WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
• What did you recently finish reading?
Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton. Oh heavens, what a wonderful book! If the author of Beowulf were in a polyamorous relationship with the late Anne McCaffrey and Jane Austen, with Charles Dickens dropping by every afternoon, this would be the unholy and delightful offspring. This book won the World Fantasy Award, and it was well-deserved. Possibly you believe there are too many fantasy novels about dragons. You are wrong.
• What are you currently reading?
Mausoleum, a Ben Abbott mystery, by Justin Scott. My magazine editor selected this for me to read for review, solely because of the title. Alas, I am in chapter 6 and am oppressed by an overwhelming sense of mediocrity. Talky cookie-cutter characters enacting a conventional locked-room plot through an unconvincing New England landscape. If you can’t make me care about the hero by page 115, it is too late, dear author. And if you expect me to believe that the cemetery commitees of picturesqure rural towns are packed with this many blonde and highly sexed young women of leisure, well! You probably believe that the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are actually housewives. Although I will say that this is the only time I have ever seen a death video used as a way to data dump — it beats quotations from the Encyclopaedia Galactica. I will read to the end in the hopes of a slam-bang violence-larded climax, but am not optimistic.
I am also breaking in my Ipad by re-reading all the Vorkosigan novels in electronic format. I am currently bogged down in my least favorite of the series, Mirror Dance. Those of you who know my work are aware that I have no problems pushing my characters through the meat grinder, but Bujold is queen, I do admit it. This book is too dark for my taste, but I am persevering so that I can move happily on to Memory, a favorite.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
I got one of those book towers to hold by TBR stack, and really ought to select a work from there, because it is full. However, it is about time to get distracted by nonfiction. I need to go to the library and find a large heavily illustrated volume of urban subway system photographs. I have a character in my current ms, trapped in an extensive underground facility of some sort (probably a defunct missile base in the Soviet Union). A large dangrous surprise is already set up for him, involving microwaves and arcing metal, but I need subsidiary perils — rusted catwalks, pools of fetid water, dark pits from which horrible smells arise. I need visuals for my meat grinder!
What about you? What have you been reading lately? Put the link to your WWW Wednesday entry in comments, or just tell us!
