books | October Reading!

October Reading!

What've you been up to, bookwise, in October? Read anything you think everyone should read? Something everyone should avoid? Are, or were, you reading anything special for Halloween? Too busy to read?

I'll be diving into Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip after hitting post here. I'm hoping to finish it before the end of the day as my final Tam Lin related book for this month. You could call it my special Halloween read if you liked.

My List of Books as it stands now - I'm not convinced I'll have the time on Monday - is as follows:

- Blood Roses by Francesca Lia Block (Didn't finish. FLB's prose and I do not get along.)
- Labyrinth by A.C.H. Smith
- Out of the Silent Planet (Space 1) by C.S. Lewis
- The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia 6) by C.S. Lewis
- The House on Durrow Street (Mrs. Quent 2) by Galen Beckett
- The Witch Queen's Secret (Trystan & Isolde 1.5) by Anna Elliott
- Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
- An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton
- The Perilous Gard Elizabeth Marie Pope
- Dawn of Avalon (Trystan & Isolde 0) by Anna Elliott

That makes a total of ten books. Possibly eleven if I can get the one I started yesterday finished on time. ^-~ I'm a little surprised, actually, that I don't seem to have managed any non-fantasy books this month. I thik my favourite, despite having a boatload of issues with it, is The House on Durrow Street and Labyrinth is my least favourite. Stick with the movie.

I am, however, all caught up on my coursework reading now. Yay!

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Nothing special for October.

I've read:
The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin - Alex de Jonge
The Third Victim - Lisa Gardner
The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen & Seth Grahame Smith
The Law of Second Chances - James Sheehan
The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabot
4.50 from Paddington - Agatha Christie
The Empty Chair - Jeffery Deaver
Star Trek Memories - William Shatner
and I'm in the middle of Marathon Man by William Goldman, which I intend to finish today.

I would recommend all of them. Kavalier & Clay was really great, definitely deserving of its Pulitzer; Rasputin was quite an interesting historical read; P & P & Zombies was really awesome, I loved it!

I hope you'll get Marathon Man finished and that you enjoyed it!

P&P&Z seems to be a love-hate kind of book. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. ^-^ What was the thing that impressed you most about the book?

I did both. ^_^ I'm not so big a fan of the 2 separate storylines in one approach, but once they finally converged it was a total surprise, I liked it quite a bit.

Oh? I don't think I've heard anything negative about it before. Did you dislike it?
I haven't read P&P itself, so I wasn't really sure what to expect; I thought it was supposed to be the original with zombie stuff just kind of spliced in, but they were so central to the plot it seems like a good deal had to be changed to accommodate that. Regardless, I just thought it was really amusing and fun. It had me "LOL"ing and chuckling quite a bit with all the zombie stuff, but was also deeper and more ...intriguing? due to the original storyline.

Yay!

I haven't read it, but all the friends and bloggers I've heard talk about the book seem to be on opposite sides, though. Either they loved it or they hated it. (I'm oversimplifying, but that's the general impression I was left with.) *ruffles hair* I'm actually having the darnedest trouble getting this answer all linear and coherent. Apologies for any unclarity and odd jumps of topic!

I guess for me the stumbling block is what you say: I was/am under similar impressions that it's the original text with new bits spliced in. So I finally did the smart thing and looked up an excerpt and it doesn't seem to be from the first page or so. (Sadly, it also proved that Grahame-Smith's prose and I do not get along.)

There's big huge chunks and swathes of original Austen, and at times Grahame-Smith's stuff is really really at odds with the original text. At other times it blends very, very well. G-S does a good enough job over all that the parts that don't fit as well (or that many people, myself included find objectionable-- such as Wickham & Lydia's fate) are all the more jarringly off and noticeable.

It sounds like such an odd book...

My October reading:

The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith - the blurb made it sound more like a mystery/suspense novel than it was, so it took a while to adjust my expectations, but it was OK.

Daughters of the House by Michèle Roberts - Two women in the house where one grew up and the other spent her holidays (and now occupies with her husband and children) with various objects in the house evoking childhood memories of their times together and of the secrets the adults were keeping.

Some Other War by Linda Newbery - First World War YA following twins Jack and Alice who turn eighteen in 1918; he joins the army, and she becomes a Red Cross nurse, I liked it.

Luftslottet som sprängdes by Stieg Larsson - The third book in the Millennium trilogy seemed to kick straight into action faster than the other two and was a page-turner from the first page until the last. I'm sad there won't be more; it feels we've only now really got to know Mikael and Lisbeth and are ready for adventures that take them beyond their pasts.

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald - a long novel about a family living in Cape Breton with one section towards the end being the New York diary of one of the daughters--that turned out to be the section I liked most, and was probably closest to what I had thought the book was going to be like. And surprise incest wasn't a fun surprise by any means. There also seemed to be potential for something about being bilingual (or frowned upon for being bilingual) but wasn't really explored at all. Overall, a disappointment.

Hey, Dollface by Deborah Hautzig - YA intense teenage girl friendship.

Temeraire by Naomi Novik - I wanted to re-read this before getting started with The Throne of Jade, which I'm currently in the middle of, and it was just as good as I remembered it being.

There also seemed to be potential for something about being bilingual (or frowned upon for being bilingual) but wasn't really explored at all.

Being bilingual (or multilingual, depending on your stance) that makes me sad. Both the potential of getting frowned upon for it and that it wasn't explored. (And no surprise incest is not a fun surprise.)

Was it a good reading month for you overall?

Yes, overall it was good, some lows but enough of the good stuff to make up for them.

Search the Dark by Charles Todd - a mystery post WWI in England

Changeless by Gail Carriger - total fun

Juliet by Anne Fortier - part historical story of Romeo and Juliet and part modern solving of Romeo and Juliet curse

Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong - beautiful coming-of-age story, my favorite of the month

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII etc.

Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom - mystery set in Henry VIII time period, quite good

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann - eh, parts ok but not loving it

Would you rate Juliet as a fantasy novel because of the curse? I've never quite figured out where it stands genre-wise. (Alternatively: was it any good and should I rush to the bookstore to find out the answer for myself asap?)

Looks like a high level of mysteries. ^-^

Mysteries are good for stress relief!

I wouldn't put Juliet into fantasy, I thought of it as historical/modern, the historical parts were from journals. I wouldn't rave about it but it was fun to read, I got a bit annoyed with the modern Julie at times but it was a good weekend read, I'd get it from the library and not waste money on it, or wait till it's in paperback.

I've finished "Let the Right One In" (much less harrowing than "The Handling the Undead"), "One Bloody Thing After Another," and "Cryoburn," all of which deal with death. So I guess there was a theme after all this month! All were super good.

And one that suits the holiday in this month at that! Isn't it fun how things like that can work?

I'm a little scared of Let the Right One in, but it sounds so intriguing... Huzzah for having a super good reading month too! I hope your November will be filled with awesome reads too!

"Let the Right One In" is really fantastic. It's very well written and well translated, very grounded in place and time, with fantastic and compelling characters. There are gorey horror elements, but the themes of the book are more about belonging and friendship and acceptance than blood and guts. "Handling the Undead" was very difficult to read because it's extremely emotionally intense. I had to take breaks to decompress a bit. It's really an amazing book, though.

*makes note to save the book for summer mornings and afternoons* Horror books scare me, but sometimes they sound really good and nothing's ever gained from not venturing outside your comfort zone.

Just as long as they don't end up traumatising me. Again.

I kind of fell down on my "read more grownup books" and "read more diverse authors" plan this month, but oh well. I was on vacation and the library I used was small.

78. Magic or Madness, by Justine Larbalestier (ya fantasy)
Really enjoyed this--an interesting, morally difficult magic system sets up the conflict, and it's set in Australia and New York City. Bechdel-passing.

79. The Shadow Matrix, by Marion Zimmer Bradley (adult science fantasy)
Reread for nostalgia's sake. Very little actually happens. Spoilery loling here, if you can spoil for something with so little plot. Definitely not one of the better Darkover books.

80. Corambis, by Sarah Monette (adult fantasy)
The marginally less problematic conclusion to Doctrine of Labyrinths. I continue to love and be deeply icked out by these books in equal measure.

81. Pretties, by Scott Westerfeld (ya science fiction)
82. Specials, by Scott Westerfeld (ya science fiction)
84. Extras, by Scott Westerfeld (ya science fiction)
Finishing out the series! Westerfeld is very much an idea writer, and I never got very vested in his characters (I was also...unconvinced by the future-Japanese setting in Extras). But these are fun idea books, even if the characters always seem a bit wooden. Very Bechdel-passing.

83. Heist Society, by Ally Carter (ya contemporary)
A very unconvincing, bland heist story. I picked it up because it had a female protagonist and heist/con stories rarely do, but the writing was mediocre (lots of telling rather than showing, distracting lapses in omniscient voice) and the characters were flat. Not very Bechdel-passing.

85. So Tomorrow, by Scott Westerfeld (ya contemporary with SFish elements)
DEFINITELY an idea writer. I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the characters, but the idea--about consumerism and branding and trend-setting--is fairly interesting.

86. The Last Hero, by Terry Pratchett (illustrated adult fantasy)
A short Discworld novel illustrated by Paul Kidby, who has basically visually defined Discworld, about the last battle of Cohen the Barbarian. It's charming, amusing, and sometimes rather gorgeous, and the illustrations are fantastic.

87. How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier (ya fantasy)
I...don't think I really liked this. Too much slang (Larbalestier is married to Westerfeld--maybe he rubbed off on her?), was much more interested in the main character's rival than the main character, and the disgustingly, unfairly, arbitrarily rigid school that all the characters loved made me want to reach through the page and punch all the authority figures. In the end, the characters all loved the school, so there was never any serious questioning of whether the authority was right. Also do not like reading about self-absorbed societies that think they are better than everyone else (no, I did not like Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books, either). The main concept was interesting, and I think telling it from the point of view of Fiorenze would have made a big improvement. Very Bechdel-passing.

88. The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan (ya zombie)
I'm not normally into zombie stories, but I did like this one. Beautiful writing, great atmosphere. I thought teenage lust was described well, although by the end I was sort of irritated by its conflation with love, and not entirely convinced by how the dystopian society was set up (a society that small, that careful about inbreeding--dude, teenage boys wouldn't be picking their brides, adults would be arranging ALL the teenage marriages). I gather the sequels are more rehashes with similar characters, so I may give them a pass, since I'm more interested in what Mary does. Not very Bechdel-passing.

I also used some field guides, including:

The Birdwatcher's Guide to Hawai'i, by Rick Soehren
Slightly out of date, but very useful to find birding locations. Sadly, many of the best sites on the Big Island were closed due to fire danger.

A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Hawai'i: The Main Islands and Offshore Waters, by Jim Denny
This was the best of the Hawaiian bird guides I used--it wasn't as compact as the others, but had more information. Also, it consistently used diacritical marks on the Hawai'ian names for birds, which I liked. However, it did not have many of the features of Sibley which I have grown to rely on, such as thumbnail images showing what birds look like in flight from behind, for example. This made some identifications difficult. Also, neither this nor any of the others was very useful for ducks. My ideal Hawai'ian bird guide--a Sibley that includes extinct species--does not exist.

The other field guides I used were not memorable.

I picked up some fun books--a book on Hawai'ian grammar (awesome! ♥), a book of Hawaiian legends, and a book on the ancient Hawai'ians illustrated by Herb Kawainui Kane. Right now I'm reading Tanya Huff's third Torin Kerr book, military space opera. I don't love these books, but they're kind of fun and nicely, if obviously, subversive of expectations.

*perks up* What book on Hawai'ian legends? I had one, but it seemed sanitised which makes me sad. They were fascinating, but I kept having that nagging feeling... And that artwork is gorgeous. ^-^ *goes back to the rest of the books mentioned*

I think I need to learn how to tell what kind of writer a person is. Your one-line description of So Yesterday may very well sum up why I disliked it way better than I managed.

The Last Hero is also the book that finally got me into Discworld novels. /random bit of Shanra-trivia. I heart the illustrations. My copy is big and bulky and of completely disproportionate height to the other books and I simply refuse to see if the smaller one matches the height. I like my big, pretty illustrations too much.

The fact that you've read these authors and books now means you might have more space to diversify your reading in other months, though, doesn't it? *trying to be positive*

Did you get most of the birds you saw identified in the end? (Also, I envy you/am really happy for you. That must've been a gorgeous vacation. ^-^)

I don't remember off the top of my head--it's one of the retold ones based on Mary Kawena Pukui's stories (but darn near EVERYTHING about Hawai'ian language and literature is connected to Pukui, so that doesn't narrow it down much). It's definitely written in a modernized style that removes a lot of idiom, and I think has the more, uh, family-friendly stories.

I flipped through a couple books that were more like direct translations of oral traditions, complete with opaque and nautical metaphors for sex, and I can't tell how much "sanitizing" has to do with era translations/retellings were done and how much is evolution of legends post-missionary contact. Versions of the Pele and Kamapua'a stories definitely vary...wildly. I should have written down some titles, because I'm having trouble finding those books on the interwebs now (they were much more expensive, so I didn't get any). If I come across the titles, I'll let you know what they were.

I think I need to learn how to tell what kind of writer a person is. Your one-line description of So Yesterday may very well sum up why I disliked it way better than I managed.

I'm really ambivalent about Westerfeld at this point. I loved Leviathan, and I think he does better with character there than his other books, but I would love his books so much more if his characters were more interesting and distinct.

The fact that you've read these authors and books now means you might have more space to diversify your reading in other months, though, doesn't it? *trying to be positive*

Well, I don't regiment my reading that much, and I don't really worry about it if I go off-goal for a while. It's a process of changing my habits, really, not an end goal.

I did get almost all the birds identified! I have some photos of a duck I need to ask the Flickr Bird ID folks about, and I saw a seabird (a tern?) the last day that I doubt I'll be able to figure out from a poor glimpse in flight at dusk. Because the biodiversity in Hawai'i is so low, it's actually fairly easy to ID birds, since there are rarely many options. It was a pretty great trip!

It's not that I have anything against child-friendly retellings of stories (I don't), but it's the fact that I don't know how much was altered/added to be comprehensible to me that bothers me. 'Sanitised' may not be quite the right word to use, come to think of it. >> My apologies for using it. Point is, I'd much rather have a more direct translation and footnotes where needed than what I got in the book I had. (And thank you for offering to tell me if you recall or find any titles! ^-^)

I'm really ambivalent about Westerfeld at this point. I loved Leviathan, and I think he does better with character there than his other books, but I would love his books so much more if his characters were more interesting and distinct.

Oh! That's promising. I picked up Leviathan a while back in the hopes that I'd like it more than So Yesterday, so that takes some of the worries I had about it away. ^-^

Still, these books can't adversely affect that change in habit now. (Which reminds me, thank you for that post on mindful reading you made earlier in the year. It's been really helpful in giving me ideas and sorting the mess in my head out. ^-^)

Yay! I hope you'll get the last two identified too! And great trips are wonderful. ^-^

It's really hard to say. I mean, the stories evolve--I've come across at least three different distinct plots for stories about beach and mountain naupaka flowers (lovers separated by Pele, lovers separated by class issues, and unfaithful lovers, iirc). But there are a few direct translation books out there. Just, apparently, hard to find the titles on the internet.

I found So Yesterday to be pretty weak, compared with Uglies etc., but Leviathan is in a whole class of its own. I am looking forward to reading the sequel.

Nature of the kind of tale is to evolve, true, but the reason you're recording or telling the tales will influence how they read all the same. The book I had came with an introduction that described a snippet of a decidedly non-family friendly story. This site looks quite promising. Lookiiiiit at the shiny! <3)

Mmm. Sounds like maybe I just really picked the worst possible start in exploring Westerfeld's books. I doubt I'll get to Leviathan soon, but we'll see where the mood takes me. I've a few books lying around that I really want to get to first.

Ah, good find! This is the book I got, since it includes transcriptions of Pukui's original Hawai'ian versions.

I think this may have been one of the idiomatic translations I saw.

I haven't read all of Westerfeld's stuff, but so far So Yesterday is the weakest I've read, both in terms of characterization and idea.

I'm glad! My googling skills hover around abysmal. And that book is far too shiny and awesome-sounding... *must save money for practical things like new glasses and pants, wants books*

*nods* Unless I hate Leviathan (which would make me sad), I'll have to keep an eye out for some of his other works before making up my mind, then!

Oops, that should be

85. So Yesterday, by Scott Westerfeld (ya contemporary with SFish elements)

Hah! I like your summary of "Corambis."

Doctrine of Labyrinths has been kind of a frustrating reading experience--there is so much I adore about them, and so much that I find deeply problematic and icky. *sigh*

I think that for a lot of DOL the readers are MEANT to find stuff problematic and icky and think about why we find it problematic and icky.

I'm not convinced it's deliberate or critical, based on Companion to Wolves (which I kind of wanted to set on fire) and how prostitution and rape are handled in DOL. The fact that DOL describes rape in a fair amount of detail, but glosses over almost all consensual sex, and especially consensual gay sex, and the fact that Felix's Tragicness is inextricably connected with his gayness...I just can't read this as a critique of problematic tropes rather than another fetishistic take on them.

people of the earth by kathleen o'neal gear and w. michael gear
stargate sg-1: the first amendment by ashley mcconnell
the virgin's lover by philippa gregory
the other boleyn girl by philippa gregory
people of the mist by o'neal gear & gear
star trek: DS9--the lives of dax edited by marco palmieri Collapse

That is an awesome icon.

Looks like a nice list. ^-^ I hope you enjoyed them all!

Not much in October.

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer

Two Heyer so close together, only broken up by a light comedy play that took about a day and a half to read, was a bit much. It was too much fluff, not enough substance, and by the second half of The Corinthian, I was annoyed with the plot devices and characterization, but I can't tell if it was the book itself or just Heyer overload.

I'm poking at Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger right now, still working on some essays and letters by Charles Lamb, and occasionally picking up A Memoir of Jane Austen by J.E. Austen-Leigh.

Have you read a lot of Heyer's works? (I've only read Cotillion, but I did get the impression that I'm better off spacing her books out.)

I've read a fair number of them, but she wrote a lot, so there are still plenty out there that I haven't gotten to yet.

Spacing them out isn't a bad idea. Whenever I read one Heyer, I seem to want to jump right into another one, and almost inevitably I end up disliking the second one. I suspect it has to do more with too much Heyer than the actual quality of the books themselves.

So far I've read Faro's Daughter, The Nonsuch, The Convenient Marriage, The Toll-Gate, Charity Girl, The Foundling, Cotillion, and The Corinthian. There's nothing in that list that I really disliked, although I do think that she wasn't at her best with The Nonsuch which is very formulaic Heyer and doesn't have terribly memorable characters. However, none of them jump out at me as ones I'd rec over any of the others either. I've also attempted and given up on several, but I won't mention titles since, as I said, it might have had more to do with when I tried to read them than the books themselves.

Mmm, sounds like it's a case of too much Heyer, yes. I had that reaction to Cotillion too, that feeling of wanting jump straight into another one, but I didn't have any others around so that put a stop to that. ^-^

I think I might delve into Faro's Daughter next, but I don't know. I'll see. *pokes TBR pile* At least it's shrinking instead of expanding rapidly.

October was a great month for me!

Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
What is the What by Dave Eggers
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Bells by Richard Harvell

Room and The Bells I was really excited about, because I rarely pick up new novels! They were both satisfying in kind of a morbid way. The Bells kind of freaked me out so much with what I perceived as borderline child molestation that I put it down for awhile, but when I picked it back up All Was Well and it turned out a great read. The best thing about October is that I didn't pick up a book I didn't actually finish, I don't think.

I'm reading The Wrong Blood by Manuel de Lope now, which is turning out really well aside from the long, difficult-to-follow sentences and the first bit being mostly about rape (though there is a preface almost entirely dedicated to explaining why that's the case).

Room is on my list to buy, how was it?

It was excellent, and I definitely recommend it. It's written from the POV of the five-year-old boy, though, so if basically being spoken to by an intelligent five-year-old puts you off (which it almost did for me, I'll be honest) that might be a problem. But! It was crafted extremely well, and the flow is flawless throughout the whole novel.

The POV is one of the reasons I'm curious about Room. ^-^ (First, though, Slammerkin.)

The POV was very realistic, in my opinion! To someone who knows five-year-olds better, it might not be, but to me it was exactly how I would expect a coherent five-year-old to tell a story. And Slammerkin is SO GOOD in a fierce and sliiightly disturbing way. One of my favourites. ♥

Both books sound awesome. ^-^ Slammerkin wins out as my introductory author read because it's in third person. The pov's a better starting place than first for me. I'm a little scared of it too, though, but I'm hoping I'll discover an awesome read and that both books together make for a good introduction to the author's style. ^-^

the highlights:

97. The Adventure of English (Audio CD) by Melvyn Bragg - loved this. BBC has since made a miniseries of it, too.

98. The Passage by Justin Cronin - good, but overhyped. Cross Stephen King's The Stand with Salem's Lot and throw in some GRR Martin.

99. The Game (Mary Russell #7) by Laurie R. King - I do love my Holmes pastiche, although this is not one of the better books in the series.

100. The Hunger Games (Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins
101. Catching Fire (Hunger Games, #2) by Suzanne Collins
102. Mockingjay (Hunger Games, #3) by Suzanne Collins
- variously loved and hated parts of these. I'm not a fan of the Battle Royale trope, but it was really good YA dystopia...with the caveat that YA dystopia doesn't generally succeed at worldbuilding that makes a lick of sense.

103. Locked Rooms (Mary Russell #8) by Laurie R. King - yup, still love my Holmes pastiche. Really nice to see them do San Francisco, although the pacing was weird throughout.

with the caveat that YA dystopia doesn't generally succeed at worldbuilding that makes a lick of sense.

Oh? I haven't heard anything bad about Collins' world-building. Could you elaborate? *curious* (I'm avoiding reading the books until the hype dies down.)

Sorry, I just realized I never replied here. What I meant was that in YA fiction, it's normal for kids to be centrally placed to save the world. Sometimes it's ridiculous and sometimes it makes sense, all depending on how well the worldbuilding succeeds. In the Hunger Games books, it's the third book before the 'verse starts to make any sense, and even that is sort of shaky. A little more work in showing the historical background would have gone a long way. I mean, I'm good with unlikely scenarios as long as there's some background to make them plausible, and HG *almost* has enough there to satisfy me. Almost.

It's still a good series, don't get me wrong, and it's great to have a strong female character who isn't too perfect or sane. And I love that she's a great female YA character who might inspire kids to read, so while HG is totally overhyped right now, maybe it's hyped enough to get some average teenagers to open a freaking book for once. Katniss is actually very much like Sarah Connor, now that I think about it, only without the Madonna complex: She goes through hell to survive and doesn't stop, no matter how much damage her soul takes...which makes the ending all the more annoying to me, but I won't spoil that for you here. (I ranted enough in my goodreads. *g*)

I did pretty good in October:

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, by Lauren Willig
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe
The Glass Painter's Daughter, by Rachel Hore
Pray for Silence, by Linda Castillo
Grave Secret (A Harper Connelly Mystery), by Charlaine Harris
The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen
The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America, by Dr. Drew Pinsky and Dr. S. Mark Young

Of these, I'd most recommend The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and the Truth About Forever.

I'm starting November with Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce (who I adore) and still working through The Encyclopedia of Counseling (I will pass the Licensing Exam the first time...)

Good luck with the exam! I hope you're enjoying Bloodhound as much or more than you have Pierce's other works! ^-^

Looks like everyone's had a decent month. ^-^

I spent the first half of the month not having much time to read at all (and also preparing for an intercontinental move, so most of my dead-tree books are in transit and will be for a while.) I plowed through an ebook re-read of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and still didn't care much for any of the characters and found the ending drawn-out and unsatisfying. Then I had a bit more time on my hands, and read Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue, about a half-faery San Francisco PI, and Sandra MacDonald's The Stars Blue Yonder, the third (and final?) book in a series with spacefarers and Australian mythology, this one with a complicated time-travel plot, both of which I enjoyed, and also a re-read of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a teenage favorite now with bonus anti-semitic stereotypes and surprisingly little actual action.

I hope the move is going well! That's quite the challenge. Sounds like a pretty decent amount of reading, despite having a lot of time for it, though. ^-^ How're the fey in Rosemary and Rue portrayed?

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October Reading!

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