![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThe cold still plagues me. Right now, it takes the form of a very deep cough: there is phlegm in my throat, but too far down to be easily dislodged. I'm doing as little outside as I possibly can.
Mostly, then, I've been doing a lot of reading. I finished the third set of books in Cherryh's "Foreigner" series - Destroyer, Pretender, Defender - and enjoyed them enough that I think I'll go back and reread the first two sets. (The blurb for Defender compared it to "The Ransom of Red Chief"; I was, however, disappointed by the absence of potatoes.)
The two Dick Francis novels I picked up at Piece of Mind - Longshot and Knockdown - were different from the ones I'd read earlier. They were both of them sad stories, ultimately, each with a final-page gut-punch. Francis is, it seems, unpredictable; he can write upbeat stories and downers with equal facility. I won't underestimate him again.
Currently I'm experimenting, rereading Dracula in tandem with Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape. I read a chapter or two from Stoker, and then read the corresponding events in The Dracula Tape. It's... interesting. Of course, Saberhagen must have had Stoker's work in front of him as he wrote, but seeing him re-interpret each little item in the Count's favor is entertaining. (Taken as a whole, I think Saberhagen's Dracula books don't quite work; how is it that we are to see Dracula himself as "one of nature's noblemen", when every other vampire we meet fits the evil stereotype? It smacks of special pleading to me. That may, of course, be what Saberhagen intended. Round and round we go....)
Mostly, then, I've been doing a lot of reading. I finished the third set of books in Cherryh's "Foreigner" series - Destroyer, Pretender, Defender - and enjoyed them enough that I think I'll go back and reread the first two sets. (The blurb for Defender compared it to "The Ransom of Red Chief"; I was, however, disappointed by the absence of potatoes.)
The two Dick Francis novels I picked up at Piece of Mind - Longshot and Knockdown - were different from the ones I'd read earlier. They were both of them sad stories, ultimately, each with a final-page gut-punch. Francis is, it seems, unpredictable; he can write upbeat stories and downers with equal facility. I won't underestimate him again.
Currently I'm experimenting, rereading Dracula in tandem with Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape. I read a chapter or two from Stoker, and then read the corresponding events in The Dracula Tape. It's... interesting. Of course, Saberhagen must have had Stoker's work in front of him as he wrote, but seeing him re-interpret each little item in the Count's favor is entertaining. (Taken as a whole, I think Saberhagen's Dracula books don't quite work; how is it that we are to see Dracula himself as "one of nature's noblemen", when every other vampire we meet fits the evil stereotype? It smacks of special pleading to me. That may, of course, be what Saberhagen intended. Round and round we go....)
