A word about books... including a book about words.

I haven't been very active on LJ lately and I miss it. But I haven't had much time lately.

Finished Traitor's Moon by Lynn Flewelling. It was good enough to finish, but was mostly boring. I don't like the main character, Seregil, as much as I like Alec, and I would really have read more about Alec than there was since most of the story was about Seregil and his past. Again I feel like Flewelling starts out writing, gets carried away by her own story (which is not necessarily a bad thing), but then thinks something like, OMG, I'd better finish up the story now; I'm running out of space! And then hurriedly wraps up the plot. It can be quite annoying. The characters are interesting enough in this, the third installment in the Nightrunner Series, and I'd read additional books if they came out, but I'm still annoyed.

In spite of my annoyance with Flewelling's style, I went on to read The Bone Doll's Twin and its sequel Hidden Warrior, of the Tamir series by Lynn Flewelling. I'm quite glad that I did, in fact! TBDT was really interesting -- it was pretty slow-paced, but it was not boring at all! The slow pace fit the mood of the story really well, which had a non-traditional type ghost in it, who was pretty darn creepy an inhuman, which is RARELY the case in fantasy stories. Ghosts tend to be helpful/benevolent or evil/menacing spirits and are boringly human in their emotions. Unfortunately, Flewelling can't seem to get away from the duology bit as she doesn't quite completely wrap up the first book. I'm used to ongoing series where there's a bigger concern that doesn't get wrapped up until the end of the series, or that the situation is a changing one. But Flewelling leaves you with a cliffhanger, in all practicality. HW was good, not as enjoyable as the TBDT, but good nonetheless. Again, however, Flewelling leaves you hanging slightly at the end. TBDT was published in 2002, HW in 2004, and I thought there might never be another installment in the series (which desperately needs one to finish up the story), but I discovered today that the third book is scheduled to come out in July, so I'll have something to look forward to.

I had also randomly picked up Word Court by Barbara Wallraff. This was quite an interesting book, a bit less a grammar rule-book than a guide to practical word usage. (I bet you're saying something like, isn't a grammar rule-book technically a guide to word usage? Shut up, smart-ass.) The book consists mostly of letters written to Wallraff's column and her responses. Not as funny as say, Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss, but still interesting and amusing in its own way. She also addresses often misused words and word phrases, which is actually quite interesting as there were some word phrases that I'd wondered about, myself.

So then I ran out of stuff to read. And in case you couldn't tell, I've been on a reading binge lately -- pretty much ignoring anime in favor of reading sf/f. I'm also waiting to get another external hard drive so I can dump some stuff off my laptop before downloading more stuff, like Bleach, Nana, and some other interesting stuff that's out... including more episodes of House ( -- of which the 2nd season finale is airing tonight). Heehee.

I have several things on my to-be-read list of new books that have just come out: In Fury Born by David Weber (not an Honorverse story), Druids' Sword by Sara Douglass (book 4 in the Troy Game series, OMGIneeditNOW!), Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher (book 8 in the Harry Dresden Files). I think there may have been another book or two I was interested in, but I forgot which. I was finally able to pick up from the library One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey and Wolfblade by Jennifer Fallon. I also bought Devlin's Luck by Patricia Bray from Barnes & Noble yesterday, which very much caught my eye, and which I'm reading now.

And did I also mention that along with Bray's book, I bought volumes one and two of Nana by Yazawa Ai, only to remember after I'd paid for them that I have the first several volumes in scanlations on the computer at home? Now I suppose I'll have to figure out whether to keep them or not... even though I have them on the computer, I do really prefer to have portable reading material for my daily commute (that doesn't depend on having my laptop with me).

Visitors, rarely to be seen again.

I did see Leo on Saturday night, although we didn't end up going to play pool. We were all pretty tired by the end of the day. Leo drove up from Florida with his brother -- a 24-hour, pretty much nonstop drive, so he had very little sleep, and lots of sitting in one spot. Maryann and I, on the other hand, got up kind of early (9:30am) and spent about 4 hours cleaning up the place. And then another 2 hours later on. And OMG, it looks SOOOO much better! We were finally able to go through that big box in front of the sink and throw lots and lots of stuff away. And when my mom heard that Leo would be staying over, she kind of went on a cleaning spree of her own, dragging Liz along with her. So the whole first floor is pretty clutter-free too! I'm just so happy to have all those things away from the sink -- I'd forgotten that the narrow hallway between the laundry room and my room wasn't so narrow after all.

Actually, Saturday was kind of crazy. In addition to cleaning for 6 hours, we all went to see The DaVinci Code. I really applaud the writer and director for sticking so close to the book -- I'm really impressed how accurate it was! I didn't, however, enjoy it all that much. It was interesting to see, but I felt somewhat bored, and pretty disappointed by how little the clues were actually focused on, in comparison to the book. I do realize that it can be difficult to visually illustrate things that, in books, happen inside the characters' heads. But since this is what I actually really enjoyed about the book, well, then without it, it wasn't very exciting. And all the things that got me all het up about from the book were just reawakened by watching the movie. Ah well. Still, I really am pleased by how close they kept everything to the book -- I only wish that other book-to-movie crossovers had been as successful!

Hanging out with Leo later that night was really great. I haven't seen him in at least two years, but even when we saw each other every day in high school, we never really hung out together or anything. Too bad, it was lots of fun -- although I suspect he's more fun now than he was in high school (but still as quirky as ever). =D It's really nice to be able to talk to someone about sf/f stuff. Why doesn't anyone read the same books as I do anymore~?! T_T Also, he did magic card tricks for us, which were really cool, and dammit, I wish he would have told us how he DID THAT!

As for other visitors ~ surprisingly, Yvette stopped into the store today! I've often wondered if she or Fay might stop in one day, but never really expected it to happen. It was really nice to see her again. And she says she has some appointment in the area on Tuesdays, so who knows if she might stop by again. I wouldn't want her to make it a weekly thing, but every so often would be nice.