stoutfellow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stoutfellow) wrote2012-07-01 02:44 pm
stoutfellow) wrote2012-07-01 02:44 pm
Entry tags:
Halfway Mark
I'm a little behind my usual pace; so far this year, I've only finished fifty books. Part of it, I suppose, is that I haven't been going onto campus much this summer, so that my bus book reading has been neglected. Even when I do take the bus, I often don't take my book, so as to leave my hands free for grocery shopping on the return.
On the nonfiction front, Charles Mann's 1493 is the standout. I didn't find it as enlightening as his 1491, but there was still a lot of interesting material there. Carl Zimmer's A Planet of Viruses contained an entertaining (if not particularly detailed) set of vignettes on notable viruses - smallpox, HIV, the common cold, influenza, bacteriophages, and the giant (for viruses) mimiviruses. Robert Wolf's A Tour Through Mathematical Logic was interesting, but not for a non-mathematical audience. The other four nonfiction - a biography of Hugo Black and three variably interesting histories - lagged well behind these.
A large fraction of my F/SF this year was taken up with a (re)read of the Ring of Fire series to date, up through Ring of Fire II, Grantville Gazette V, and 1636: The Saxon Uprising. The standouts were Weber's At All Costs, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, and John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation. Lots of rereads; I'm kind of marking time, waiting for the next Harry Dresden and for Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. (The LMB list is already discussing the latter; I've dumped more than a hundred posts into the Spoilers folder, to be perused after I get my hands on the book.)
I'm thinking of going back to Dorothy Dunnett, reading the Niccolo and Lymond series straight through. Or maybe I should read some of the mainstream stuff I get from Library of America. Decisions, decisions....
On the nonfiction front, Charles Mann's 1493 is the standout. I didn't find it as enlightening as his 1491, but there was still a lot of interesting material there. Carl Zimmer's A Planet of Viruses contained an entertaining (if not particularly detailed) set of vignettes on notable viruses - smallpox, HIV, the common cold, influenza, bacteriophages, and the giant (for viruses) mimiviruses. Robert Wolf's A Tour Through Mathematical Logic was interesting, but not for a non-mathematical audience. The other four nonfiction - a biography of Hugo Black and three variably interesting histories - lagged well behind these.
A large fraction of my F/SF this year was taken up with a (re)read of the Ring of Fire series to date, up through Ring of Fire II, Grantville Gazette V, and 1636: The Saxon Uprising. The standouts were Weber's At All Costs, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, and John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation. Lots of rereads; I'm kind of marking time, waiting for the next Harry Dresden and for Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. (The LMB list is already discussing the latter; I've dumped more than a hundred posts into the Spoilers folder, to be perused after I get my hands on the book.)
I'm thinking of going back to Dorothy Dunnett, reading the Niccolo and Lymond series straight through. Or maybe I should read some of the mainstream stuff I get from Library of America. Decisions, decisions....