Reactions to recently read books
Endgame and Act Without Words, by Samuel Beckett: I went to see the Cutting Ball Theater production of Endgame in San Francisco with Steve, who later lent me his copy of the play since I hadn’t read it prior to the performance. I don’t know how I would have reacted if I read the [...]
A Game of Kings, by Dorothy Dunnett: I picked up Dorothy Dunnett on Cat’s recommendation. A Game of Kings is the first book in her famous Lymond series, featuring the Scottish aristocrat, Francis Crawford of Lymond, the Master of Culter. The book felt bewildering at first because Dunnett drops us into the [...]
The Invisible Ring, by Anne Bishop: My level of tolerance for Anne Bishop’s prose (can you believe she actually makes a catchphrase out of “balls and sass”?) has decreased over the years, but The Invisible Ring still makes an indulgent and mindless read. I finished the book in a day, over three train rides. [...]
A Bed of Earth, by Tanith Lee: I remember reading Saint Fire, the second book in the Secret Books of Venus by Tanith Lee, about six years ago, and I’ve been meaning to finish the series ever since. Much to my delight, the other three books are at the local public library. Set in Venus, [...]
The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke: A collection of short stories set in the same universe as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. (Well, one is supposed to be set in Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, but it still reads very much like the other stories in the book.) I’m perpetually delighted by the attention Clarke [...]
The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle, by Catherine Webb: Pei Yi and I had a book swap, where I sent her Ted Chiang’s short story anthology, and she sent me this book by Catherine Webb. Lucky for me because as far as I can tell, the Horatio Lyle books aren’t published in [...]
The perennial question: will I ever catch up on the year-long backlog? Who knows? But in the meanwhile, I’m attempting to prevent the backlog from increasing by updating with the books I’ve read in August.
The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay: About two years ago, Sai compiled a beautiful, haunting fan [...]
I’ve been dragging my feet on posting here for nearly a year now because I haven’t had the time to face down the immense backlog of books, and I have this irrational compulsion to review books in chronological order. Sometimes I think my life would be a lot simpler if I weren’t so neurotic. [...]
The following books were read in May 2006. (I’m still catching up on the backlog.)
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik: Dragons in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The main character being a Royal Navy officer, Laurence, who stumbles across an egg of a rare Chinese breed, originally promised to Napoleon himself, and finds himself [...]
The following books were read from January to March 2006.
Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding: I’ve seen Bridget Jones referenced obliquely so many times—in magazine articles, in the Very Secret Diaries, in passing conversations—that reading the actual book was somewhat of an anticlimax. I suppose it also didn’t help that I had watched the movie [...]