Two Book Reviews, or Starting the year out right...

I'm starting out the year on a bit of a reading binge, apparently. Since the beginning of the year I've finished two books. Already mentioned in an early post, I finished Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910 - 1969 (2001, Viking; 422 pages), by William J. Mann, on Friday night.

It is an interesting book, well worth reading despite the fact that there are times when it takes a scorecard to distinguish the players. The problem is that Mann, in an admirable attempt to be comprehensive, tends to throw out names one after another, then refers to them sometimes by first name and sometimes by surname, which becomes confusing at times.

But, he is comprehensive and he isn't engaged in gossip-mongering, which is something I was afraid he might be when I first picked up the book. When he identifies someone active in the entertainment industry as gay, he provides evidence, and when there is no evidence that someone who has been presumed to be gay actually was, he says so. Additionally, he spends very little time on top stars who were either admittedly or rumored to be gay, and instead traces the history of movie-making through all aspects of the industry. He does write about actors, both male and female, but he also writes about directors, writers, producers, editors, art directors, agents, publicists, and all the other people it takes to put a movie on the screen. If Mann had been aiming at a sensationalistic account, he would have spent much more time on the Hollywood names everyone knows.

Along the way, Mann also addresses the ups and downs of the acceptance of open gays and lesbians in Hollywood, and the terms under which they were accepted, when they were. He also points out the essentially conservative nature of the top executives and some of the top stars in the industry, something that blocked the complete acceptance of homosexuals and homosexuality in the industry even when the society as a whole really didn't worry so much about what movie makers did in the privacy of their bedrooms.

The most difficult times for gays in Hollywood, according to Mann, were the years when the Hays Code, the production code that severely limited what themes movies could explore, how those themes could be explored, and what could be said and shown on-screen, and what could not even be hinted at, from about 1930 to 1941, and during the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and 1950s (essentially the first years of the Cold War), when life for gays in all segments of society was especially difficult.

I highly recommend Mann's book for anyone interested in film history or gay history.

After I finished reading Behind the Screen on Friday night, I wasn't ready to go to sleep just yet, so I picked up Faye Kellerman's Gun Games (2012, William Morrow; 375 pages). This is the latest entry in Kellerman's series of novels about LAPD detective Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that this is one of my favorite mystery/police procedural series, by one of my favorite writers in the genre.

In this novel, Decker and Lazarus have taken in a young piano prodigy whose father is a gangster (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) and whose physician mother has gone off to Africa to have a baby with another man. At the same time, Decker and his team are looking at the suicides of two high-school students who may or may not be linked and who may or may not have been helped along in their suicides.

I won't say more, as I don't want to provide any spoilers, but I will say that the book is a fast, good read. If I have any quibbles with it, it is that the teenage characters sometimes don't speak much like any of the teenagers I know, sometimes sounding much too adult. It is a minor quibble, however, overshadowed by a plot that moves right along. It certainly kept me turning pages late into the night.

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As an update, I'm now reading The Codex, by Douglas Preston (2004, Tor; 404 pages). I'm only about 60 pages in, and I'm not sure yet that I like it much. I'm going to try to stick with it, however. I started but did not finish way too many books in 2011, and I'm going to try to be better about that in 2012.

The first update of the New Year...

Since I've been working on a writing project, I haven't gotten too much other reading done yet in the New Year. I'm a little over 150 pages from the end of Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910 - 1969 (2001, Viking; 422 pages), by William J. Mann. It isn't the gossip-fest that I feared when I picked it up, and there are more names I don't recognize in it than those that were household names. The big bonus is that Mann not only talks about actors, but about writers, directors, art directors, costumers, set dressers and the rest of the people who are as important (or more) in the making of movies than are the actors. I'm pretty sure I'll have more to say about this book when I'm finished reading it.

As far as the research I've been doing for my writing project, I've been dipping into several books, including the Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology (1996, Cambridge University Press; 386 pages), edited by Paul G. Bahn; The Practical Archaeologist: How We Known What We Know About the Past (2nd edition, 1999, Facts on File; 186 pages), by Jane McIntosh; and Archaeology: A Brief Introduction (1999, Prentice Hall; 306 pages), by Brian M. Fagan. All very interesting stuff, but I'm mainly on a mission right now to construct a list of archaeologists through history and to gather a glossary of key terms, as I'm essentially writing a study guide for beginning students. Eventually, I'll move on to cultural anthropology and biological anthropology, as I'm wanting to do either an overall study guide for all three branches of anthropology or to do a separate one for each subfield. It's a fun project, as it's what I'm educated in, but I'm having to do much more research than I had counted on (it's amazing how much detail one loses a few years out from taking classes). That's fine; it's just taking more time than I had hoped to do the writing, which I'm doing as I research along, or trying to.

It's not original work by any means, but it's something I wish I'd had access to when I was taking my first courses in these subjects. My theory is that since I actually knew quite a bit about these topics when I took those classes because I'd done a lot of reading, students who are jumping into these classes without much prior knowledge would find such a reference, all in one book (either for all three or for each subject separately), valuable. Something like this might already exist, but if it does, I haven't found it. So, I'm writing my own.

I just wish I could get more up-to-date reference materials from my public library system. There is more recent stuff in the local state university library, but there are logistical problems in getting there (no close, free parking, mostly). So, I'm doing all the work I can from older sources, and then will spend some intense work days at the university library, updating what needs to be updated, with a list in front of me of just exactly what I need to find, so that I won't get off-topic and end up browsing among the stacks. Don't laugh. Going and playing in the library is one of my favorite things to do.

Reading update...

I picked up a couple more books by Patricia Cornwell at the library the other day, thinking that because I enjoyed reading The Scarpetta Factor, I would give more of her work a try. Yeah. Not so much.

I gave Predator (Berkley Books, 2005) most of 100 pages, but I could not stick with it. The main problem with the book, from my point of view, is that it is written in the present tense. That hardly ever works, and in this case it not only did not work, it bugged the crap out of me. My brain kept switching the verbs to past tense, but then reading along that would mess the whole sense of a paragraph off. I refrained from throwing the book against the wall, because the wall hadn't done anything to me and I couldn't see inflicting that on it. But, the book is now back on the library, no doubt lurking on the shelf and ready to snag some other unsuspecting reader.

I still have Scarpetta (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008) out of the library and might give it a try later today. I hope it is better...and not in present tense.

Meanwhile, I've been reading in Medieval Women Writers (University of Georgia Press, 1984), edited by Katharina M. Wilson, not as recreational reading, but in beginning the research for a project called (I think) the 50 Challenge, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA), of which I am a member. The idea is for members of the SCA which, for those of you who are not familiar with the organization does medieval re-enactments, to celebrate the founding of the group by doing 50 of something tied in to each person's interests in the Middle Ages. For example, to learn to do 50 things that someone living in the time of the individual's society persona would know how to do, or to make 50 items that their persona would have used or, in my case, to write a 50-page research paper on some aspect of the medieval period.

Choosing to write about women writers in the Middle Ages was a fairly easy decision for me, as I am both a woman and a writer, and because I don't really know that much about women who wrote in that era. So far, what I'm finding is fascinating. There were more women writing in that period that I expected, and not all of them were nuns. This surprises me, I suppose, because of the general perception that the only way a woman in the Middle Ages could gain an education was by entering the religious life. Apparently, this was not always the case.

I expect, however, that it will be a challenge to find sources for research, and that I'll probably end up spending some time in the library at the local CSU. Which is fine, since I love to play in libraries. The parking situation over there is hideous (knowledge I gained while living right across the street from the school for five years), but a main bus line goes right to the campus, so I'll probably just take advantage of that.

I've also been doing some other reading in history, as I'm gearing up to do some general writing on history, part of which will land up in a blog (once I figure out what to call the blog), and which is meant to end up as a book about exploring various aspects of history.

Reading Update: The Scarpetta Factor, by Patricia Cornwell

I just finished reading The Scarpetta Factor (Berkley Books, 2009; 572 pages), by Patricia Cornwell. I'm not completely sure how I feel about it.

There's no doubt that it kept me turning the pages. However, 572 pages to tell a story that takes place in about a day and a half sometimes seemed a bit excessive. And there were places in the story where two or three things were taking place all at the same time, and it was, occasionally, slightly difficult to follow. This could also have had to do with the fact that I have not read all of the other books in the series, and so probably lacked some background that could have made some of the relationships between characters easier to follow.

Also, I've had a sort of variable relationship with the books of Cornwell's that I have read. I've liked some of them a lot; others, not so much. This one probably isn't one I'll read again, but the journey was interesting, and I'm glad I picked it up at the library and read it.

Monday update: A recommendation and a little on media differences...

As predicted, I read right through Break No Bones, by Kathy Reichs.

It was so good that I stayed up much later than I should have last night/this morning to finish it. I kept trying to put it down, and I kept picking it back up. Aside from the usual...great plotting and wonderful writing...it had the difference of being set entirely in South Carolina, rather than taking place mostly in Montreal, or going back and forth between the US and Canada.

I don't think I'm going to do a more detailed review of this one. I can't really think how to do it, without giving too much away. Which is my gripe about reviewing in general, especially reviewing mystery novels that really depend on the reader being surprised by the ending.

I will say something, however, about Reichs' books versus the TV series Bones, which is very loosely based on the series of novels. I've run across people who love the books and hate the series, and those who love the series and hate the books. I've managed to enjoy both because I look at them as being two separate things. It seems to be an easy thing to do, considering the fact that the only thing the two have in common is the name and occupation of the lead character, Temperance Brennan. There are no other characters or situations that exist in both universes.

Reichs herself explains the dichotomy by saying that the character in the series is a much younger version of the character in the books, who is a much diffrent place in her life. I don't even think that is even necessary. I consider them to be different universes, with that one slight convergence. To bring my love for science fiction/fantasy and time travel stories into my explanation of this, it is as if the books are Temperance Brennan living on one universe, and the tv series is the same person, only she made some choice in her life that was slightly different and ended up living a completely different life. (See David Gerrold's novel The Man Who Folded Himself, or the Fourth Series Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" for illustrations of that concept).

Of course, I see reasons who someone would not like one or ther other series. That is a matter of personal tastes and choice. But the fact that the book and the TV series have so little in common shouldn't even enter into it as an excuse for liking, or not liking, either one.

The thing is, this is a good book. It might not be my favorite of all Reichs's novels, but it is well worth spending the time necessary to read it.

Reading update...

I'm finally onto a book that I think I might finish. It is Break No Bones (Scribner, 2006), by Kathy Reichs. I've read most of her other novels, and enjoyed them immensely. Since this one is several years old, I'm not quite sure how I missed it. I'm nearly to page 60 (out of 339), and it's quite promising so far. Even with the Headache that Won't Go Away.

Actually, I'm not sure it's the same headache, since it does come and go at odd intervals. It just seems like I've had it for just about ever. I've come to the conclusion that it's this strange weather we're having this spring. Take today. It's raining, which is definitely not normal for the sixth of June in Fresno.

I've got a few other books out of the library that look promising as well, so if I can find the time to read, it looks like I might actually be coming out of the reading doldrusm, finally.

Another week past, and no books read...and a movie review of sorts

Between a change in work duties that mean I spend a bit more time working, the headache that never seems to really go away completely (so persistent that my roommate asked me if I'm sure it isn't a migrane), spending more time on writing...and, not incidentally, watching the full series of Red Dwarf...I managed to go another week without reading through a book.

This does not mean that I haven't read anything. I've read a lot, just not a book all the way through. Most of it was research reading, either for work or for one of the writing projects I'm working on. That the writing is going at all is a great thing, but it really cuts down on my evening-time-hunker-down-in-bed-and-read time. Ah, well, this week if I had tried to read in bed I would probably have just fallen asleep and awakened the next morning with the corner of a hardback poking me in the ribs.

What I did do this afternoon, though, was see a movie, the film version of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. I loved the book, if only on the strength of the fact that I love time-travel stories, and when I heard that it was being made into a movie, I had high hopes. When the film came out, however, I didn't hear that much about it that was good. So, I didn't venture out to the theater to see it, and I didn't rent it when it came out on DVD. When I was at the library the other day, though, I found a copy (two copies, actually) available to check out. Free movie? Never a bad deal, I thought, so I checked it out and just got around to watching it today.

Meh. It wasn't a bad movie, at least, not nearly as bad as some of the reviews I heard and read. The problem was, I'd read the book. Having done that, the movie just didn't measure up to my expectations. It wasn't nearly the disaster that Raise the Titanic was. I loved that book, by Clive Cussler, too. Worst movie ever made, and, especially, badly cast. But it wasn't Silence of the Lambs, either, which is probably the best movie based on a recent novel that I've seen.

I don't know if The Time Traveler's Wife was confusing to me because I was looking for things I remembered from the book that weren't there to find, or whether it was just confusing. At any rate, having read the book did not help at all. At least, when I saw the theatrical-release film of Frank Herbert's Dune, which was possibly the most confusing movie ever made, having read the book helped with some of the confusion. With The Time Traveler's Wife, reading the book before seeing the movie was not a plus.

This is why I don't especially love seeing movies after I've read the book. As I said, Silence of the Lambs was an exception. I had read the book not too long before seeing the film, and I was still on the edge of my seat through the entire film, which seemed to stick quite closely to the story line in the novel, a rare thing. Gone With the Wind is another exception to the rule. Obviously, huge swathes of the novel are not there in the movie. Otherwise, it would have been twenty hours long, instead of roughtly four. But it feels like it is all there, even though you know that they've gotten rid of whole children of Scarlett's and a whole lot of the more, um, politically unpalatable, content of the book (not that this was as much of a consideration in 1939, when the movie came out). Other than that, I can't really remember seeing a movie after reading the book it was based on and being favorably impressed by the film.

Next week, I hope to get back to some reading that is not work or writing-project related. Since Monday is a holiday, there's hope. On the other hand, my roommate wants me to proofread a manual she is writing for the middle school program she teaches in.

Non-update reading update

I haven't read much at all in the week just past, having had the headache from hell pretty much all week. Sometimes it recedes and is just annoying, but other times it's much worse than that. Most of my productive reading time was used up with reading and writing for work, so research and recreational reading didn't stand much of a chance.

Right now, it's just past midnight Sunday night/Monday morning, and the headache is middling bad. Yesterday it was to the point where my roommate asked me if I'm sure I don't get migranes. I've got no clue; I've never been diagnosed with them, but sometimes I suspect that's what they are.

Here's hoping that I get to read a little more this week, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Reading update, or missattitude reads manga

I think I have my computer issues sorted, so maybe I'll be able to update more often. I hope.

I'm not making much progress in Cryptonomicon right now. Just not in the right mood for it, I suppose. Plus, I've been taking care of the computer issue, or worrying about it, for the past few days, so I needed something to read that wasn't particularly intricate. Cryptonomicon is intricate; you have to pay attention or you miss things.

However, my roommate turned me on to a manga series called Library Wars, by Kiiro Yumi. There are four volumes so far, and I read through all of them over the weekend, just here and there as I had a little time. Although they are clearly geared to younger readers, I have to admit that I like this series a lot, and got quite involved in it.

For the uninitiated, manga is Japanese graphic novels, sort of the print version of anime. This particular series is about a girl, Iku Kashahara, who joined the Library Forces which, in this near-future world, has the responsibility for protecting the libraries from another government group that tries to confiscate and ban books they don't approve of. This fight has escalated to the point where there are actual battles over the library's right to hold and disseminate books that are seen as dangerous by this group and its supporters. This is not exactly Fahernheit 451-lite, but the point here is the same: censorship is not a good thing.

These manga volumes, which are apparently based on a series of novels by Hiro Arikawa, are not all ideology and violence, however. Iku joined the Library Forces because several years earlier, she had an experience in a bookstore in which the censors tried to confiscate a book she was trying to purchase, but a young Library Forces agent intervened and got her book back for her. She has turned the memory of this agent into an idealized hero who she wants to emulate. And that's where the story takes off.

I had never read manga before, and I approached these volumes with a bit of skepticism. Turned out, I couldn't put them down, and now I'm just hoping that a new volume comes out soon.

I should probably note one thing. Because these were originally published in Japanese, the English-language translations are printed Japanese style to preserve the integrity of the illustrations and the pace of the storytelling. So, the volumes, and each page, read from right to left rather than left to right. It was a little difficult to get used to this at first, but there is an illustrated guide in each volume showing how to read a page, and before I was finished with the first volume it seemed completely natural to be going in the opposite direction, so to speak.

Also, I have just barely started reading The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man, by Amir D. Aczel (Riverhead Books, 2007; 288 pages). I'm only a few pages in, and so I can't say yet whether I will like it and finish it, but those first few pages have me hopeful for this one. I picked it up as part of my research for a writing project I'm working on, but I just might read it for pleasure before I start sorting through the inforamtion to take notes.

Reading update: Some books are worth re-reading...

...even if they're long.

I'm in the process of re-reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (Avon Books, 1999; 1139 pages).

Yes, that's right. It isn't a typo. The book is 1139 pages long, including appendix. And I'm reading it again. There is a method to my madness, however, which includes Quicksilver, which is, from what I understand is a sort of prequel involving the ancestors of some of the characters in Cryptonomicon.

Or not. All I know is that Quicksilver has been on my shelf for awhile, waiting to be read, but its been about three or four years since I read Cryptonomicon and so whether it is really necessary, I'm going to read it again before I tackle the other book, which is also Really Long. But, I'm also re-reading because I enjoyed the experience of reading Cryptonomicon so much the first time around, and I've been intending to read it again for awhile.

I will freely admit that there were things in Cryptonomicon that I didn't understand, things mathematical and cryptographic. Didn't matter, it's still a great book, and encryption and decryption fascinates me, even if I don't have the math to understand how it all works.

I'm just on page 114, so it will be awhile before I finish this one. I might conceivably read a book or two other than this one before I finish Stephenson's book. That's okay. I'm not always so linear a person that I have to finish one book before I start another one. I think I've discussed that here before.

What I want to, know, though, is what do you look for in a book that you will read again and again? Or, if you never re-read, why not? I'm curious about this because I've always re-read favorite books.

Good Friday update...

I've finished reading Nine Dragons, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company, 2009; 377 pages). Connelly is one of my favorite writers, and this book lived up to all my expectations. Made me homesick, due to a reference to a particular freeway offramp that I'm familiar with. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. I'll admit that it's really easy to make me homesick sometimes. One of the things that I like about Connelly's writing is that it is particular like that, and that he does his homework and doesn't always just make stuff up as he locates his stories in space and time.

If you like mysteries, this is one book...and one author...you need to put on your to-read list.

Now I've started The Paris Vendetta, by Steve Berry (Ballantine, 2009; 418 pages). I'm not sure yet how I'm going to like this one. I've liked some of Berry's books, and there have been one or two I've started and then just set down, never to return (at least yet). I'll see how it goes.

And, I've finally and officially given up on Desperados. It needs to go back to the library in a couple of days, and it continues to have that problem with reading like the begats in places. Maybe I'll try it again later, but for now, no.

Also, just a note that I've completed reading 14 books so far this year. Not as many as I'd hoped, but still nearly a book a week.

Edited to add that I also finished reading LEGO: A Love Story. Quite an enjoyable book, as much about the author's difficult journey toward fatherhood as it is about Adult Fans of LEGO, but also an interesting look at a particular fandom and fandoms in general.

Thursday update, or, over a week later...

No, my absence here has nothing to do with the computer issues mentioned in my previous post. I've just been busy, and when I haven't been busy, I've been more than a little lazy.

Oh, and I've been reading. I'm still sort of reading Desperados, but there are places where it's like reading the "begats" in the Bible, and so as much as I'm interested in the music it talks about, I'm not sure I'll actually finish reading it. We'll see.

I finished Mystery, by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine, 2011; 320 pages) on Sunday, and it was a quick and satisfying read. And now I'm reading LEGO: A Love Story, by Jonathan Bender (John Wiley & Sons, 2010; 270 pages). It's a book about Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL; really, they have an acronym), and I picked it up because it sounded quite unlikely and also because, being involved in a couple flavors of fandom myself, and being educated as an anthropologist, I'm interested in fandoms.

LEGO is an interesting book so far, but I was a bit apalled, but not terribly surprised, to learn in the reading that there is LEGO porn. I mean, there is Rule 34 (I think it's 34) and everything. But, for a toy?

Wednesday update...

Finally finished reading Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. I'm still not sure I liked it, and I can't quite pinpoint why it left me feeling unsatisfied as a reader. I'll have to think about that a bit.

Next on the menu: Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock, by John Einarson (Cooper Square Press, 2001; 287 pages). I'm just a couple of pages into this, so not sure how it will go. I found it on the shelf at the library the other day, which has been a reliable way for me to find good books.

I find it interesting how many books I've found in the past little while about the whole Southern California 60s/early 70s music scene. It seems like it has been a hot topic for writers. The best thing is that most of the books on the topic that I've read so far have been fairly decent books.

And just as a note, I'm having intermittent computer issues, so posts here could be a little thinner than usual until I've sorted the problem. I will at least attempt to post what I'm reading and which books I've finished.

Reading Update: Saturday

I just finished reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. I'll defintely have more to say about it, but at this point I just want to say that it is an incredibly good book and that you should read it.

I'm still working my way through Digital Fortress, and I'm still not sure whether or not I like it. I'm also working on a review of The Devil's Triangle. I liked it a lot, but it's turning out to be difficult for me to write about it without giving too many spoilers.

I hate spoilers. Not for myself, necessarily, and not so much for reading as for films. But I don't like giving too much away in reviews, because I know they bug the crap out of some people. And there are some things that just need not to be spoiled...again, more often movies than books, but sometimes books, as well.

I'm especially adamant about not spoiling either books or movies for others after an experience I had with The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out, way back in the dark ages (which is why I will mention the spolier to follow; the movie has been out for how many years? Thirty? More than that? Anyway, long enough to be way past worrying about spoilers.), I went to see it, first day first showing. Only the first showing sold out when there were three people in line ahead of me to buy tickets, so I had to wait around for the second show. Which was fine. Except that when I was in the theatre and waiting for the movie to begin, someone who had been in the first showing had either bought another ticket to see it again or had sneaked back into the theatre. She sat down beside me and, without any preface, told me, "Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father." I looked at her and said, "Why did you tell me that." It was awful; I hated knowing that before the movie began. Which is why I try not to put spoilers in my reviews.

Wednesday update...

I'm still in the middle...well nearly to the middle...of reading Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. I keep putting it down, saying that it's silly, but I keep picking it back up and reading along a litle further. I'm not liking it, excatly, but I keep wanting to know what's going to happen next. Which, I suppose, means that it is successful at least on that level.

I'm also reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997; 341 pages). It is another book lent to me by a friend. She read it for an anthropology class she took, and since my education is in anthropology she thought I'd like to read it. And it very good. It concerns a Hmong family in Central California, whose young daughter began having what were later diagnosed as severe epileptic seizures when she was just months old. The book chronicles the difficulties between the girl's family and the doctors treating her due to cultural differences in how the doctors and the family interpreted the causes of her illness and how the illness should have been treated. But it also explores the Hmong culture and history.

The difficulty I'm having in reading the book is that I suffer from extreme medical anxiety. Not only to I have anxiety issues around anything medical...hospital visits, doctor's appointments, and the like, but I can't even watch medical shows on television. I'm a little better about it than I used to be, but there are parts of the book that I can hardly stand to read. I'm determined to finish it, however, if only just to prove to myself that I can do it. We'll see how that turns out.

Reading update...

After looking around for something to read, I'm sort of starting Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1998; 430 pages), but I'm not convinced that I'm going to like it much. But, a friend lent it to me when I told him that I was reading The Lost Symbol, so I'll read it. I'm only on page 60; maybe it will pick up.

In truth, it might not be the book. I'm going through a patch right now where I'm finding it very difficiult to find anything that is really catching my interest. it happens sometimes, and it's always as frustrating as it is now. I've got a whole weekend at home alone. I can stay in bed and read all day tomorrow if I want, or stay up all night reading tonight, since I don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow. It would be nice if I could find a book that I just can't put down.

Tuesday Update: Two Books Finished

I'm back, the cold is mostly gone (although I've been coughing again today, after a couple of days of not; we'll see where it goes from here), and I've finished two books in the past two days.

I finished Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol yesterday, and I'll probably have something to say about it, but not right now. It's knit night, and I need to leave in a little while and, well, we all have our priorities. Right now, I'll just say that I don't hate myself for reading it, and that there were some interesting things to think about in it, but that I was disappointed in how he wrapped the whole thing up.

Then, today, I finished The Devil's Triangle, by Mark Robson. It's apparently the first book in a series, and now I'm hanging here, wondering what's going to happen next and not knowing when the next book will come out and how I'll get hold of it, since his books are not available in the US as far as I know. I think I mentioned before that I won it in a drawing. Well, if nothing else, I have a friend in the UK who will just have to buy me a copy and send it to me when it comes out. Because it is a very good book, for all that I mostly didn't read YA books when I was a YA, and I don't read them now (although my summer project may well be to read through the Harry Potter series; I've been meaning to for some time).

In fact, for all that they are very different things, I'd say that overall, and considering each book for what it is, I would probably have to rate The Devil's Triangle as the better of the two books. Both kept me turning the pages, wanting to know what was going to happen next, but Robson's book did not disappoint me the way Brown's book did, in a number of ways.

Well, like I said, knit night awaits. No new books to report I've starated. I'm looking at a couple, but I only finished The Devil's Triangle a couple of hours ago and I haven't yet made up my mind what I want to read next.

Monday update...

I'm just past halfway through The Lost Symbol. As I expected, it's keeping me turning the pages, to the extent that I have time to read. I suspect that if I didn't have to do things like work, I'd likely have finished the book by now, even though I didn't actually get to start reading it until Thursday. So far, I stand by my assessment that while Brown's writing isn't great literature, it's pretty good storytelling.

I'm also still working on The Devil's Triangle, but I haven't read much in it since I started The Lost Symbol. I either need to make time for it, as well, or hurry up and finish the Brown book so that I can find out what's going to happen in this one.

Reading Update: Trying to find time to read in a busy day...

That has been my issue for the past week or so. Simply finding time to read has been a problem.

With my job, the writing project I'm working on, and allergies that seem to be making me sleepier than ususal more often than ususal, it has just been difficult to find time to read when I want to read. And so, it has been a week and a day since I updated.

But, I'm reading two books, more fiction after the Dexter novel, and enjoying both of them. First of all, I'm nearly halfway through Reversal (Little, Brown and Company, 2010; 389 pages), by Michael Connelly. This is the latest in Connelly's series of police procedural/mystery novels featuring police detecctive Harry Bosch, with this novel also featuring Mickey Haller, a defense attorney who mostly works out of the back seat of his car. Only, this time, Haller is working for the L.A. D.A.'s office, prosecuting a susepcted child-killer whose 24-year-old conviction was overturned by the California Supreme Court and sent back for the case to be either retried or dismissed. The District Attorney's office wants to retry the case, but for various reasons, they bring Haller into the case and he, in turn, brings in his first ex-wife, an assistant district attorney exiled to Van Nuys (anyone who has much experience with Southern California knows that this is about like being exiled to Siberia by the old Soviet Union). He also brings Bosch, who is Haller's half-brother, in as lead investigator.

Reversal is very good so far, proving that a really good book can go a long way to make me find the time to read.

The other book I'm currently reading is The Devil's Triangle (Simon & Schuster UK, 2011; 391 pages) by Mark Robson. This one is a YA science fiction novel that I won in a drawing on a science fiction/fantasy website and forum where I'm a moderator. Robson has been a participant on the website ever since he was self-publishing his novels after writing the first one when he was stationed in the Falkland Islands when he was in the Royal Air Force and his commanding officer told him one day to go do something constructive, like write a book. Robson did, and after self publishing a couple of books, recommendations from booksellers led to him being picked up by Simon and Schuster UK.

The Devil's Triangle concerns a family from the UK, a father and twin teenagers. The man's wife and the children's mother disappared in the Bermuda Triangle 10 years earlier, and now the family returns to the Florida Keys every summer so the father can search for the children's mother, who he believes to still be alive...somewhere. But, the man's son and the friend the son brought along to share the vacation themselves disappear after taking the family boat out one day without permission to do some fishing.

That's as far as I've gotten in the book, and I like it so far. Robson's storytelling is keeping me turning the pages, and I'm interested to see where he takes his characters and the story. One note, however: as far as I know Robson's books are not available in the United States. This is a shame. I think he could easily find an audience here, based on what I've read so far.

Friday night update...

Which I started by publishing just the title. This does not bode well.

Anyway, what I started to write was that it took me a few days after returning from the con to get back into reading mode. But I am back and finished Dexter Is Delicious this afternoon. Good book; relaxing fiction, if a little grotesque. If you've ever seen the TV series, you alraedy know that. I'll probably have more to say about this one soon, but it's late and I should be going to sleep soon.

The other update is that I was very good and didn't spend any money at all in the dealer's room at Gallifrey. This does not mean that I didn't come back with a book. I was given a copy of The Mythological Dimension of Doctor Who (2010, Kitsune Books; 248 pages), edited by Anthony S. Burdge, Jessica Burke and Kristine Larsen. It is a series of essays about the relation of the British television series Doctor Who and its spinoffs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. It looks like it might be interesting and is definitely on my to-read list for the not-too-distant future.

However, I've got to try to finish up Claim of Privilege. I've also got to find some more fiction to read; it was a nice change of pace to read the Dexter novel. But, like I said, more about that later. Right now I've got a seven o'clock alarm waiting for me in the morning.