This week, Conan the Cimmerian gives us his instructive outlook on the subject of Literature.
Conan: Book? Why would I read a book?
John: I finished reading Crossed Blades by Kelly McCullough. Not sure what I will read next….depends on what gets here first!
Kat: I read several short books from my Audible library this week: Flight from Rebirth by J.T. McIntosh (fairly entertaining), The White Isle by Darrell Schweitzer (a disappointment), Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit (wonderful children’s fantasy), The Beast Master by Andre Norton (good old fashioned young adult science fiction), Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (another entertaining children’s fantasy) and The Voice from the Edge, Volume 3: Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes by Harlan Ellison (he is always fascinating, especially when he narrates his own stories). In my other life, I was a presenter at my university’s first annual Innovation Symposium where I spoke about proctoring online exams so that we can elevate the reputation of online classes.
Marion: I finally finished Sworn Sword by James Aitcheson, and I started The Last Policeman, Ben Winters’s “pre-apocalyptic” novel. What a great premise! Detective Hank Palace’s world (ours) will be obliterated by an asteroid in six months. What is the point of solving murders if everyone’s going to die anyway? Palace has a more immediate problem, though; he has a hinky feeling about one of the fatalities he is currently investigating. In a world where suicide is rampant, this one looks like murder, but he can’t get his higher-ups interested.
Terry: I’m sick again, this time with the flu, so I hurt all over — but my concentration isn’t bad (when I can stay awake). So I’m reading several different novels all at once. The first is Backward Glass, a first YA novel by David Lomax, which seems quite good even if I’m having trouble telling what year I’m in from time to time. The second is Doyle After Death by John Shirley, which is about a private eye who finds himself in/on a new world after he dies in our world, where he meets up with Arthur Conan Doyle (the inventor of Sherlock Holmes) to solve a string of murders. It’s part of a new line of ebooks from HarperCollins called Witness Impulse that seems promising. I’ve also started reading Anne Lyle‘s The Alchemist of Souls, set in an alternative England where Queen Elizabeth marries Robert Dudley — to name just one change (the presence of a race called the “skraylings” is rather a larger one). Aside from those three, I’m also continuing to read a number of short fiction collections and magazines, and I’m still making my way through Stephen King‘s The Shining. Hmm, maybe my concentration has been affected, seeing as I’m skipping among about ten different books.
Tim: This week I read an eclectic mixture of texts. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells was on the list, as was The Conan Chronicles by Robert Jordan, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, and The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. I suppose I’ll just let the reader guess at which ones were course readings and which was my return to comfortable territory.
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