My vacation reading

[chanaleh]

I haven't managed to recap the rest of my vacation yet, but I can take a minute to cover one aspect of it: my reading list! I've had way too little reading downtime in recent months memory, and I expected to have quite a bit of it on my trip to CA/OR, so I brought about four good-sized tomes with me.

• Got through my second reading of Order of the Phoenix, of course, as I mentioned.
  
• Next I finally managed to read the book kalessin loaned me several months back, which was technically an omnibus volume of 3 novels: The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Wow, was this good! Thanks! I actually cried at the end of Bridge of Birds.
  
• And ultimately, on the plane ride home, I got to the book I'd picked up for myself in, like, February: Bujold's The Curse of Chalion. Also very good. Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Vorkosigan books, but just as sparkling in the writing and storytelling. She invented a whole pagan religion for it, for one thing, which I liked a lot. The last time I was at pandemonium_bks, I bought a copy of Cordelia's Honor for my dad, and the cashier recommended Curse to me (which I then already owned but hadn't read) because "the next book in that universe" [apparently Paladin of Souls] is due out this year.

The book I brought but didn't get to was The Alphabetic Labyrinth, which I bought at the National Gallery during Balticon. First, though, I'm going back to reading A.B.C. Et Cetera, which I must lend to navrins next, and after that its companion volume Alpha to Omega. Mmm, alphabet geeking!

Comments

[coraline]

heh. i just hooked by dad (with "shards of honor" and "warrior's apprentice") on bujold at christmas :)

still haven't gotten around to reading curse of chalion though... somehow it just didn't appeal to me (i've been on an anti-medeival-fantasy-kick recently. dunno why.)

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

there's a second sequel to bridge of birds? not sure i've read it... what's it called?

the cashier at pandemonium recommended curse of chalion to us, too. :) good book.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

The three Barry Hughart novels are Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. I think I liked the first best; the latter two were more fantastic, but not quite as tightly written, imho.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

I very much enjoyed Curse, largely because I didn't see everything until the very end, which is always good. :) I love Bujold's writing in general, though I'm not that fond of some of her books.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

It didn't appeal to me that much until I actually started reading it (notice that I didn't pick it up for 5 months after I bought it; I can't put that *all* down to schedule constraints). But it is good.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

My husband has been on about The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox for a while now. Now that I've finally finished the Harry Potter book, that's next on my list. :)