey, but I can't say much of it stayed with me. She writes about learning the tai chi forms and how they lead energy to flow through the body. Since I've been studying tai chi for almost 6 years now, I understood enough of what she was talking about to find the book interesting, but I suspect many readers would be either bewildered or bored.

I also read most of another Phillippa Gregory book, The Other Queen, about Mary, Queen of Scots.

I thought this one was even better written than The Other Boleyn Girl---and that's saying something. Gregory's prose is gorgeous without being overwrought. Unlike Boleyn, this book has three point-of-view characters, Mary herself, George Talbot, the English nobleman to whom Elizabeth I assigns the task of imprisoning Mary, and George's wife, Bess of Hardwick, a farmer's daughter on her fourth husband. The very practical Bess has quite the head for figures and business and has enriched herself over the years, not least by appropriating the religious properties closed down by Elizabeth's father Henry VIII.

(I've visited Bess's mansion in Derbyshire, Hardwick Hall---amazing place!)

While each of the characters is presented vividly and memorably and believably, none of them is as sympathetic as Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl. Mary Stuart is quite a controversial historical character, and I appreciated Gregory presenting her as a strong woman with practical motivations.

But I had the same problem with this book that I did with Boleyn. The endless cold and calculating political maneuvering, while probably historically accurate, more or less, left a bad taste in my mouth. It also became so repetitive that I skipped a good portion of this book, too. (Which is shorter to begin with than Boleyn, a massive volume.)
 
Definitely worth it! When the last book came out and had made the rounds in our family, we all started again from Book 1 and read straight through, and agreed that she'd really pulled it off as a complete long-form narrative.
 
is not my favorite Asimov series. I am a great fan of Asimov, but I have only read Foundation series a couple of times. I much prefer his Elijah Bailey and Daneel Olivaw mystery series. I have lots and lots of his books of essay written for various magazines, also.

For years and years the Foundation series was listed as the best series and he beat out Tolkien for a Hugo for "best all time novel series" in 1966.

Later, he ties the Elijah Bailey and Daneel Olivaw series into the Foundation series.
 
This is the third and final book in The Strain series, and Del Toro and Hogan finish the story off very well. The writers aren't much for happy ever after, or for 'those who fight the good fight remain strong and untouchable'. The put their characters and the planet through a hell of a lot in a book that's a quick and absorbing read.

I think they've been very smart in how they handled the agency of the story's resolution. In other hands it could well have felt like deux ex machina, but in The Night Eternal the deliverance is part and parcel of the evil of vampires and so makes sense.

I'm looking forward to reading all three books in one go after a while, so I can see the story unfold without months of waiting in between books!
 
I'm halfway through Out of Oz, now. It's the fourth book in the Wicked series, and he says the last, except for some short stories he's planning to publish next year. Right now Dorothy is on trial for the murders of the Wicked Witches of the East and West and the Cowardly Lion is attending the trial. Should be interesting! These books are almost too dark for me, but the detail-spotting keeps pulling me in, as he spins his own tales but brings in occasional details from Baum's books, like the woggle-bugs. I'm still anxiously awaiting the apperance of Tip. Mombi just showed up and I'm very curious what he's going to do with her.

As a bibliophile, I bought the hard copy; that whole series is so yummy physically. But I've discovered an unexpected side benefit to my Kindle: it can read aloud to you. I commute an hour a day, so that's been really fun. I didn't have an e-copy of Out of Oz, so I looked around for something else to listen to, and lighted on one of my own novels. I suppose it's not great writing, and not of much interest to anyone but me, but I'm finding I love it so much ;-D I guess I write the kinds of books I want to read.

It's the story of a girl who was Meant to meet and marry a boy, but he was killed in Vietnam before they could meet. Throughout her life he watches over her. She meets and dates other people (of both sexes), but all her life she becomes increasingly aware of the spirit who was her soul mate. There's a lot about the AIDS crisis and Harvey Milk as well as her reaction to the Silmarillion and the Bakshi LotR. She and her angel lover are both LotR fans as well as Oz fans, and a lot of that gets into the book. TORn even shows up at the end. There's also a lot of hiking, and the Big Thompson flood of 1976 makes an appearance. And there's a lot about Heaven. I don't have any particular beliefs, but imagining Heaven in such detail helped me lot when my mom died, and I was glad I had written the book first.
 
is that it's not all that necessary to go beyond the original trilogy. The trilogy kind of leaves you wanting more (or at least it left 13-year-old acheron feeling that way [;)]), but the later sequels kind of derail the trilogy a bit, and don't really complete their own story either. ("Edge" and "Earth" are sequels to the trilogy, and kind of end on a cliffhanger that is never resolved. "Prelude" and "Forward" are prequels, about Selding.)
 
by Clive Cussler
I really like his adventure books, I could read even 100 pages in a day!!!
NUMA RULEZ!!! [cool]
 
the last (one assumes) of the Tiffany Aching novels from Terry Pratchett. I have loved this series so much.
 
I just have a hard time finding the time to sit and read, so I listen to them... pretty-much non-stop... at work. Jim Dale's reading of all 7 books makes it such a great treat. I've heard he's come up with 134 voices for the myriad of characters. You know when Hermoine is speaking, or Hagrid, or Dumbledore just from his voice. Of course, they're more developed as the books go on... but by The Prisoner of Azakaban, he's pretty-well set. You can tell he absolutely loves these stories! I WISH WISH WISH he'd read The Hobbit and LotR. *sigh*
 
Someone asked the other day about reading habits and reading more than one book at a time. That's a "bad" habit I got into in college (literature major) and I've just never outgrown it.

I'm just a handful of chapters into the audiobook of "Barchester Towers" (Trollope) and there has already been more intrigue and drama than in the entirety of "The Warden." The archdeacon is still a bit of a pompous autocrat, but since he's in the right this time, you don't mind it as much. Heh. (Plus, Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope are such unlikeable characters that Dr. Grantly just seems more saintly in comparison.)

I am really enjoying "Wee Free Men" (Pratchett)! I just wish my mental Scots brogue was a little better.

Edmund Crispin has a certain flair with words, and he is a talented writer, but some of the situations his characters get into are so ridiculously absurd that even in a work of fiction, they're hard to swallow. I'm working on his second Gervase Fen book, this one called "Holy Disorders." Someone, for some reason that hasn't been established yet, keeps offing the organists at Tolnbridge Cathedral.

I read the last book in Cyril Hare's Inspector Mallett/Frances Pettigrew series and was pretty impressed by it, thinking it was the first volume. Well, this time, I really am reading the first volume. But I havent gotten far enough along to judge how good I think the book is yet. A banker convicted for shenanigans leading to the collapse of his bank has vowed revenge/personal justice on someone he also holds responsible for wrongdoing. The mysterious, bearded recluse we've seen walking along the street is either the paroled banker or his intended victim. We'll probably find out which in Chapter 2.
 
I burst out laughing when I saw that the bards were called "mcgonagalls" (probably not spelled right---I don't know just where my copy of the book is), no doubt after the infamous, appalling, Scottish poet. I suspect J. K. Rowling of evoking William McGonagall as well, with the professor at Hogwarts played by Maggie Smith in the movies.

When our refrigerator makes weird knocking noises, we say the McFeegles are looking for a snack.
 
On Stranger Tides last night already almost three hundred pages in (this in and around watching movies, writing my NanoWritmo submission and sleep).

Can definitely see some of the ideas which were woven into Pirates of the Carribean 4, although the weakening of Blackbeard both in the film and the book bums me out. I will say it is wonderfully neat for Blackbeard to be a Voudon shaman. Love it.

Quite like how epic the story is turning out to be and am surprised I like the lead character as much as I do. Very impressed. :)
 
the writing duo Hogan and del Toro have begun working on another trilogy. Subject tba.

Haven't read NE yet, pesos are scarce. I like what you had to say about it. I was wondering how the gap [not between book release dates but] in story time between the end of The Fall and The Night Eternal was handled... if it worked, I mean.
 
if it worked, I mean.
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I think it was handled well, because we see the effects of those intervening years on the main characters rather than having a quick run-down of what happened when.
 
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