What are you reading mark II

[fuzzyoctopus]

Colors in the Dreamweaver's Loom, by Beth Hilgartner


Since I finished my other Beth Hilgartner book last night, I can safely say that while she does great characters, her flaw as an author is that she doesn't know how to end a book.  They always just STOP.  And since this one was written in 1986 and the other one was written in 2000, it's not something she's grown out of.

If I ever meet her I'm going to rip the page out of the dictionary that has "denouement" on it, circle it, and hand it to her.

[Entsuropi]

I am reading the osprey guide to the Assyrians, and the Exalted RPG corebook.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Today in the mail I got "Juniper" by Monica Furlong.  Oddly I like this book, the prequel, much better than I like Wise Child, the first book.

[dinodynamo]

The most recent book I've read was "The DaVinci Code" by Don Brown. Or Dan Brown, don't quite recall at the moment.

An in depth murder mystery with secret societies and and religious implications, this book kept me hooked since the second page at least.

Before that I read the entire Dark Elf collection by R.A. Salvatore.

[House of Mustard]

I'm finally reading The Chronicles of Narnia.  I never read them as a kid, and my wife convinced me to do it.  I'm reading them in series order, not the order they were written in, and I liked the first book (Magician's Nephew) better than the second (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe).  My wife says that's blasphemy.

[dinodynamo]

Ah, Narnia, spectacular series. I think I've read Lewis more than I have Tolkien.

[stacer]

As you can probably guess if you know the subject of my paper due tomorrow (draft, I mean--finished paper won't be done till Dec.), I've been reading The Princess and the Goblin reeeeaaallly slowly. The first half of the book is about twice as thick now because of all the sticky notes in it. I need to go faster and just pick out the most important things. Then I have to reread The Princess and Curdie, doing the same thing.

Oh--they were written by George MacDonald, if you were wondering. And they're really good.

And it occurs to me that I've posted this same book under What are you reading before. And yes, I'm still reading them.

[MsFish]

True confession--

I started reading this Anita Sheffield (sp?) novel last night, because I was in the mood for junk fiction, and my roommate handed it to me.  And then I stayed up until 3:30 reading the entire book.  I got sucked into sappy Mormon fiction!  And worse, it was sappy Mormon *Christmas* fiction!!  Worse yet, it was corny, badly written, sappy Mormon Christmas fiction.

I feel so cheap.  

[House of Mustard]

I would imagine you mean Anita Stansfield, Queen Mother of LDS Romance.

[MsFish]

Yeah, that's it.  

[House of Mustard]

Here's some interesting trivia: Anita Stansfield has sold more books than any other LDS author, ever.  While other authors, like Gerald Lund, have had individual books that sell really well, Stansfield continually cranks out crap en masse, and people suck it up like it was crack cocaine.

[Fellfrosch]

Why do people say crack cocaine? I always thought that the one was slang for the other, and that grouping them together was stupid. Am I wrong, or is Mustard stupid? Or both?

[MsFish]

Yeah, my roommie (I love her, don't get me wrong) owns all her books.  She wants to bring them all down from Roy (where she's from) after break because she thinks I should read them.  Eeek.  

Stansfield's characters can do some interesting things with dialogue.  Like "snarl" it "lightly."  And "insist" it.  And my favorite, "almost smile" it.  And this is the reason I slept until noon today.  

And besides, relationships never happen the way this one did.  Partly because the guy wasn't even a guy--he was some bizzare fantasy guy who doesn't even act like a person would.  He is the reason relationships don't work out, because people read these books and confuse these ridiculous images with reality.  

[MsFish]

I've always thought that crack cocaine refered to the form the cocaine was in, but I could be wrong.  

[House of Mustard]

What was the name of the book?

And I always understood crack cocaine was a cheaper, street version of cocaine.