Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Mar 26, 3:30pm
Views: 14484
|
It's the occasional reading thread!
|
|
|
So we've now had the March equinox, which means the beginning of either spring or fall, depending. It's spring for us here in Texas. The grass and trees and all are burgeoning---sniffle, sneeze, cough! It's the oak pollen that hits me the worse, which is a tad ironic because one of the many reasons we bought our house is because the world's handsomest live oak tree resides in the front yard. We have, of course, named it Treebeard. I keep wanting to put Merry and Pippin dolls up in the branches. I finished listening to two books I've mentioned before. The shorter one is the seventh book in the Sherlock-Holmes-esque Barker and Llewelyn series, Anatomy of Evil, by Will Thomas. This installment fits into the the sub-sub-genre of, we really caught Jack the Ripper but kept the truth from the public. The longer one is Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price. I learned a lot about Viking history and culture, although I was taken aback a time or two at narrator Samuel Roukin's pronunciations of Scandinavian words. Not that the pronunciations are wrong, mind you, they're just not the ones I've been making---like "fjord", which Roukin pronounces "fyourd" rather than "fyord". I've now started Alexander the Great: His Life and His Mysterious Death, by Anthony Everitt. So far Everitt has summarized what he's going to be writing about and is exploring the historical milieu into which Alexander was born, with Macedonia at some times playing a Greek/Hellenic wannabe and at other times catering to the power of Persia. I'm also listening to the highly amusing Starter Villain, by John Scalzi, in which a poverty-stricken substitute teacher discovers himself to be the heir of a massive secret corporation.... Well, no spoilers. I'll just say it's a very entertaining book, read with great verve by Wil Wheaton. I also listened to The Red House Mystery, by A. A. Milne---yes, the A.A. Milne much better known for writing the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Here he adds a shortish novel to the Golden Age mystery canon, which, like so many Golden Age mysteries, is very clever as long as you don't stop to analyze it too closely. I doubt Milne intended me to be so highly amused by the veddy British characters. In print I read yet another book in Veronica Black's Sister Joan series, the seventh, A Vow of Obedience. I still enjoy the characters of Sister Joan and her fellow nuns at the convent in Cornwall, along with their Romany neighbors and the often-bemused local constabulary. This story starts with a reunion of Joan's college art class in London. There are some clever moments, but also a great deal of repetition. Also in print---and on paper---I read a mystery set in Thailand, Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness, by David Casarett. A young woman working for a hospital in Chiang Mai is drawn into a murder mystery as well as into puzzling events inside the hospital. My editorial eye is VERY aware that it's a clone of the Precious Ramotswe books in style and tone, if more convulated at the end. The Thai material is enjoyable if self-conscious, with the occasional "we", and the characters are generally positive and caring, which is always good. I'm also reading The Secret World of Weather: How to read signs in every cloud, breeze, hill, street, plant, animal, and dewdrop, by Tristan Gooley. I'm fascinated by the details of weather and landscape and am already eyeing the sky with new knowledge of the whys and wherefores. IMO, this book, with its drawings and photos, works better on paper. So what have you been reading?
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....
|