memelaina | i read a book

okay, i've read several books this month since coming home from denvention. but this weekend i just sat down and read one practically straight through with only brief breaks for food, shopping, and church. i read S. M. Stirling's The Scourge of God. at least when i started this one (unlike the last one) i KNEW that it was not going to finish the story. i feel a little silly admitting it (after all, stirling alwasy writes trilogies) but i was three quarters of the way through The Sunset Lands before the realization struck that i was not going to get to "finish" the story.

i bought Scourge of God in hardcover (which has to please the author) and read it eagerly, almost greedily. i'll do the same for the next one next year. but did i really like it? i'm not sure. i want to see how the story ends. i want to have more to do with the characters. but i feel kind of like i did after watching the Jackson Lord of the Rings films - like they wasted a lot of time on sword thrusts, beheadings, and spilling blood when there was so much more really important stuff they could have focused on. there are Steven King elements in this book which, although they were foreshadowed a bit in the last, still make it different from Stirling's other work. gods and demons are walking along with the Hero (note capitalization) and his chosen companions.

i'm also reading Elizabeth Peter's Laughter of Dead Kings. perhaps enjoying it more, but not reading it with the engrossed directedness that i lavished on the Stirling. this is the first non-Amelia book that has come out in a decade. which is nice, because i just can't focus on anymore Amelia stories, much as i liked the first ones. i did get an older, older Barbara Michaels (Sons of the Wolf) out of the library and listen to it in the car.

and when returning it i picked up anne mccaffrey's Cities in Space - which i had never read. and (you guys know i am slow, right?) i figured out about midway through that she is setting up to join these "Talents" books as pre-cursors to the "Rowan" books - which I've also never read, although I did read the original short story. so now i guess i have more mccaffrey in front of me.

does anyone else listen to books in the car? i do it almost exclusively these days. i used to listen to NPR but then even that got to be too much for me, and i always have an audio book (and a spare) for any bit of driving i need to do. sometimes, i even have a fast food lunch and sit and listen for half an hour. but i try really hard NOT to take the audio book out of the car.

in some ways this month feels like the first month after i got out of college (and out of grad school) - reveling in the freedom to read WHATEVER I WANT without sixteen other thing pushing at my time. did i mention that i'm never running another worldcon again?