The other day I finished Star Trek: Enterprise: Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel by Christopher L. Bennett. I'm now reading Grimm: The Icy Touch by John Shirley.
Finished out Plagues of Night late last night. Excellent read. At times a little slow but with some great insight into characters. (Though, I'm not really certain how well the Ro distrusts Blackmer because she liked the last guy better sub-plot works for Ro's character.) I also immediately started in on Raise the Dawn last night, too. Staying up till 2:30 to get through those first 50 pages. Excited for this one. I do really appreciate DRG's ability to build interesting "enemy" characters across book one and then dispose of them literally 10 pages into the second book. UPDATE: Also, I couldn't help but notice that Plagues references the events of Indistinguishable from Magic a few times, which makes its eventual "decanonization" even more confusing. Though I must admit that I really didn't buy Geordi's argument for downgrading in rank and it seemed like something DRG was asked to write in and he did his best to come up with something.
Started Star Wars: Coruscant Nights- Jedi Twilight. Still reeling from the revelation Friday that the entire Star Wars EU, even the pre-Episode I novel released last month, is now considered "legendary."
After a relatively long break from Trek-lit, on Saturday I was a driver and gopher for a photographer, which meant sitting about in a car for most of the day, so I read the entirety of Imzadi. Bloody good. I've got the signature edition, and had only intended to read 1 and leave the sequel till another day, but thanks to some odd editing of where Imzadi II starts I accidentally started it.
Just reread "The Wonderful story of Henry Sugar" over lunch, which is exactly as billed. God I love Roald Dahl's writing.
It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Almost the entire SW novel catalog has been in print since Thrawn came out. Will they "retire" the books as they go out of print? Will they rebrand them?
The official press release says: "Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner."
Last night I finished The Landing Party from Constellations. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it took me three sittings to get through it. Sometimes during the workweek, I only get a chance to read at night before going to sleep - and this story worked wonders in that area. ME
I'm reading Star Trek SCE Breakdowns the stories are more serious in this book and well written. I really like Heather Jarman's story I've read in this book .Also KEith's story too.
Just finished two books by Howard Andrew Jones -- The Desert of Souls and The Bones of the Old Ones. Very enjoyable "scimitar and sorcery" tales set in the 8th century caliphate, around and about Baghdad and Mosul. Ancient sorcery, crafty djinns, and duplicitous Greeks (actually Byzantines) abound. Lots of fun and highly recommended!
At work I've begun listening to my very first audiobook. It's Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi- Into the Void. I really think I like audiobooks now. I didn't realize there would be some much sound effects and music. The woman reading can do some very versatile voice work as well. A very enjoyable experience so far. Too bad audiobooks are so expensive. I'm only get this one by the free trial from Audible.
Some have more than others. Most audiobooks are dramatic readings by one or a few people supplemented with music and sound effects, but GraphicAudio, the company that adapted my novels Only Superhuman and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder as well as several of Greg Cox's DC Comics novelizations, does full-cast adaptations that are more like radio plays, although still with most of the narration of the novels.
I was a bit spoiled. As a kid, I fell in love with the Dark Empire and Dark Empire II audiobooks they put out. (Comic Book audiobooks!) In reality they weren't actually audiobooks but rather Full Cast Audio Dramas. And so every time I went and tried some other audiobooks I found them boring and dry. I do intend to revisit some audiobooks, though. I've heard some good things about Kristen Bell reading the Veronica Mars novel that just came out. I do really enjoy the Rob Inglis audiobooks of Lord of the Rings, though.
I just got Jeff Mariotte's Serpents in the Garden. I'm liking it so far. Only about 5 chapters in. I'm glad we also get to see the Enterprise a bit
So, I started to read Isabel Allende's "Zorro" but got derailed by severe translation failure in the English edition, when I hit page 39's sentence (about a painting) "it was one of the horrors commissioned by the square unit in Spain, which had become popular in California." Er, the what? WTF is the square unit? I suspect, following a moment's Googling, that Allende is referring to the Tercio Espana, a post-Renaissance regiment of pikemen who were sometimes called The Spanish Square - perhaps this military unit commissioned paintings for the HQ and officers' mess? Fuck knows, cos it's obviously something that would be clear to Spanish readers in the original Spanish, but the translator has neither amended the text to clarify, nor added a footnote to explain. The words square unit aren't even capitalised as the name of a regiment or the like would be, so who knows if that's what's meant. Either way it put me right out of the book - I'll have to find one in Spanish, I suppose. So I started dipping into Warning Shadows: Home Alone With Classic Cinema, by (usually a music historian) Gary Giddins. This is basically a trawl through Hollywood from the 1900s to the 1960s - plus Blade Runner and Howl's Moving Castle - with about half a page each devoted to his thoughts on 200 or so classic movies. Overall it's not much of a history or really an analysis - insofar as the word count demands brevity or everything - so it comes over as a collection of blog posts on the classics he's watched each week. Which is fun as far as it goes, but there are some disappointments. It's very Hollywood-centric, and a lot of my favourites are barely mentioned. Basil Rathbone, for example, is mentioned only twice. There are only a couple of mentions of Conrad Veidt as well (described as "marvellously slimy" in the entry for A Woman's Face - which comes in a chapter on Joan Crawford - and Jaffar referred to as "His sword draped by his cloak suggesting a large tail" in the two pages devoted to Thief Of Bagdad. In fact Werner Krauss gets more wordage than Connie, in the brief spot on German Expressionism. Still, collections of thoughts on movies watched are always going to be totally subjective, and with so many vintage films mentioned, there's always going to be something that makes you think "oh, I'll have to check that out," even if you're a longtime classics fan.