Hot books

It's been hot enough that I've been spending a bunch of time sitting quietly in air conditioned space, reading. Much of that time was spent at the library, or reading paperbacks I brought home after a stint at the library.

I've finished three library books in as many days; when I left the library at closing today, the heat wave seemed to have broken, leaving us with ordinary hot August weather. (I've also been reading magazines, done some bits of rereading, and am still in the middle of one book I started on my way to Montreal.)

The Stonehenge Gate, by Jack Williamson, is basically pulp adventure, of the sort that doesn't worry too much about the lines between sf and fantasy (lines that hadn't been drawn when the author started publishing): one-way gates between inhabited worlds, part-robot monsters, a space elevator between tidally locked twin worlds, a character who is pressured to lead a slave rebellion because of his magical birthmark, and events that mostly move fast enough that I didn't spend much time stopping to think until near the end (when I was disappointed by what was supposed to be the encouraging message the narrator ends up with).

Melancholy Baby, by Robert Parker, does familiar things and does them well. Not a Spenser novel this time: the narrator is another private detective, also operating out of Boston, who is trying to figure out why her ex-husband's remarriage is hitting her so hard, while helping a young client find her biological parents in the face of the insistence, by the parents who raised her, that she's their own flesh and blood. The narrator (Sonya always called Sunny, and I can't remember her surname at the moment) decides to see a psychotherapist, and is referred to Dr. Susan Silverman (Spenser's long-time girlfriend); a few other familiar names also turn up.

Od Magic, by Patricia McKillip, was also a fast read, but that's partly because I wanted to finish it by 6:00, not borrow and thus have to carry a hardcover. There's a school of magic, and a youth who comes a long way to be the magical gardener there because the title character found him in the middle of nowhere and asked him to; there's an illusionist, who may or may not have any actual magical ability; there's a princess who is increasingly frustrated that neither her father nor the wizard he's decided she should marry actually listen to anything she says, and who realizes that she needs a friend. There's also an excellent labyrinth, and the Twilight Quarter of the city, which sleeps during the day and works and plays during the night, for reasons never explained, and which the king and his advisors don't quite trust. McKillip describes the gardener and his way of listening to plants, and what he learns from them; it feels real, as does the cold mountainside he visits early in the book and doesn't understand, and the golden lion tamarin (described, not named) in the royal menagerie.

Three books I enjoyed, one [the McKillip] I may reread. Weeks like this, the "fifty-book challenge" seems trivial; then I go long periods rereading, reading the paper, reading the net, playing computer games. Still, I'm glad to have and be using a library card again.

Hot books

It's been hot enough that I've been spending a bunch of time sitting quietly in air conditioned space, reading. Much of that time was spent at the library, or reading paperbacks I brought home after a stint at the library.

I've finished three library books in as many days; when I left the library at closing today, the heat wave seemed to have broken, leaving us with ordinary hot August weather. (I've also been reading magazines, done some bits of rereading, and am still in the middle of one book I started on my way to Montreal.)

The Stonehenge Gate, by Jack Williamson, is basically pulp adventure, of the sort that doesn't worry too much about the lines between sf and fantasy (lines that hadn't been drawn when the author started publishing): one-way gates between inhabited worlds, part-robot monsters, a space elevator between tidally locked twin worlds, a character who is pressured to lead a slave rebellion because of his magical birthmark, and events that mostly move fast enough that I didn't spend much time stopping to think until near the end (when I was disappointed by what was supposed to be the encouraging message the narrator ends up with).

Melancholy Baby, by Robert Parker, does familiar things and does them well. Not a Spenser novel this time: the narrator is another private detective, also operating out of Boston, who is trying to figure out why her ex-husband's remarriage is hitting her so hard, while helping a young client find her biological parents in the face of the insistence, by the parents who raised her, that she's their own flesh and blood. The narrator (Sonya always called Sunny, and I can't remember her surname at the moment) decides to see a psychotherapist, and is referred to Dr. Susan Silverman (Spenser's long-time girlfriend); a few other familiar names also turn up.

Od Magic, by Patricia McKillip, was also a fast read, but that's partly because I wanted to finish it by 6:00, not borrow and thus have to carry a hardcover. There's a school of magic, and a youth who comes a long way to be the magical gardener there because the title character found him in the middle of nowhere and asked him to; there's an illusionist, who may or may not have any actual magical ability; there's a princess who is increasingly frustrated that neither her father nor the wizard he's decided she should marry actually listen to anything she says, and who realizes that she needs a friend. There's also an excellent labyrinth, and the Twilight Quarter of the city, which sleeps during the day and works and plays during the night, for reasons never explained, and which the king and his advisors don't quite trust. McKillip describes the gardener and his way of listening to plants, and what he learns from them; it feels real, as does the cold mountainside he visits early in the book and doesn't understand, and the golden lion tamarin (described, not named) in the royal menagerie.

Three books I enjoyed, one [the McKillip] I may reread. Weeks like this, the "fifty-book challenge" seems trivial; then I go long periods rereading, reading the paper, reading the net, playing computer games. Still, I'm glad to have and be using a library card again.