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June's What are you Reading Thread


Snuffaluffalee

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I finished AFFC today (first time :)), so now I'm making myself focus on my summer reading for AP English. First on that list is Crime and Punishment. I've also got to finish C.S. Lewis's Miracles at some point this summer before the friend I borrowed it from goes off to college. :cry: I'm also reading some sappy, cotton candy sweet, teenage girl fiction by Sarah Dessen for when I get tired of using my brain. :P

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Finished Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Bujold can write, that is for sure. It was an entertaining read while it lasted, showing occasional flashes of brilliance which hinted at a greater potential, something the author failed to realize IMO.

The romance between Cazaril and Bertriz felt completely out of place, to the extent of impeding Cazaril's character development. The villians failed to live up to their role, not least because of their one-dimensional portrayal and card-board nature. Same goes for pretty much every character not called Cazaril. The story was exceedingly saccharine and failed to maintain an even pace throughout. The 'luck', for the most part ended up as an annoying dues ex machina. The book lacked a deepness most good books possess; this is not a book to be re-read often.

Despite all this, this was not a bad novel. It was certainly several notches above what I have been reading recently in the epic fantasy department. (Fallon, Briggs, Lindskold)

Overall: 6/10

I'll be skipping over Paladin of Souls and moving onto the Hallowed Hunt.

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Finished Royal Flash. Good book, solidly entertaining with great humour throughout.

Now started my re-read of The Prestige by Christopher Priest (soon to be a major motion picture starring Hugh Jackman & Scarlett Johansson!), something I've been promising myself for the past several years. I remember this novel as being simply one of the greatest things I've ever read, some great ideas transmitted through a wonderful writing style. Let's see if I remembered it correctly.

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add-on,

the last poem is the best. I was distinctly unimpressed by Kay poetry (not a fan of poetry in general either) but that poem won me over.

I finished it at the end of last week. I am a fan of poetry, but , for the most part, I find his style annoying. However, I really enjoy the one near the end about love, so it may not be Kay's poetry I dislike, just Ammar's.

Anyways, now I'm reading The Invisible Pyramid by Loren Eisley, a paleontologist/anthropologist. It's a book about life in general: it's origin, limits, future, etc. So far it's very thought-provoking, and, for a non-fiction book written by a scientist, the prose is fan-fucking-tastic.

Also, I'm starting a re-read of Walden and some other Thoreau stuff that will just kind of be interspersed with the rest of my summer reading.

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Having just finished reading all of the Hugo-nominated short pieces, I decided it's time to find out what this R. Scott Bakker guy is all about. Currently 40 pages into The Darkness That Comes Before.

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Just finished Children of the Serpent Gate last night. Solid conclusion to the Tears of Artamon trilogy by Sarah Ash, but it wasn't as good as the first two in some ways:

- Sudden explosion in number of points of view (and plot threads)

- Pace accelerates dramatically in the last quarter of the book; as though the author looked at a page count while building tension and developing threads, and said "oh hell, I need to close this out in 200 pages"

- Multiple unresolved plot threads.

Started (by which I mean I read about six pages so far) Michael A. Stackpole's Cartomancy (book two in Age of Discovery). Too early to say anything about whether it's good.

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Just read (for the first time) Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, which I enjoyed tremendously. I need to go find more Vance, as this was my first exposure.

In the meantime, I'm rereading Pride and Prejudice before tackling The Worm Ouroborous. (No thematic connection there; just picked up P&P last night as I was falling asleep, after finishing the last of the Lyonesse books.)

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just finished josephus' bellum judaicum, and friggin' narnia.

currently, procopius' secret history, about halfway. fucking fantastic so far--all juicy dirt on belisarius and justinian & theodora. (i think cersei is at least one part theodora, actually.)

tacitus' histories next. then pindar's odes. maybe finish bakker after that. dunno about the last week of june yet.

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