(no subject)
Nov. 11th, 2002 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI've been doing a bit reading. I ordered a stack of books from Edward R. Hamilton and have been working on some of them. I'm in the middle of Kij Johnson's Fox Woman. I can tell that no one will be happy at the end of it, but I'm enjoying exploring the world. Aristocratic Japanese culture in that period is very alien to me, but I know just enough about it to have a reasonable starting place for understanding the novel.
I'm also in the middle of Sharon Kay Penman's Time and Chance. Her historical novels are among the few that I consistently seek out and always finish. This one's about Henry II of England and focuses on his problems with Thomas Beckett. I'm working away at it slowly and enjoying it. Progress can be a little hard sometimes because I know the tragedy awaiting various characters. Sometimes I know from histories I've read, and sometimes I can just tell the shape of the story. For example, any character presented as the hope of Wales is either doomed or not likely to be able to live up to his potential. I'm glad, though, that Penman has finally written this book. I'm fond of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their era, and her previous work more or less bracketed Henry's reign.
I finished a Spider Robinson book, Callahan's Key, this morning. I wasn't hugely impressed by it. There just didn't seem to be much substance there. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but... The plot was weak. The characters didn't really do much except present the possibility of the Callahan's paradigm; I suppose that's what readers want from Robinson these days, at least when they buy a Callahan's book. I really liked the short story collections, but I find that I'm pretty glad that I got this one remaindered.
I've also finished Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe part III. It's quite as much fun as parts I and II. I'm always amazed at the amount of information that Gonick can dig up and interconnect. Generally, I find the bits of history that I know well kind of frustrating when he skates through them because he can't give the level of detail that I already know, but the bits I don't know all that well are great fun. There's not so much that I'm overwhelmed, and it's presented with humor (even when he's writing about something like the Black Death! I wouldn't have expected that to be funny under any circumstances, but...).
I'm also in the middle of Sharon Kay Penman's Time and Chance. Her historical novels are among the few that I consistently seek out and always finish. This one's about Henry II of England and focuses on his problems with Thomas Beckett. I'm working away at it slowly and enjoying it. Progress can be a little hard sometimes because I know the tragedy awaiting various characters. Sometimes I know from histories I've read, and sometimes I can just tell the shape of the story. For example, any character presented as the hope of Wales is either doomed or not likely to be able to live up to his potential. I'm glad, though, that Penman has finally written this book. I'm fond of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their era, and her previous work more or less bracketed Henry's reign.
I finished a Spider Robinson book, Callahan's Key, this morning. I wasn't hugely impressed by it. There just didn't seem to be much substance there. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but... The plot was weak. The characters didn't really do much except present the possibility of the Callahan's paradigm; I suppose that's what readers want from Robinson these days, at least when they buy a Callahan's book. I really liked the short story collections, but I find that I'm pretty glad that I got this one remaindered.
I've also finished Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe part III. It's quite as much fun as parts I and II. I'm always amazed at the amount of information that Gonick can dig up and interconnect. Generally, I find the bits of history that I know well kind of frustrating when he skates through them because he can't give the level of detail that I already know, but the bits I don't know all that well are great fun. There's not so much that I'm overwhelmed, and it's presented with humor (even when he's writing about something like the Black Death! I wouldn't have expected that to be funny under any circumstances, but...).
