Blurt! — Sben

Blurt! — Sben
pile.org

Finished reading The Dragon Waiting by John Ford. I loved it; it felt like a mix of Tim Powers and Neal Stephenson … but sometimes with the attention span of Douglas Adams, or quite possibly I mistook oblique allusions for dropped threads. The book changed directions several times, and briefly became a murder mystery, but even when I wasn’t sure where it was going (or even that Ford was sure), I was happy to be along for the ride.

Also

Finished reading The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, my first fantasy novel in a while. If you can get past an excessive amount of swearing — I can put up with a lot, but this was a lot — it has a surprising amount of heart; I eventually decided it felt a little bit like The Lies of Locke Lamora (but without a con game or heist).

— 6/6/2021 8:07pm ∞
Finished reading Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift, a post-COVID “everybody in the world but the protagonist dies from a plague” story. I have mixed feelings about this one: It wasn’t what I expected, the protagonist did not start out at all sympathetic, and there were some gruesome descriptions of the recently-dead. That said, it was compelling, I found myself rooting for the protagonist by the end, and the end itself was satisfying.

— 6/3/2021 1:02pm ∞
Finished reading The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, about how a wargame hack (D&D) came to be understood as a “role-playing game”, and what that meant to early players and theorists. I can’t recommend this book to you; only you know if you would find this interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course.

— 6/1/2021 9:58pm ∞
Finished rereading Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian. Master & Commander was good, but this book is where O’Brian really started to figure out what he was doing.

— 5/29/2021 10:14am ∞
Finished rereading Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian. It’s a little longer than most of the other 19 (!) books in the series, a little less tightly-focused, but still very enjoyable.

— 5/19/2021 9:30pm ∞