Rereading some Jacquiline Carey books

Forgot how much fun the whole Kushiel's series is. I'm out of office because of a cold that mainly manifests itself as me not being able to talk, although today I think I must be getting better, because this morning I coughed up some really awesome goo...

Aside from that, I'm reading... and reading... and reading. Yay!

If you like swords and sorcery, or politics and intrigue, or a bit of naughtiness in your sf/fantasy novels, then probably check these out. In order! I liked them enough to start buying new ones in hardback as they came out... and I'm waiting for another in the 3rd trilogy.

Book: Solar by Ian McEwan

A very unlikeable main character, however, I was able to be happy that the main character was also unliked by the author.

A little slow in parts, where Beard isn't being cheated on, stealing, or killing maybe, and a couple of nice side stories. He bumbles along, trying to do nothing, and bad stuff happens a lot. Through it all life isn't so bad for him, he eats and eats and lazes about, and does very little.

I really wished he would have had one particular success - the novel feels a bit incomplete as is.

Ah well. An entertaining read.

Geeky Review: farenheight 451

Hm wow. What an odd book. So much description, so much caution with words. The character starts out from nothing and becomes something.
Of course everyone is aware of the plot, etc, but looking at the society every few years would prove interesting - what is close to our society, what is not? Where do we seem to be heading in the direction of firemen?

Quickest read ever, and I only read it because I never had before, but now I think I'll take a look at it every 10 years or so. Have you not read this in 10 years? Try it out!

Review: Spooner by Pete Dexter

I took a break from nonfiction since this was on my wait list at the library, and it recently came through.

The thing that stayed in my mind the most was the obvious relationship with dogs.
Spooner isn't smart. He's not even bright in some way. Everything he tries seems to mess up, although more in a sad way than a funny way.
There's a little puppy, who Spooner as a small (between the ages of 4-10) child terrorizes. There's the family dog moving to suburbia. There's Spooner's old dog, and there's Spooner's neighbor's dog. They all sound perfectly doggy. Perhaps its because I'm a dog lover, but Spooner is at his best with dogs. He's more human as a character when with dogs, instead of as a target for author sadism.

Perhaps everything is about the floating dead, and not dogs at all.
Perhaps its about marriage. Or parents. Or about just living.

Comedy and tragedy at every other moment, but no LOLs from me, just some ironic "HA!"s.

Largely I read fiction books as I look at art. At the end, there's a painting, and how do I feel? This one made me feel like my life cannot possibly suck more than this guy's, and it made me hug my dogs.

It's very readable, I'd recommend trying it out. You'll at least make it to the parts about shampoo and shoe-pissing-in with a smile.

Geeky Review: The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel

A disclaimer before I review non-fiction: I am generally biased against non-fiction because I find most of it hard to read, but I like stories.

This book started out telling me about the mid-end of this book. What do you mean, this man can't stop picturing himself shooting people in the head? What do you mean, he's lost all hope? This book was obviously written by someone who knows how to keep his audience wanting to read. I kept waiting and waiting to hear about the dog mentioned on the first page.

Despite reading the beginning, I got attached to the soldiers. Perhaps because the author isn't too cruel, I didn't get too attached to the soldiers that died, but I grew to like Kauzlarich. I nervously read faster and faster ever time bombs started going off. I nodded my head in sympathy at times.

And yet, distance is maintained. I became attached to the characters, but never became the characters. I enjoyed the read a lot, but I didn't become completely absorbed.

Ah, the difficulties of reading non-fiction. Nonetheless I think fiction readers could read this!