Final vacation update, and some books
Aug. 12th, 2005 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienWe had two more walks, one with heather and intermittent sunshine and one with rivers and woods and intermittent rain. My mother bought a new laptop and I'm breaking it in for her. (I sold her my 1997 one in 2000, and it really was getting past the end of its useful life.)
Mostly, though, books.
I haven't been reading as much as I sometimes do on vacation; I've been spending the evenings scanning old photos and organizing new ones. Still, here's the roundup so far.
This is a sequel to Expiration Date, which I have read and posted about, and also to Last Call, which I haven't. It might have made more sense to read Last Call first, but that was a bulky trade paperback and this was a mass-market more suitable for traveling with.
It's the usual Powers farrago of myth and magic and out-of-context bits of literature in a quasi-realistic contemporary setting. The fact that the setting is California probably boosts the amount of oddness that can be squeezed in without distorting the appearance of reality too much. This story involves Bacchus and the Californian viniculture industry; everyone seems to drink too much, which may not be unconnected. There are ghosts, and a dead Fisher King whom a motley assortment of characters are trying to bring back to life, a woman with serious multiple-personality issues, and an oddly saccharine ending. There are also character epigraphs taken from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities that make the book sound a lot creepier than I ever found it.
This is a sort of faux-regency melodrama, with elements of hard-boiled detective fiction, set in and around London in the closing days of the regency of Queen Charlotte, wife of mad King George. The seamy side of regency life, with its brothels and fallen women, implicit even in Heyer's regency romances, is front and centre here; the heroine is herself a fallen woman who has chosen the life of a private detective over prostitution. It's an entertaining read, but the plot hinges on what seems to me a massive and unlikely coincidence.
This is not a Thursday Next novel, though it seems to be set in the same universe or possibly the one next door; there is at least one crossover minor character, and allusions to the movie of The Eyre Affair. Also, one of the protagonists seems to be connected to Thursday's refuge in The Well of Lost Plots, so it isn't clear exactly how the worlds relate. Fforde pokes gentle fun at literary and TV detectives from Holmes to Morse, and weaves nursery archetypes seamlessly into twentieth-century life, in a way rather reminiscent of Pratchett. I was amused and charmed, but the book (UK edition) really could have used another copyediting pass.
It may have been a mistake to bring this, the first volume of the Viscount of Adrilankha trilogy, to Sheffield and leave the other two volumes at home. Oh well, I should be back in a month or so. The book would be a lot shorter if not for the archaic style and excessively mannered dialogue adopted by the narrator, but those are a large part of its charm. One knows, from reading the Vlad Taltos books, that the Empire will indeed be established and Morrolan will get his inheritance, but it's still interesting to see how it came about.
Mostly, though, books.
I haven't been reading as much as I sometimes do on vacation; I've been spending the evenings scanning old photos and organizing new ones. Still, here's the roundup so far.
Earthquake Weather, Tim Powers
This is a sequel to Expiration Date, which I have read and posted about, and also to Last Call, which I haven't. It might have made more sense to read Last Call first, but that was a bulky trade paperback and this was a mass-market more suitable for traveling with.
It's the usual Powers farrago of myth and magic and out-of-context bits of literature in a quasi-realistic contemporary setting. The fact that the setting is California probably boosts the amount of oddness that can be squeezed in without distorting the appearance of reality too much. This story involves Bacchus and the Californian viniculture industry; everyone seems to drink too much, which may not be unconnected. There are ghosts, and a dead Fisher King whom a motley assortment of characters are trying to bring back to life, a woman with serious multiple-personality issues, and an oddly saccharine ending. There are also character epigraphs taken from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities that make the book sound a lot creepier than I ever found it.
A Point of Honour, Madeleine E. Robins
This is a sort of faux-regency melodrama, with elements of hard-boiled detective fiction, set in and around London in the closing days of the regency of Queen Charlotte, wife of mad King George. The seamy side of regency life, with its brothels and fallen women, implicit even in Heyer's regency romances, is front and centre here; the heroine is herself a fallen woman who has chosen the life of a private detective over prostitution. It's an entertaining read, but the plot hinges on what seems to me a massive and unlikely coincidence.
The Big Over Easy, Jasper Fforde
This is not a Thursday Next novel, though it seems to be set in the same universe or possibly the one next door; there is at least one crossover minor character, and allusions to the movie of The Eyre Affair. Also, one of the protagonists seems to be connected to Thursday's refuge in The Well of Lost Plots, so it isn't clear exactly how the worlds relate. Fforde pokes gentle fun at literary and TV detectives from Holmes to Morse, and weaves nursery archetypes seamlessly into twentieth-century life, in a way rather reminiscent of Pratchett. I was amused and charmed, but the book (UK edition) really could have used another copyediting pass.
The Paths of the Dead, Steven Brust
It may have been a mistake to bring this, the first volume of the Viscount of Adrilankha trilogy, to Sheffield and leave the other two volumes at home. Oh well, I should be back in a month or so. The book would be a lot shorter if not for the archaic style and excessively mannered dialogue adopted by the narrator, but those are a large part of its charm. One knows, from reading the Vlad Taltos books, that the Empire will indeed be established and Morrolan will get his inheritance, but it's still interesting to see how it came about.
