Nine Muses

I don’t remember the earliest things I read so well. I remember reading a fair amount of non fiction about whatever caught my interest. (Horses, castles, dinosaurs, wildlife, etc. I could go on, if I tried.) One of the earliest books I distinctly remember reading was Escape to Witch Mountain when I was maybe eight or nine years old. I checked it out from the school library. I was already reading voraciously then, so I’m sure there were many others. I’ve just lost the memory of them in the general fog my childhood memories have become.

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Ugh. I had to put “Waking the Moon” down. I’m halfway through it and I’ve decided to take a little break.

It’s not a problem with the writing style. The author’s prose is wonderful. It’s just… so much angst, it seems… something like that. It’s almost hard to put my finger on.

I guess it’s that we’ve spent half the book establishing the roles of both sides of the conflict, and the blah personality of the person caught in the middle of the conflict. (And really, she’s not very interesting other than that she’s caught in the middle of this situation — though I think that’s the point. She’s ordinary, caught up in the extraordinary.) And everything I read is just more of what I’ve been reading for the last couple hundred pages, it feels like.

This book was highly recommended and very well reviewed. I’m wondering what I’m missing at the moment. It’s not that I’m not enjoying it… I just keep wondering when things are going to start happening.

Technorati Tags: Books Fantasy Literature Elizabeth Moon

So, I’m reading this book by Elizabeth Hand called “Waking the Moon,” and I’m just really not sure who the good guys are. It’s at least apparent who the protagonist is, but since she’s not sure who’s good and who’s not either, that’s not much help.

There’s the Benandanti, who are saying that the Goddess awakening will bring chaos and darkness and all that, and you think they’re the good guys at first, especially since the Goddess seems a bit on the bloodthirsty side.

At the same time, you find out that for thousands of years, these men have barely tolerated women at all, and have done all they can to squash anything, religious or secular, led by women.

So, I’m halfway through, I’m intensely into the book, and I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I guess that’s a sign of a good book.

Technorati Tags: Books Fantasy Literature Elizabeth Moon

So, I’ve been trying to not buy anymore books. It’s not that I’m worried about the cost or anything. It’s just that I recently organized my books, and bought a new bookshelf so I could actually see all of them. And I realized that there are tons of that I haven’t read.

Needing something to read during lunch at work, I grabbed “The Birthday of the World” off my shelf. I’d started it at one point, and it’s a collection of science fiction short stories, so I was able to pick it up and just make sure I was at the beginning of a story. Perfect lunch reading.

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