Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.
Again, I'm delving into the comfortable re-reads. This one I last read in a sophomore english class in college.
March 2003 Archives
Placed an order with Amazon:
Whose Body? [Mass Market Paperback] by Dorothy Sayers
Online recommendation. May have been in ceej's journal long long ago.
The Speed of Dark [Hardcover] by Elizabeth Moon
Online recommendation. Heard about it in her newsgroup and enjoyed the portion of the first chapter posted at Amazon.
Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2) [Mass Market Paperback] by Robin Hobb
Have had the first book for a long time.
The Wellstone [Mass Market Paperback] by Wil McCarthy
Recently read and enjoyed his previous book, Collapsium
The Chronoliths [Mass Market Paperback] by Robert Charles Wilson
Amazon recommendation.
Ventus [Mass Market Paperback] by Karl Schroeder
Amazon recommendation
Green Rider [Mass Market Paperback] by Kristen Britain
Online mention in one of the sff.net newsgroups.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete Second Season [DVD]
Replaces copy we got for xmas with cracked DVDs. This may have been a manufacturing defect, or it could have been due to toddler damage. The damage was discovered after the 30-day return policy in any case.
Unreal Tournament 2003 [CD-ROM]
For Rich, who recently bought himself a new computer capable of playing this at a decent frame rate.
Dear Bill, Remember Me? and other stories by Norma Fox Mazer. Another rescue from the "books I read in high-school pile.
Some nice stories in there. More poverty and death than I remembered when I picked up the book.
My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel. I'm desperately mining the bookshelf for re-reads at the moment. My husband's Gene Wolfe collection is beckoning, but I'm not in the mood for anything that takes that much brain right now.
I probably enjoyed the book much better when I was in high school. Right now, it just seems dated.
I don't recall buying this book. It may have been a gift from a babysitter of mine, Eileen. I wonder if she was trying to tell me something. (The story is about a two high school couples; one of the girls gets pregnant.)
Wil McCarthy's The Collapsium. Picked this one up in the supermarket, of all places.
Really enjoyed this one. As Wil McCarthy points out on his website it was somewhat remenicent of Isaac Asimov or Larry Niven. The technology behind the magic is cool, too.
I made the mistake of attempting to read the appendicies first, which I sometimes do. In this case, they are technical snippets taken out of the body of the novel, and don't quite make sense as standalones.
I will probably order the sequel when I place my next Amazon order.
Felicia's Journey by William Trevor. For the TUS March
book discussion. Early discussion.
What a depressing book. Which says "Irish book" to me, for some reason.
Hildreth's descriptions of food tended to make me hungry.
The ending of the book made the whole thing sort of depressing and pointless. And the background of Hildreth's psychology was rather heavy-handed.
(more thoughts to come?)
Picked up Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the kids room at the library. But dove right into it myself. And finished it right away, too. A nice, comfortable read. I'd forgotten how awful all the other kids were. And I remembered more details about the book than seemed to be present, which was odd. Perhaps I'm remembering from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
Octavia Butler's Kindred. This was a tough read, because the book is so emotionally packed. But I wanted to read it for the "If All of Rochester Reads the Same Book" event, even though I wasn't able to get out to see Butler speak.
I tore through this one pretty quickly, partly because it's on a special one-week loan from the library, and partly because I thought there might be a public event I could get to this weekend. But I checked the calendar today, and I've missed it.
This would be a good book for a book discussion group.
Still mining the bookshelf for re-reads. This time, it's Larry Niven's Protector, which is composed of what are essentially linked novellas.
I think I must have liked this better the first time around. The book is to sparing of characterization details for my current tastes. Reminded me of Asimov, though it's got the hard-sf gadgets (ramscoops, gravity-control devices) typical of Niven.
