Enemy of Entropy

The Girl Is Better! And More Reading

7 July 2008, 11:31 pm. 1 Comment. Filed under Family, Health, Reading.

That’s a relief. I was get­ting quite wor­ried. She spent most of the week­end sleep­ing or look­ing like a zom­bie, eat­ing only what Sam could coax into her, and using heat­ing pads. I’m start­ing to think that we should accept the offer to refer her to a pain man­age­ment doc­tor, if only to have some­thing she can take dur­ing a flare.

Blood NoirSo I read the lat­est Anita Blake novel, Blood Noir. I’m not sure why I con­tinue to read these. Hon­estly, Hamil­ton is a decent writer. I enjoy her prose. She just needs to go back to plot school! Or maybe work with a co-​​writer who is strong on plot, but not rela­tion­ships or descriptions?

There was no plot at all for the first few hun­dred pages of the book. When some­thing involv­ing a pre­vi­ous “big bad” did hap­pen, it was noth­ing but an incon­ve­nience, and over within an hour of Anita find­ing out about it. Whoopee. There was a cri­sis and dan­ger, of course, but I found them anti­cli­mac­tic after the vil­lains Anita has van­quished in the past.

There was, of course, lots of sex. This one could have been called, “Anita gets a fuck buddy.”

SunshineOh well. On to Sun­shine by Robin McKin­ley. Some­one rec­om­mended it to me years ago, and I hap­pened to see McKinley’s name some­where and remem­bered it. I don’t think that I’ve read any of her nov­els before. Short sto­ries, maybe.

Review: Hotter Than Hell

4 July 2008, 9:56 pm. 1 Comment. Filed under Reading.


Hot­ter Than Hell, the lat­est “Hell” anthol­ogy is edited and has an intro­duc­tion by Kim Har­ri­son. I don’t know if the sex­ier trend is her choice, a response to mar­ket demands, or some­thing else again.

The anthol­ogy is thicker than most, with longer pieces – short novellas? – by each of the 13 authors. I read a copy from the library, but it’s one of the few antholo­gies that I’d con­sider worth the $7.99 cover price.
Read on…

Review: From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

25 May 2008, 9:28 am. Comments Off. Filed under Reading.

From Dead to WorseAfter read­ing From Dead to Worse, I feel as if Char­laine Har­ris is fin­ished with the South­ern Vam­pire Mys­ter­ies. If so, she’s doing so well, as vol­ume seven is the most sat­is­fy­ing book of the series.

This is not a “hap­pily ever after” book, but it isn’t an “oh my God what’s going to hap­pen next,” either. I’m sure that more could be writ­ten about Sookie Stack­house and her very inter­est­ing life, but Har­ris has a his­tory of leav­ing series on a high note. The Aurora Tea­gar­den and Shake­speare sequences felt a bit more “done” at the end, so maybe I’m wrong. I cer­tainly don’t hold Ms. Har­ris’ confidences.

In any case, I hope that we’ll see more books by Har­ris before long. She’s a good author, and I enjoy her ideas.

 

Powered by WebRing.