April

April was a rather odd month on the reading front. I came into it reading two books, The Stone and the Flute by Hans Bemmann and God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan by Jonathan Spence. I finished the month... still reading those same two books. Normally I read much faster than that. I'm not sure what happened. Part of it was a general lethargy that afflicted me all month; part may have had to do with the books themselves, but that may have been amplified by my own ennui. In any event, I've finished both and will review them in a bit, after I've had time to digest them. Meanwhile, as a palate cleanser, I've gone back to reread Bujold's A Civil Campaign. (I've also begun an extended re-watching of BtVS, beginning to end, now that I have the entire series on DVD. This will take a while; 144 episodes at about 45 minutes each would be about four and a half days of absolutely uninterrupted viewing, which they're not going to get. It may take me all summer at a more reasonable pace.)