Books, but…

I will be posting about something more than books tomorrow. Something memorable.

But for today. It’s books!

19. Shadow Of The Torturer by Gene Wolfe – I’ve read this before, but I didn’t remember much of it. It was a good read, but not as good as I don’t remember.

20. Claw Of The Conciliator – Decent, but worse than Shadow… I was going to read the rest of the series, but I’m not sure I can be bothered now!

21. The Affinity Bridge – Tepid, mediocre, etc. Not worth reading really. Don’t think I’ll read any more by this author.

22. Ferno The Fire Dragon by Adam Blade – A Beastquest book for Gwire. Not bad for a kids book.

23. Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – Very chaotic and clever really only in the context of when it was written.

More Books

Time to keep track of the books that I’ve been readin lately. Not exciting, but good for me.

16. The Blade Itself: Book One Of The First Law by Joe Abercrombie – Came highly recommended, but is distinctly average. Not that that is bad these days. Nice solid fantasy. I liked it and will read the next book.

17. Revenge Of The Judoon by Terrance Dicks – Borrowed mainly for G, but I really like Doctor Who so I polished these off myself

18. Made Of Steel by Terrance Dicks – See above.

X – Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz – NE wanted me to read this as it was one of her teenage favourites or something. I’ve read some Dean Koontz and found them enjoyable enough, but this… was… awful. Florid, overwrought, purple prose. Hated it.

Books I’ve read Recently

I’ve spent most of my extra time for the internet on Facebook and on Flickr. I want to get back to posting here this week and I should have plenty to post about as I’ve just been to York for a holiday to visit some in-laws.

But in the meantime, I’ve read:

14. Hard Cool by Ian Rankin – I’ve wanted to read a book by Rankin, but didn’t want to start in on his detective series. This was a good story and I wouldn’t mind reading another by him.

15. The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker – The first three in this series were exceptional, a breath of fresh air in a stale genre, but this one was self-indulgent rubbish with overlong descriptions and ingrown characters. I don’t know if I’ll have the stomach to continue this series.

Books I tried to read:

X. The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin – I had read a book by Tom Holt and it was dire. So, I’d naturally lumped Robert Rankin into the same category of modern, schlocky humour. When the opportunity came to buy this book from library for 30p, I took it so I could give him a chance. For the first 50-70 pages, I was liking it and patting myself on the back for rescuing an author that I hadn’t given a chance. I put one of his books on my wishlist and rejoiced, because finding a new author that I like was rare. Then came page 71, or thereabouts, Barry… The TIME SPROUT. He’s a sprout… that controls time. Nuff said. Book in Bin.

Books I’ve Read

Not a terribly exciting post, but this one is more for me to look back on and see what I was reading and a bit of what I thought about the books at the time.

I didn’t read Toll The Hounds. I ranted about the reasons in an earlier post.

 

11. The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes – This was alright. Kind of a sequel to The Somnambulist by the same author, which was a much better book.

12. Dwarves Of Death – Jonathan Coe – This was very forgettable, modern fiction without any of the humour that I expected. Not sorry I read it, but not exactly happy either.

13. The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia – I had high hopes for this book. It was billed as similar to Neverwhere, which I really liked, but it was much more boring than that. Maybe I didn’t resonate with the Russian fairytale figures coming to life. I just didn’t connect with the characters. Oh well.

 

Reading: Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland – Not bad so far. A bit quirky in a good way.

I chose the path less travelled…

It was the first day of the Colossal Library Book Sale and I… didn’t go! There’s a reason for this and a good one. I found out yesterday that my fam wasn’t going to Home Ed group. They were going on an adventure instead. And what are books at the end of the day… just things. They are nothing compared with the prospect of spending time with my family in the outdoors.

Not that I don’t think the Home Ed people aren’t nice or anything. I just don’t feel comfortable socialising with people and I therefore felt fully comfortable going to the Book Sale as long as my fam was headed there.

Anyway… We went on an adventure by the canal and I took loads of pictures, we ate sandwiches and had a great time in the sun. I’ll leave the actual details to NE as she’s brewing up a blog post even as I type this.

Just as an aside… I’ll be going to the Book Sale on Saturday. The best books might be gone, but then again there’ll be less dross to sort through. In the end I’ll have some books.

Book Sale Day!

NE thinks that it’s funny that I’ve taken a half day off next week for the Library book sale. Now, you all know my preoccupation with acquiring new books. So, when I heard about this book sale I knew I wanted to get into the Library at the stroke of 10 when the sale begins. I don’t want anyone to get in there and get some of the sci-fi/fantasy books as they are in short supply anyway. I’ll also be on the lookout for any books about Switzerland or about learning German. Secondarily, if there are any books for G, then I’ll get those. NE will be going to the book sale as well at some point and she can shoulder the burden of that weight. I’ll be bringing my big, big backpack of holding as the books will be going cheap, cheap cheap!

Falling Out of Like With An Author

I was eagerly anticipating the latest installment of the Malazan Book Of The Fallen by Steven Erikson. I’d enjoyed the first… Five I’d say very much. The sixth one was all about people in the past who we had no connection with and I simply didn’t care and didn’t read it. Maybe I should have recognised the signs at that time, but I decided to give it another go and read the seventh book, which did have characters that I knew and liked from past books. So, all good there. The eighth book arrived and it featured characters we weren’t that familiar with. So, I just couldn’t care.

To add to all this, Stevie’s books have grown by 200 pages from the first installment to the eighth. I put this down to slack editing as he became more popular. His books could use cutting about 200 pages in each volume. He does go on.

But that’s neither here nor there. I can stand a bit of excess verbiage. I’ve waded through all of Robert Jordan’s books and I’ll read his posthumous one, but I have to have some characters in each book that I’ve connected with over the series. Unfortunately, Erikson goes through characyers like a madman! He kills off loads of charatcters, created literally hundreds over the series. I can’t bring myself to care about most of them.

So, I’ve had it. No more reading of this series.

Another author I’ve lost patience with is George R. R. Martin… Will he bring out another book before he dies? He doesn’t look healthy and he’s not a spring chicken. It’s been nigh on three years. If he continues at this pace, then we won’t see the end of his series until 2020. He won’t make it until then!

The Camera Has Landed

Well, it finally arrived and I couldn’t be any happier about it. It does everything I want. It’s not a super camera with multiple lenses and it doesn’t do well in the dark, but it fits my style of photography. Minimal effort and ease of use. Maybe this will give me a taste for something more in the future as my brother-in-law, M was saying at the weekend, but that’s something for the future. Maybe I’ll just update my bridge camera every so often or maybe I will go out and get a “real” camera, but for now I’m happy.

Happy Birthday To Me

It was my birthday on Sunday, making me an Aries, for whatever that’s worth among the stars. NE likes to get the numbers reversed and if I didn’t remind her, I’d be having my birthday on May 4th every year. Don’t hit me, NE!

Earlier that week I had received my birthday gift from my son and wife. It was a coffee grinder. And not just any coffee grinder, but a hand grinder! I’ve been helped to a new level of coffee snobbery. Above and beyond mere coffee-likers (dripping disdainfulness) who use an electric grinder. Coffee is best ground slowly and lovingly, not in some sort of jumped-up coffee blender. I also got a big bag of Brazilian coffee beans. I ground some up and made a cup of coffee to startle the Eternal Lords of Coffee. Delicious!

On Saturday, I took G to the movies as there was a special family movie showing where adults were free and children were on a couple of quid. The movie we saw, Bedtime Stories wasn’t so bad. Standard family fare, but much less fanciful and fun than I’d thought. It was more aimed at the 8-12 year olds and G was bored halfway through it. Don’t go see it with a just-turned-five year old. It was still fine, though as we got to be out and about together, which is what I was aiming for.

My parents got me an Amazon gift certificate for my birthday and with it I bought books. New books! And a couple of DVD’s: Unforgiven and Henry V, the Branagh version. I spent this before I knew I wanted a new camera. Who knew!

I also read a book in the mean time:

10. Mister Foreigner by Matthew Kneale – Not bad, easy read and short.

Reading: Toll The Hounds by Steven Erikson – 920 pages! Looks like I’ll be reading half and checking it out from the library again.

My Future Camera

The camera I have now has served me through thick and thin. It’s gone on a few trips, notably to Switzerland and it’s been a good basic camera. It’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ8, which was a replacement for my original Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7, which I dropped on the ground and it stopped working.

But now I want to move on up and I like Panasonic. So that means a Lumix FZ-28! It has excellent zoom and much better macro capability. I like taking pictures of flowers and that’ll mean sharper, closer pictures. I can’t wait! I won’t go into too many details on the camera. I could induce immediate snoredom with a barrage of numbers, but I won’t!

Also, I read a couple of books:

8. Declare by Tim Powers – A real slog and an author who needed an editor!

9. Making History by Stephen Fry – Solid story, good writing. Extremely skippable screenplay sections!