The Sorceror: Metamorphosis by Jack Whyte

This is the final installment in Jack Whyte's Camulod Chronicles. I think this was probably one of my favorites of the 6 books in the series, but I found it horribly dissatisfying at the end. Whyte leaves a lot of questions unanswered, things that were foreshadowed, and it just felt incomplete. After checking his website (http://www.camulod.com) , though, I did find that, after some persuasion, Whyte did decide to complete Arthur's story in the Golden Eagle miniseries of books, of which The Lance Thrower is the first. One of these days I'll probably pick that one up, but I'm taking a break for now. Overall, I highly recommend this series, but don't expect it to have all the ends neatly tied up when you finish it.

Sunday Summary

I feel like I sort of already did this on Friday, but I really do want to try to establish a pattern, so I'll do a quick summary.

I didn't finish anything this week, but I did start An Abundance of Katherines, which, as I mentioned in my last post, is freakin' hilarious. I highly recommend this book.

I'll finish The Sorceror probably midweek, but I'm not planning to pick up a new book to replace it. Instead, my current plan is to tote my "main" book (well, right now I have two "main" books, which I'm alternating between) back and forth between work and home. I'll be glad to focus my reading a bit more for a while, I think.

That said, my daughter asked me if I could get an audiobook for us to listen to on the way to school in the mornings, so looks I'll be adding something new after all. Gonna go browse Audible.com when I finish this post to see what looks fun.

We're a little less than halfway through reading Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean for bedtime. I tried to read this a while back but didn't get very far. I'm not sure why, as it's really very good! This makes a nice addition to the RIP II Challenge that I'm participating in.

House of Leaves has finally gotten a little freaky. I'm not sure it's living up to all the hype, though. But I'll reserve judgment.

Still loving Going Postal. I wish I had given Terry Pratchett a chance sooner.

And I guess that's about it for today! I still need to read a short story for Short Story Sunday. It's been a really busy day...

Yikes!

Gosh, it's been much longer than I thought since I posted. Life has just been so busy.

A couple of quick reviews:

Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix: This was a great YA thriller. Serious pop fiction for kids. Bethany has been left with an aunt she didn't know she had, and her parents are MIA. After some disconcerting reactions to her appearance by people in her aunt's little town, Bethany begins to have lots of questions about her parents' past and her own.

For Short Story Sunday this week, I read a story out of Stephen King's Everything's Eventual called "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away." It wasn't sufficiently creepy enough to count, though, in my opinion. It's about a traveling salesman who collects graffiti from bathrooms along his travel and the decision he is facing.

I started An Abundance of Katherines, which is on the high school Name that Book reading list, and so far it is hilarious. I love books that make me laugh out loud.

I also finished Maximum Ride: Saving the World, the 3rd in James Patterson's YA series. It was ho-hum. My daughter loved it, but I found it annoying. Stupid things like Fang wanting to know if there was a way to e-mail all the kids in the world at once, and the computer geek telling him yes. My daughter will read the next in the series in the spring, but I think I've had enough of Max and the Flock.

Sunday Summary

I'm going to start something new and do a sort of week in review on Sundays, updating on the books I've been reading during the week, thoughts and such.

I already posted reviews of May Bird and First Among Sequels, both of which I finished this week, so I won't revisit those.

The Sorceror: I'm a little over halfway through this; should finish the last week of September given my reading rate. I read this at work over lunch and typically get in about 20 pages per day, barring lunchtime meetings, etc. I like this series of books (Camulod Chronicles by Jack Whyte), but I'm ready to be finished. I think this is the last in the series, other than 2 books that are sort of companion books but not crucial to the story. I think I'll pass on those and call it quits after this one (unless I realize that the story isn't wrapped up at the end of this one).

House of Leaves: This is by no means a quick read. It is in the form of a documentary, with lots of footnotes (some rambling on for pages). It's starting to get creepy, though, and I am enjoying it. I knew it was a slow read going into it, so no surprises there.

Going Postal: I'm loving this so far. This is the first Terry Pratchett I've read, and it's so funny. I haven't had enough time to really get into it, though, which has been disappointing.

Double Identity: This is the YA book I'm reading right now (off the Texas Bluebonnet list). It's sort of pop fiction for teens/tweens and really good. It's a quick read, but I only read it right before the kids' bedtime, so it's taking me a little while to get through it. It's one that could easily be read in a sitting, if I had the time.

Outlander: I started this years ago and left the book at my brother's house and never picked it up again. I decided to listen to it on my commute, and I'm glad I did (even though it is a whopping 30+ hours of listening time!). The narrator is excellent. Lovely British accent with wonderful Scottish accents when necessary. I'm only about an hour into it right now, so that's about all I have to say for now.

Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean: We started this book for bedtime this week, after finishing May Bird. I had put it down after starting it last year, but have since read several really good reviews of it. So of course I had to pick it back up. Hopefully the kids will like it!

Maximum Ride: Saving the World: I'm almost done with this. It's actually a good thing when my "waiting" book takes me a long to get through, because that means I'm not having to stand and wait for the shuttle to/from my parking garage hasn't been too terrible. I'll write more about this one when I finish it, hopefully sometime this week.

I'm sort of overwhelmed with all my books right now and am trying to decide how to trim that number down. The problem is that I am somewhat compulsive about reading and can't stand to stick to just one, and all of them have their place! I'm thinking I might make one book my "main" book and carry it around with me, as well as read it at home. The whole "waiting" book is a relatively recent addition and not absolutely necessary. I've also considered cutting out my work book and just toting my "main" book back and forth. That's actually probably what I'm going to do once I finish The Sorceror. That would trim it down to my main book, a children's book, and an audiobook. Much more manageable.

Short Story Sunday: "The Cyprian Cat" by Dorothy L. Sayers

Being a cat lover, I just had to read this selection from Witch's Brew. The writing style for this short story is conversational - you are intended to be listening in on a statement being made to, I suppose, a detective or other investigator after a crime has been committed. Main characters are the narrator (whose name we don't know), Merridew, Merridew's wife Felice, and lots of cats. I thoroughly enjoyed this story, although, it became apparent to me just where it was going about halfway through. I think my favorite character was Felice. I'm going to have to read more stories by Sayers!

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

I'm not sure how I got into the habit of listening to the Thursday Next series instead of reading it, but there ya go. First Among Sequels is the 5th in this series by Jasper Fforde. I read the first one, The Eyre Affair, about a year and a half ago while recovering from surgery (tip: don't try to read while on Vicodin) and have listened to all the others on my commute. I tend to try not to bog myself down in series, since there's so much else I want to read, so if I like the first in the series, I'll tend to listen to the others. There's no real system, though...

Fans of the other books in the Thursday Next series won't be disappointed with this most recent installment. Thursday is back, this time 14 years after the previous book ended. As always, the literary references are delightful, and Fforde's wordplay never fails to crack me up. The best in this one is "Ann Worthless Schitt." (This brings up one of the downsides of listening to the books - I have no idea how that is actually spelled.) We are re-introduced to Friday (and Friday and Friday) as a slacker teenager, and we meet Tuesday and Jenny. We hear about Sherlock Holmes, and we meet Tempe Brennan (from the Kathy Reichs books). Oh, and how could I forget, Thursday 1-4 and Thursday 5!

The one thing that was very aggravating, and it probably wouldn't have bothered me as much in print, was a particular technique Fforde used a couple of times involving time manipulation. If you read it (or have read it) you likely no what I'm talking about.

Overall, I recommend the book to any fans (and recommend the series to the uninitiated), but I highly recommend reading it in book form and finding other titles to listen to, if that's your thing.

The Lamp by Agatha Christie

I'm delighted to have started reading for the R.I.P. II Challenge
yesterday by picking up House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and even more delighted that it's already Sunday, so I could read an eerie short story for Short Story Sunday!

My first pick for this part of the challenge was "The Lamp" by Agatha Christie. To my knowledge, I've never read an Agatha Christie (short story or otherwise), so when I saw a selection by her in Witches' Brew I decided to give her a try. "The Lamp" is truly a short story, in that it is only 9 pages long and is a very quick read. My memories of reading short stories is that there is often hidden meaning and, while short, they are often quite complex. I found "The Lamp" to be simple and rather sweet. In the story, a very practical woman, Mrs. Lancaster ("...tall, with much dark brown hair just tinged with gray and rather cold blue eyes"), purchases a long-empty house said to be haunted by the ghost of a little boy who is often heard crying. Mrs. Lancaster moves into the home with her father and young son, and while Mrs. Lancaster is closed to the possibility of a haunting, her father and son are aware of the young ghost's presence and want to help him. I won't give any more away!

The Thirteenth Tale

I started out loving this book and fully expected to add it to my favorites when done. However, it sort of lost its luster somewhere along the way. Still, it was a very good book and does certainly make the cut (so far) as one of the best books I've read this year.

I can't really find the words to say what I thought of this book. It drew me in with its talk of books at the beginning, but overall it was the story of Angelfield that was so haunting.

I have two quotes that I marked, which I'll share.

"Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you."

and from the same page...I know this feeling so well. I have this very distinct memory of sitting in chemistry class in high school and being called on by the teacher while I was in another world. This describes that feeling perfectly.

"I jerked out of my reverie and fumbled for an answer. Had I been listening? At that moment I couldn't have told her what she had been saying, though I'm sure that somewhere in my mind there was a place where it was all recorded. But at that point when she jerked me out of myself, I was in a kind of no-man's-land, a place between places. The mind plays all kinds of tricks, gets up to all kinds of things while we ourselves are slumbering in a white zone that looks for all the world like inattention to the onlooker."

Other reviews can be found here:
Bookin' It
Reading Adventures

Reading and posting

When I created this blog, I really intended to be more prolific. And I still have hopes. Unfortunately, life is busy and I'm not finding as much time to post as I like. I'm also reading more slowly, which means I don't have a lot to post about! I am, however, reading lots of blogs and getting ideas for more books to add to my wishlist.

As you can see on my sidebar, I'm currently working on 6 books. I'm almost finished with The Thirteenth Tale (which, since Carl said we could start early, I'll count as one of my books for the RIP II challenge), but not too far along in anything else. The timing is great, because I'll finish The Thirteenth Tale just in time to pick up new books for the challenges I'm doing.

I got Witch's Brew from the library last night, which I saw mentioned on someone's blog (sorry, I can't remember whose!), and will choose a few short stories from there for the RIP II challenge, too. I'm excited about this!

God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I think I'm going to have to add this book to my list of favorites. Roy's writing style is just absolutely beautiful. Her descriptions are amazing. I kept finding descriptions I wanted to note, but there were just so many that it seemed pointless. The whole book is just one big memorable quote.

The God of Small Things is most certainly not an upbeat book. Roy uses foreshadowing through most of the book leading up to the tragedy that shaped the entire Ipe family's modern history. You know the tragedy happened very early on in the book, but you don't find out exactly what happened until later on. Roy doesn't tell her story in a linear fashion - the book jumps all over the place, but in this particular case, that just adds to the beauty of the book.

I found it interesting that 95% of the book was written in this poetic, whimsical style, but when Roy finally decided to tell the official story of what happened (probably 3/4 of the way through the book), she reverts to a strictly narrative style. Just the facts, ma'am. Very clever.