Books 1-6

[subplotkudzu]

I'm trying to keep better track of my books for this year, having lost the thread a while back. As in the past, I track book reading from Christmas to my birthday in July for the first half of the year, and then the rest of the year as the back half.

I've had a pretty productive week:
1) A Wizard of Earthsea: started right before Christmas, this is one that I should have read long ago but kept failing to get into. Once I caught the thread of Le Guin's voice it was a fine read.

2-3) THUNDER Agents archives Volumes 5 & 6: this completes my quest ot get back issues of this venerable series (mentioned here previously as a very good Supers RPG frame story). The quality of the tales really fell off towards the end, but you can still see flashes of brilliance in it - but the bad stories are very second rate.

4) Girl Genius Volume 6: The Voice of the Castle: The Foglio's ongoing masterpiece is still a joy to read. The plot inches forfard even as the cast broadens, but they keep all the balls in the air - no mean feat given the number of plots and counterplots in this gaslap romance.

5) Growing Up Weightless (reread): Just got a copy of this for Christmas, and I definately got more out of the second read then I did the first. Bloody brilliant, thought provoking and constructed with consummate grace. I can't help but be impressed with the book being one long tracking shot even as I know Ford likely did it just to prove he could.

6) The Devils in the Details: Three short stpries, one by Tim Powers, one by James Blaylock and one that they wrote together. Not bad, but not their best work either. I haven't read any of Blaylock's short fircition, but I know that I prefer Powers in longer works where he can flesh out the world and characters a bit more.

7) Thirty Three Teeth: Colin Cotteril's second Dr. Suri mystery, set in 1970's Laos just after the communist twakeover. The supernatural elements didn't bother me this time, I suspect because they are now a part of the setting rather than feeling like an intrusion to it. Very enjoyable and reeks with verisimilitude. I have the next two piled on the 'to read' shelf and am itching to get to them.

Not a bad first week. More to come, including the

Comments

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

IMAO, the first three Earthesea books still hold up, even the third one, which Le Guin had reservations about. I detest the fourth and fifth ones. Well, I detest the fourth one. The fifth would bother me much less if it weren't an Earthsea book. Le Guin seems to have decided that the trilogy was insufficiently feminist and a) didn't realize how very feminist and subversive it is and b) decided to add anvil-dollops of her idea of correct feminism, a brand which makes me want to barf.

Growing Up Weightless is great, but I'm still not quite sure what was going on with the folks from Earth or why Ballard was described as having "evil" eyes.