Playing catch-up

Every time I fall behind in posting about the books and movies I enjoy, I tend to continue procrastinating because the job of work catching up keeps becoming more daunting the more time passes. So I'm going to get that out of the way now. If you don't care, don't jump.

I've read the first couple books in the Prospero Trilogy by L. Jagi Lamplighter: Prospero Lost and Prospero in Hell. They weren't bad. I don't know that I'll read them again, but I'm definitely going to finish the series; the final book has just been published so I'll read it as soon as the library gets its copies of Prospero Regained.

I also read a couple books of short stories and essays by Gene Wolfe. Castle of Days was half stories that had connections of varying strength to holidays through the year. Most were good, but the quality varied; perhaps because tying them to the holidays made for some stretches. The essays were very interesting and gave a lot of insight into his writing process and how he thinks about books and writing. Starwater Strains was very reminiscent to me of Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man. Most of the stories were excellent, but also very creepy. I probably shouldn't have stayed up until 2am finishing that one.

Pandora by Holly Hollander was a book by Gene Wolfe that was not like his usual work. (He's fond of odd titles. He wrote a story called The Island of Dr Death and Other Stories and then put it in a short story collection titled The Island of Dr Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.) This book, like many of his works, is presented as a first-person book written by one of the characters. But this book wasn't SF or fantasy, it was a straight murder-mystery. It's narrated by a 14 or 15 year old girl, however, and (so far as my knowledge of such things goes) he does an excellent job of capturing her voice. It's a bit dated, as any book written from the perspective of a teenager would have to be, but it can hold its head up among other classic mysteries.

In Castle of Days Wolfe talks about how he wrote The Knight as a straight knight-in-shining-armor story. He was disappointed that most recent stories of knights were focused on their flaws and shortcomings and decided to write a heroic tale. I've read the first book and he does an excellent job of making the knight a classic hero. I can't wait for the next one to finally arrive from the library.

Last, but not least, I read the last installment of The Book of the Long Sun. In Exodus from the Long Sun it only partially resolves a lot of the plotlines, but it still manages to be very satisfying. I don't know that I would ever have believed that I would write a sentence like that. I've started the next series The Book of the Short Sun, but I'm only about halfway through the first book.