Sunday Status Update: November 22, 2020

Marion: It was not a good week for reading because I had writing to accomplish, but on Wednesday I started Hilary Mandel’s The Mirror and the Light, the third book about Thomas Cromwell.

Bill:This was an eclectic week of reading, which included:

• Brian Naslund’s quite good (and often laugh-out-loud funny) Sorcery of A Queen  (review soon to come)
• Virginia Postrel’s interesting The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
• Rick Barot’s excellent poetry collection The Galleons
• Kristina Moriconi’s lovely In the Cloakroom of Proper Musing: A Lyric Narrative
• about 75 final papers — drafts so I get to do it all over again in a week or so. Yay!
• And I’m halfway through Chris Gosden’s Magic: A History from the Ice Age to the Present

In genre video, a disappointing The Mandalorian (too much running and shooting and too reliant on utterly incompetent Empire bad guys) and an equally disappointing Discovery save for an excellent closing scene. 

Terry: I read Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey, one of a subgenre I always enjoy — the characters who relive their lives over and over. It worked well until the end. Now I’m reading The Overlook  by Michael Connelly, the next in my project to catch up with Connelly’s mysteries. In the warm-up circle: The Throne of the Five Winds by S.C. Emmett.

Tim: This week, I read Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson, culminating in a marathon session last night to finish it. At this point, I feel that Sanderson novels are almost their own subgenre of fantasy. This latest is a typical example of the style. I enjoyed it (as I enjoy pretty much all Sanderson novels), though I have a hard time figuring out what to say about it that I haven’t said about previous Brando Sando books. He’s pretty much got his style down to a science at this point.