Yeah, that bit is something of a low point for the book. But I like the characters(except for that bloody Kender), I rather like the setting, and I like the way it's written.

*Shrugs*

At 0306 this morning I finished Thomas B. Costain's The Last Plantagenets. Took me long enough! In the old days I'd have plowed through a book this size in a couple of days to a week or so at most depending on potential conflicts of interest. Nowadays I find it difficult to maintain focus for any appreciable length of time. For what it's worth, this was my sixth documented reading of the work, the first having concluded 28 Dec 1983. My feeble mind tells me I bought the series during the seventies and read it at purchase, before I began the practice of annotating inside covers with completion times and dates.

I don't know if I'd want to mar the cover jacket with the dates; but still, that is a great idea to log it. I think I might have used a sticky note in the inside jacket of the book rather than write on the original jacket cover though.

I did that for a while too - wrote the date I read/re-read on the inside of the front cover (never on the cover jacket).

But now I have too many books and not enough time - it was a big deal that I re-read The Hobbit for the first time in something like 35 years . . .

I am seriously considering thinning my collection of books - I'm not likely to be reading them again anytime soon, and if I have to move again . . . ugh.

I just have a document on my laptop where I log everything. It is really cool to be able to look back and see what I did several years ago. I have a dozen authors that I read, and it is surprising how quickly time flies before I get back to that same author again. Its like 'what, 2012? Really.'

It is not an issue that I cannot go further back in time as I have only become serious with my books since I bought an e-reader.

Currently I am going through the Dark Tower series (Stephen King). Next up is Darkness at Sethanon (Raymond E Feist).

As I was about to prepare supper (boring but relatively healthy salad) I realized that after finishing The Last Plantagenets early this morning I had neglected to pick my next read. (I evaded the decision at lunch by reading a Maximum PC (magazine) article.) I was at a loss for some time. Nothing appealed. Then I spied Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. Inside-cover annotations show that I last read it June 2006. I've long considered Kay the best writer active in Fantasy today. Fionavar is, so far as I know, his earliest published novel, and a favorite in the traditional epic fantasy mold. (Later books tend toward historically informed fiction set in alternate worlds with relatively lite fantastical elements.) My only knock against Fionavar, and it's a minor one, is that it features characters from earth transported to another reality who, as is too often the case in such books, fit right in and end up being major movers and shakers. Kay handles it well enough, but I find the premise itself questionable. Donaldson gets the transplanted earthling about as close to perfect as I've encountered with his first two Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever chronicles. (I consider the much later written third chronicle as major disappointment.)

All that to let folk know I am now reading The Summer Tree, book one of Kay's Fionavar Tapestry.

I remember The Summer Tree! I read that a loooong time ago. That was a good one.

That it is. My qualms with transplanted modern-day earthlings slipping so easily into a fantastical medieval environment fade to nothingness once in Fionavar and Kay works his literary magic. Kay is prolly the only author whose works I own in whole, his fantasy writings at least. He's not overly prolific so it's not a huge monetary investment. Push come to shove my top recommendations for someone new to Kay are the single volume Under Heaven and the two volume Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors). The books I recommend least are Last Light of the Sun, which I feel less inspired than his other output, and Ysabel. I admit a bias against Ysabel, it being set in modern times. Kay, btw, cut his teeth helping Christopher Tolkien edit his father's unpublished works, including The Silmarillion.

I finished Donald Kagan's second book on the Peloponnesian War - The Archidamian War today. Next up is The Peace of Nicias, which was of course anything but peaceful.

One thing that I really speaks to me about this series is how Kagan goes beyond a simple, dreary list of battles and casualty figures, and gets down into the meat of the politics and economics at work. Most of his focus is on Athens, which I am sure is purely because it is the state whose inner workings we have the most information about. After all, Thucydides was an Athenian after all, and was even involved in some of the campaigns he writes about, and assuredly a direct witness to many of the decisions of the Athenian Assembly (not to mention a victim of the plague that so gutted Athens).

Even though this was a war that took place nearly 2,500 years ago, the very same realities governed it as do our modern wars, and our modern states and their foreign policies. Politics is very front and center here, as both Athens and Sparta were internally divided into factions with very different ideas of how things should be done. How each city acted in the war and the peace depended upon which faction was most influential at the time, and of course which faction was most influential depended on what happened in the war and peace at the time.

They did not have political parties like we do now. But these factions did exist. Some wanted peace, some wanted war. Some wanted war on certain terms, but not on others. Some of course were looking out for their own interests, and used to war or peace to further their own personal fortunes. Alcibiades was certainly obvious here, but so too was King Pleistonax of Sparta.

Money of course was important as well. We know a great deal about Athen's expenditures throughout the war, thanks to their public records (that were inscribed in stone). That is something that many people never think about. But as Cicero said: "The sinews of war are infinite money." You cannot fight a war without it. Athens went into the war with a vast treasury of about 6,000 talents built up thanks to her empire. It also had a substantial income of 600 talents a year it received in tribute from its empire. But war is expensive, especially naval war, and sieges. The Athenian treasury leaked silver like a slashed jugular vein. During the early period of the Archidamian War they were spending on average 2,000 talents a year on the war. Obviously they could not keep up fighting a war like that for long, even with special taxes and massive increases to the tribute their subjugated 'allies' were forced to pay them annually.

And of course just like today, people on both sides went to war with the absolute certainly of their own victory, and no consideration that they might lose. Naturally they prepared for the last war they fought, not for the coming one, and were completely unready. This does not just go for the Spartans, who thought they could just invade Attica for a month, chop down a few trees, and lure Athens into a land battle that would end up with them suing for peace. But also for Pericles, who was so certain that Athens was invulnerable that the Spartans would come to their senses after a few years and just give up fighting. Everyone was in for a big shock when reality set in.

Finally, we also see the importance of neutrals and wooing them to one side or the other. It was neutrals and their conflicts that played a major role in the war starting to begin with. Both Athens and Sparta were often targets of smaller states who tried to get them to intervene on their behalf, in affairs that had nothing to do with the larger states. Just like today. And neutrals joined the war on both sides not because they cared about Athens or Sparta, but because it gave them a pretext to attack their neighbors, who just happened to be all allied with the other side.

The whole thing is a gigantic, ugly mess. It is also a great primer for anyone who wants to write about wars in their fiction. Here you can see examples of not just battles, but the social forces that drive states to war and peace. There are the debates and political back-biting between opposing factions in the same city. Then very real fact that you cannot fight a war when you cannot pay your army.

At 0324 this morning I concluded my sixth reading of Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree, book one of The Fionavar Tapestry. I will almost certainly begin book two, The Wandering Fire, ere day's end. This and its companion novels, assuming I finish them in time, are at the moment front-runners as 'best reread of 2015'. I've read so few novel-length books this years it's rather unfair to issue my yearly reading awards, so small is the pool. I'll do so anyway, when the time comes.

At 2314 yesterday I concluded my sixth reading of Guy Gavriel Kay's The Wandering Fire. I immediately started in on book three, The Darkest Road but read only a few pages before falling asleep.

I wish I was able to read more than I do. Unfortunately I have an eye condition that sometimes sort of "blur" the text I´m reading (even in this box I´m writing in), essentially obscuring the black text with the white background. Hard to explain, but that´s the main reason I don´t read even books I know I like. It´s hard to appreciate any book when that keeps happening. I can sort of control it a little but it takes effort and is tiring.

Glad you´re able to enjoy your litterature though, Decrepit

I commiserate with you, Mirocu. I loved reading my whole life, and not being able to without massive effort has killed one of my favorite pastimes for me.

Tried reading The Ill-Made Mute, by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. It's the first part of a trilogy that I'm not going to complete. I couldn't even finish the first book. It's got issues.

For one, the pacing is terrible. Sections of very little substance are dragged out for far longer than they deserve, followed by bursts of action where so much happens so quickly that I honestly couldn't care about any of it because it was over as soon as it began.

The setting suffers for this, because having so much thrown in so quickly makes a lot of it seem gratuitous, which in a fantasy novels brings it to the realm of weird for the sake of weird.

But the biggest problem with the book is the main character: A mute, waifish girl with amnesia and a massively disfigured face, who's apparently utterly helpless on her own. So the result is this hugely passive character of no apparent significance who is coddled and carried from one scene to the next by one far more competent man or another. Frankly, I don't think I've ever read a book with a worse female character in it.

I got three quarters of the way through the book, hoping it would improve once it got going, completely baffled as to why this girl was even in the story, and still without anything having been revealed about her, before I gave up. The story had launched into a painfully drawn-out romance with her most proficient protector yet, that I really couldn't be bothered with because I couldn't care less what happened to her, and the moon-eyed drivel about how perfect he was was just annoying.

As much as I'd like to read a fantasy story that I haven't read before, I'd rather re-read one I've got for the dozenth time than subject myself to that. I think I might just go back to Lord of the Rings again.

At 1021 this morning, just prior to lunch, I concluded my sixth reading of Guay Gavriel Kay's The Darkest Road and The Fionavar Tapestry, of which it is volume three. These books pack quite an emotional wallop for me, closet romantic that I sometimes am. My eyes misted a goodly number of times throughout the three books, especially the last, where I experienced a few gully-washers ere the end. I can't recommend these highly enough for someone seeking Tolkienesque old-school high epic fantasy. My problem now is how to follow them up. Just about anything I pick up is bound to be a letdown by comparison.




A terrible plight to find oneself. I myself go through days-long periods when one eye or the other goes out of focus. I've taken to wearing a patch over the affected eye at those times. Always scary when it occurs, but thankfully all such episodes have been temporary . . . knock on wood . . . except for the very first which led to my needing reading glasses during the early 90s.

Rereading this post, it dawns on me that I too read Ill-Made Mute, and had much the same reaction as you. If memory serves, the very beginning held promise. It soon after went downhill, becoming rather trite. I believe I struggled through to the bitter end, and might even have attempted volume two. If that's so I didn't finish it. (I'd have had to have bought the first two books together. I can't see myself buying book two after reading the first, though I won't rule it out.)

At least it's nowhere near as bad as Robert Newcomb's The Fifth Sorceress. That, for me, is bottom-of-the-barrel fantasy.

As for myself, I decided to stay with Guy Gavriel Kay, and am now re-reading book one of his two volume Saratine Mosaic, titled Sailing to Sarantium.

Yeah, early on the story had some things going for it, but they dropped off pretty quickly. It's always a shame to see a good opening go to waste.

I'll add The Fifth Sorceress to my list of books to avoid.


And I'm back to reading Lord of the Rings again

At 1406 this afternoon I concluded my third reading of Guy Gavriel Kay's Sailing to Sarantium and will almost certainly begin book two, Lord of Emperors, ere day's end. I'm very glad I decided to stay with Kay after finishing Fionavar Tapestry. The works are sufficiently different so as not to seem like more of the same, yet equally masterful in their separate ways. If I harbor a slight preference for Fionavar this go-round, it is only because at the time of reading Fionavar I craved Tolkenesque epic fantasy.

I just read Report: Disaster at Ionith...

Finally got around to reading Stardust, but Neil Gaiman. I picked it up cheap a while back for my kindle.

To be honest, I was disappointed.

I've always thought books better than the films based on them, and while it may be cringeworthy early on, I love the film Stardust. But I can't honestly say that the book is better.

The film is different from the book, quite noticeably, but in this instance it's a good thing. It allows the film to present a full story, while the book leaves the impression that more of the story has been left untold than was actually in the book. At least, that's the impression I had of it.

And personally, I thought the ending was so anti-climactic that it rather ruined things.

At 0541 this morning, just after breakfasting, brushing and gargling, I concluded my third reading of Guy Gavriel Kay's Lord of Emperors, second and final volume of his Sarantine Mosaic, a 'fantasy upon themes of Byzantium' as he himself terms it. As with most Kay titles, this one is an easy recommendation, especially for those who treasure rich, complex plot-lines and characterizations.

Bought myself three books this month, a little concentrated fire on certain genres to help me be more 'immersed' in them. The main course are Tom Clancy's Threat Vector and Locked On, with a side dish of Robert Harrison's An Officer and a Spy. Will buy more books like these once I get some down time.

I was given a Dead Space book for my birthday, so I'll be getting started on that soon. I also bought a copy of Harry Potter in Spanish. I'm hoping that will help me read it a little smoother, not to mention learn new words. Should be fun!

Dead Space is a book??


How do you convert a TPS into a novel?

I've just started reading Sagas of the Icelanders.

I's about the discovery of the Marker in the Yucatan peninsula, so it takes place hundreds of years before the games.

Having recently read books described by their author as 'a fantasy on themes of Byzantium' I decided to follow them up with straight history, Lars Brownworth's 'Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization'. This is its third reading. It's a good book with one chief fault admitted by the author in his introduction . . . it's too short to adequately cover a thousand year empire. In consequence he has been forced to concentrate on those at the top to the near neglect of other strata of society. Despite that, it is entertaining and informative. I'm on page 109 at the moment, which by sheer coincidence deals with the period portrayed in Kay's novels.

You just prompted me to buy the same author's The Sea Wolves - A History of the Vikings.

Though I am still on the final book of Donald Kagan's History of the Peloponnesian War.

Months ago I bought what I thought was both volumes of Henryk Sienkeiwicz' two volume The Deluge off Amazon. Only, I goofed and ordered volume one only. Come to find out the books are normally to be had only as a set. Fast-forward to tonight. I at last found a used copy of volume two alone for a reasonable price and hit the order button no questions asked. Having read the first book of Sienkeiwicz' "Trilogy", With Fire and Sword, near the beginning of 2015, I eagerly look forward to its arrival. I have read that the "Trilogy" is commonly considered Poland's literary epic. Judging from With Fire and Sword I can well believe it. (Mine are the Kuniczak English translations, which I understand are superior to competing English versions.) Estimated arrival date is the first week of January 2016.

I first became aware of Sienkeiwicz' historical novels after having watched this sabre duel clip at YouTube.

At 0855 Christmas Eve morning I concluded my third reading of Lars Brownworth's Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization. I have not yet decided what to tackle next.

I am happy to report that my order of volume two of Henryk Sienkiewicz's two volume The Deluge appeared in my mailbox yesterday afternoon, a day earlier than its ETA and far earlier than initial delivery estimates. I'm tempted to start in on volume one, but not sure I want to commit myself to such a long book -- v1 is over 800 pages, v2 over 900 -- before the new year. We shall see.

Near year's end I sometimes provide a pointless summary of that year's reading accomplishments, such as they were. As I doubt I'll finish another novel-length book ere 2016 I might as well get it over with.

This past year I read twenty-three novel-length books. I can't recall having read so few in the course of a year, but won't rule it out. Sadly, early computerized reading logs are saved in a format none of my current word-processors read. The earliest of those I can read, 2005 and 2006, show a total of fifty-three books each.

Twelve of this year's reads were fantasy, eight history, two historic fiction, one true-crime. Eight were new reads, the rest re-reads. All were/are owned by me except the true-crime, an unsolicited loan from my brother.

Best New Read of the Year: Henryk Sienkiewicz's With Fire & Sword in the W.S. Kuniczak English translation.

Best Re-read of the Year: Guy Gavriel Kay's three book Fionavar Tapestry.

Best read of the Year: A tie between With Fire & Sword and Fionavar Tapestry.

Special Interest read of the Year Beethoven's Only Beloved: Josephine by John E. Klapproth. An exhaustively detailed justification of the author's belief that not only was Josephine von Brunsvik Beethoven's one true love (which is nowadays fairly well established) but also the Immortal Beloved (which is much contested). Being a Beethoven fanboy (and supporter of the Josephine as Immortal Beloved theory) I eat this sort of thing up, but it's no literary classic. I suspect its appeal is limited to those with a keen interest in the topic.

Pleasant Surprise of the Year: David Howarth's The Voyage of the Armada: The Spanish Story. I read this during 1981 and never since, until this May. I held no specific memories of that first read. I do recall being not overly impressed. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed the book this time round.

Biggest Disappointment of the Year: This honor goes to a new acquisition, a book not on the list of twenty-three, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman. This is not a knock against the book but rather myself. I'm afraid I bought it too late in life. I'm too addle-headed to maintain focus on the narrative for any length of time, despite my fascination with the subject matter.

For all that you read, Decrepit, I have serious doubts about your self-proclaimed "muddleheadedness". Someone who reads that much simply cannot have that

Stephen King- On Writing.

It was one of my christmas presents. I've torn through the biogaraphy-ish bit, which was remarkably compelling, and I'm about to start the next section

I haven´t read much Stephen King, as in nothing... I understand though his books are far better than the movie adaptations.


As I´ve probably mentioned I´ve mostly read Enid Blyton´s books about the four kids and their dog.

I haven't read any of his books either, but it's at the top of pretty much every list of books on writing. And it reads a lot better than other books I have on the subject.

I too have never read a Stephen King novel. My mom read him, as has my brother. (I have no remembrance of my dad ever reading a novel-length book.) Contemporary horror isn't one of my preferred genres, though I understand he has published at least one fantasy novel.

As for myself, I thought to do a little 'lite' reading. Settled on David Eddings "The Belgariad", a series I've read possibly more times than any other books. This would have been its tenth reading. However, only a few pages beyond the prologue of book one, "Pawn of Prophecy," I realized it was too familiar and lost interest. (I last read it only two years ago.) I am now on page 135 of volume one of Henryk Sienkiewcz's two volume The Deluge. At 840 pages (for volume one alone) I'm gonna be at this a LONG time. I've read that Deluge is considered the best of Sienkiewcz's 'Trilogy'. We shall see about that. If it's anywhere near as good as its predecessor, "With Fire and Sword," it will be quite good indeed.

I have read a ton of Stephen King novels in the past. Up until he got really famous, and decided he no longer needed an editor. Then his books went from being 250-350 pages to over a 1,000, and I stopped reading. It was the final one for me.

But back in the day, his books like Salems Lot, Christine, The Dead Zone, Night Shift (a short story anthology), the Stand were all excellent novels. So was It, it was just looong. His real strength is that he makes his characters - even the minor ones who only live for ten minutes - spring to full, three-dimensional life and practically leap off the page at you. That makes the horror work, because the plot is so well grounded in real and believable characters.

I am half way through Dead Zone on my e-reader at the moment. I knew nothing about the plot before I started and was very surprised to see the whole 1970's election work its way into the story. Though I guess I should not be. Men with power ambitions make a good antagonist.

Been reading some Dickens on my Kindle, since I picked them up for free. Read A Christmas Carol, which wasn't bad. Tried reading Oliver Twist but bailed after 76 pages, I just couldn't keep reading it. It was just pissing me off, and I really didn't give a damn about Oliver, in all honesty.

Edit: Read Great Expectations. I've decided I'm not going to bother reading any more Charles Dickens books. I've read three, and not really given a damn about the characters in any of them.

I'm still slugging away at Henryk Sienkiewicz's "The Deluge, volume 1" in the W.S. Kuniczak English translation. Four hundred ninety-one pages down, some three hundred fifty to go, plus the nine hundred plus pages of volume two. I haven't yet acquired the concluding novel in 'the trilogy,' "Fire in the Steppe." As slow a reader as I am I reckon it's going to be quite some while before I order it.

Addendum: Now early Sunday morning, I checked prices for "Fire in the Steppe" at Amazon during a break from Banished last night. Yikes! Looks like I wouldn't be buying it any time soon.

At 0248 this morning, thanks to yet another poor sleep, I finished Henryk Sienkiewicz's "The Deluge, volume 1" in the W.S. Kuniczak English translation. Took me long enough. I started in on it just after Christmas. Granted, at 841 pages it's a long book. Still, my younger self might have finished it a week or two sooner. I've read that The Deluge is considered the best of Sienkiewicz's 'trilogy'. Judged solely on volume one, of the two I prefer book one, "With Fire and Sword."

I am now maybe ten pages intro volume two.

It´s awesome that you read so much, Decrepit. Saves your eyes from hours of screen time

Assassin's Creed Underworld by Oliver Bowden...

The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Started reading it this morning, one of the ones I downloaded some time back for free off Amazon, but never got around to reading. I started it this morning, and have been finding it far more compelling than I'd expected. It's proven to be quite difficult to put down.

CT, neat! Glad you are enjoying Dumas. I remember being quite enthralled by The Count of Monte Christo over half a century ago. It might have helped that I lived at the time on a street called 'Rue Alexandre Dumas' in St Germain en Laye - a suburb of Paris.

I bought a crapload of books recently; 13, I think. I now have the complete LOTR trilogy added with Children of Hurin, a couple of Tom Clancy's books (Threat Vector and Locked On), Blade Runner, a crapload of Dan Simmon's Hyperion series (up to Rise of Endymion, I think) and Isaac Asimov's I, Robot and Foundation. I also got a gift from one of my seniors; she gave me Robert Harris' an Officer and a Spy. Probably going to buy me some Star Wars books, if I can find them.

An eclectic gathering to be sure, but I'm loving them all. They be my babies mmmhmmmm

Right now I'm being enthralled by Dan Simmon; the surroundings he's written are giving me ideas for my own. The characters, I'm neutral regarding since I'm still getting to know them but at this point I'm having a blast reading the delightfully demonic Martin Silenus; he reminds me of Ylenno with his antics lol

A question for fellow Tolkien fans: How does The Lord of the Rings end for you? I have read the books, normally preluded by The Hobbit, many times. I of course always read the story-proper in its entirety. I have not, however, read the whole of the appendix since my first read-through back in the mid 1970s. That said, several bits of it are for me indispensable.

The first of these is A\I\(v): "Annals of the Kings and Rulers\Numenor\Here follows a part of the tale of Aragon and Arwen." Next comes the concluding few paragraphs of Appendix A, referencing the departure of Legolas and Gimli. I then jump to Appendix B "The Tale of Years" and read from the paragraph beginning "After the fall of the Dark Tower and the Passing of Sauron..." to its end, which includes Sam's departure, the deaths of Meriadoc and Peregrin, and these final two sentences:

"Then Legolas built a grey ship in Ithilien, and sailed down Anduin and so over the Sea; and with him, it is said, went Gimli the Dwarf. And when that ship passed an end was come in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring".

I might or might not read more of the appendix during any given re-read, but for me this ends the tale.

I've never really gotten into the appendices, if I'm honest. I keep meaning to, but never get around to it. I've looked into a couple of them, but nothing more. I think next time I read The Lord of the Rings I'll have to make a point of reading them.


Well, I've finished The Three Musketeers, and I'm annoyed.

I was enjoying the book immensely, up until the point where the character frequently referred to as 'Milady', Dumas' pet monster, is imprisoned in England. At that point, the story took a swandive off a cliff, and took reason, logic, and even sanity with it. Off the top of my head, I cannot recall reading a book that has gone downhill so quickly.

I've still got The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo to read, and I'm about to start the latter, but I'm hoping they don't have the same problem.

I have read the Appendices a few times, both after reading the books, and just for reference. I usually do not however, because it makes me feel too sad. That is the problem with every good series, be it books, television, or film. It is sad to see it over.

I just started re-reading a book this morning. I needed something to read, but the few remaining "new" books just didn't appeal to me at the moment. So I went digging and found "Deed of Paksenarrion," which I first read more than twenty years ago. I only read it once, but liked the female protagonist so much that she stuck in my mind all these years. Now I don't remember the story too well, so it feels like the first time again.

I remember that! Or maybe it was Sheep Farmer's Daughter? It was about the same character, how she started out. I remember liking it, and its gritty portrayal of a fantasy setting, which I had not seen much of at the time.

Today I finished Donald Kagan's four part History of the Peloponnesian War. It was good, even though I knew how it would end A good series for history buffs, or even just for those who want a good look at the political and social forces that drive people into wars, and prevent them from making peace. Especially notable is how every state is invariably effected by faction politics within its own ranks, and how individuals not only drive those factions, but inevitably put their own interests before those of their country (often to the detriment of their State). Finally, passions often rule state policy, be it arrogance and greed, to grief, fear, and hate. The way the Athenians executed their victorious generals after they had won the Battle of Arginusae is a prime example. Anyone who wants to write about city-states and empires would do well to read it and take notes.