May Reading Update

I've actually been doing pretty well in my reading schedule. I finished three books, and am making good progress on another one. Having the Stanley Cup playoffs on TV helps, as I like to get in bed early, turn on the game(s) and read.

Update from Last Month

• The Tyranny of the Night by Glen Cook. I was doing pretty well on this. He had just gotten beyond the background and started to get into the story, when I gave up. I still might try this one more time. (ha)
• Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier. I almost gave up on this a couple of times, but I pushed on and ended up enjoying it. Like several other fantasy & sci-fi "first in a series" books I've read over the past few months (Old Man's War and Hammered), it spent most of its time setting the situation and was just getting into the main story when it ended. But it was good enough to make me want to try the next in the series (Magic Lessons). The protagonist is a 15 year old girl, just learning about her magic powers after her now-committed Mom spent her formative years shielding her from them. It'll be interesting to see where she goes from here.
• Now I can die in peace : how ESPN's Sports Guy found salvation, with a little help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox by Bill Simmons. I saw this in the New Books shelf at my library, so I took it out again. This time, I just read the last half or so, where things got interesting. This book has probably come the closest to telling the real story of the season, from a fan's point of view, but there are a number of annoying quirks that keep it from being the definitive one. For one, he's too much of a TV culture name dropper and I find it both tiring and boring to read about Survivor, Real Life, OC, etc. I don't watch "normal" TV, and I could care less about it. He also intensely disliked Fever Pitch, which I happened to like. His hatred felt forced, like it was expected of him to dislike it in order to be "cool". In fact, striving to be "cool" was probably the most annoying thing about the writing. I was also surprised at just how much autonomy he lost when he signed on to be an ESPN columnist. They won't let him badmouth announcers on other stations, because it wouldn't be fair as they won't let him badmouth ESPN announcers. And there were numerous examples of where he would say that the editors made him change columns, like when he wasn't allowed to say that working at Taco Bell was a bad thing, due to the fact it might be construed as racist. Huh? But I enjoyed the ending a lot:-)
• The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. A book about the search for a missing Caravaggio painting, The Taking of Christ (see above). Interesting book, except I just couldn't feel the passion for Caravaggio that the author and his subjects obviously had. Much ado about nothing to me. And he spent the first part of the book talking about two Italian researchers, when in fact they had nothing to do with finding the painting, as was described in the second half. They did uncover much of the back story, I guess.

Currently Reading

• River of Gods by Ian McDonald. A book set in the near future, India 2047. A huge book at nearly 600 pages, with a George RR Martin like "persona per chapter" way of writing. So far, so good. Heavy going, but now that the table is set, the characters are beginning to come alive.
• Pennant Race by Jim Brosnan. Followup to the classic The Long Season, it follows him playing for the pennant winning Reds of 1961. Seems to be even funnier than the first one.

In The Queue

• The Raj quartet by Paul Scott. Ha! I didn't even know that The Jewel In The Crown, a classic historical novel I had borrowed from the library before (also set, oddly enough, in India), was the first of a trilogy. This book contains all three books and clocks in at nearly 2000 pages long! Unlikely I'll ever finish this, but I couldn't resist taking it out when I saw it on the library shelf.
• Dreaming The Eagle by Manda Scott. Turns out the book I mentioned last month, Dreaming the Bull was, in fact, the second book of the series. So I picked up this one, the initial book. It is about Boudicca's Rebellion, a subject I find pretty interesting.
• Eats, shoots and leaves : the zero tolerance approach to punctuation by Lynne Truss. I saw the new edition of this classic and popular book for a good price at the local Super Stop & Shop and I couldn't resist buying it.