July 2013

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: July 2013

1. The False Prince by Nielsen, Jennifer A.
2. City at the End of Time by Bear, Greg
3. Inside Job by Willis, Connie
4. Lexicon by Barry, Max
5. Appointment with Death by Christie, Agatha*
6. The Brides of Rollrock Island by Lanagan, Margo
7. Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
8. Gunpowder Empire by Turtledove, Harry
9. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Sayers, Dorothy L.
10. Five Red Herrings by Sayers, Dorothy L.
11. 2312 by Robinson, Kim Stanley
12. Northanger Abbey by Austen, Jane*

Italics indicate library books; asterisks indicate audiobooks. I didn’t finish numbers 2, 6, or 8.

Mysteries. I read the first mystery by Qiu Xiaolong, and while it was enjoyable, I did not adopt it as my series-to-read-straight-through. That honor goes to Dorothy L. Sayers, although I haven’t been reading the Lord Peter Wimsey novels in publication order: I haven’t been able to find some titles and will have to wait on requesting them via interlibrary loan.

Hard SF. Although I didn’t care for (or understand) Greg Bear’s novel, I quite liked this year’s Nebula Award-winner by Kim Stanley Robinson. After an attack destroying the only city on Mercury, the eccentric, artistic Swan Er Hong travels the solar system to try to understand what happened and to carry on her grandmother’s political career.

Audiobooks. It would be hard to choose between such a classic Agatha Christie novel and Jane Austen’s first-written-posthumously-published Northanger Abbey, a Gothic-novel parody. Both narrators were excellent, and the stories had me laughing. I think I will attempt the 16-disc Fellowship of the Ring next.

WWW Wednesday Jul 3

What are you currently reading? The City at the End of Time by Greg Bear. I’m about a third of the way into this hard SF novel, and I’m still not entirely sure what it’s about. Three people living in something like today’s present have access to sum-runners, which are stones that allow them to dream the extremely distant future, where Chaos is about to overtake the city of Kalpa. And a couple of beings in Kalpa, who are connected to some of the present-day humans, are about to go exploring the chaos. I think.

What did you recently finish reading? The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen. Sage is an orphan who is in training to pretend to be the long-lost Prince Jaron, except he actually is the long-lost Prince Jaron and doesn’t end up having to pretend at all. Yes, I know, I gave it away. This book would have been awesome if I were eleven.

What do you think you will read next? Lexicon by Max Barry or Inside Job by Connie Willis, both on reserve for me at the library. Unfortunately, due to tomorrow happening to be the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted 237 years ago, the library is closed. Grumble. I will have to forestall the decision at least until Friday.