What’s Up Wednesday? Back from Kansas

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! I’m glad to be back after spending a few weeks away at the Young Gunns workshop in Kansas.

What I’m reading:

Wow, what haven’t I been reading? 😉 I’m about half-way through the audible version of Jim Butcher’s “Skin Game”, and also been listening to Sophie Kinsella’s “I’ve got your number” as a pre-loaded audiobook from the local library.

I read three books while I was in Kansas, and enjoyed them all: Diana Wynne Jones’ “Cart and Cwidder”, Ben Bova’s “The Silent War”, and “Magic Burns” from the Kate Daniels series. I’m still working on “Dark Lord of Derkholm” (also by Wynne Jones,) started the new Veronica Mars book “Thousand Dollar Tan Line”, and Elizabeth Moon’s “Command Decision.” Oh, and since I got back I’ve finished the first Angel&Faith graphic novel, “Live Through This.”

What I’m writing:

Umm, well. I revose another draft of “TimeBubble Blues” while I was in Kansas. I want to work more on revising all three stories I took to the workshop, and I’ve started to write something based on my Magic Milkshake idea from April. But I’ve been taking a little break from writing while I recover from the two weeks of breathing writing and spending time with nobody but writers!

What inspires me right now:

Spending two weeks of breathing writing and spending time with nobody but writers! Also Storywonk talking about Cabin in the Woods–I need to make sure to make time to listen to their commentary track over the weekend.

What else I’ve been up to:

Getting used to being back in Ontario, going to work every day, and preparing a lecture for the TNEO workshop. Yeah, my first time going back after Odyssey, and Jeanne asked me to teach a class! I’m excited and really nervous all at once. Need to decide on a title for my lesson and send it out by tomorrow.

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What I’ve read this fall

September issue August issue

Okay, it’s been nearly three months since I shared my readings here n the blog, so I’ve got lots to tell you about!

Please note: I will be discussing a plot spoiler for “Childhood’s End”, by Arthur C. Clarke further down in this post. If you don’t want to get spoiled on this fine book, then don’t read past the paragraph on “Castle for Rent.”

“The Gripping Hand,” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I finally finished this in early October. I loved the main thrust of the action within the Mote system, with the Empire expedition running into a new civilization of space-born Moties this time and getting caught in the middle of a war between them. Frankly, the novel could probably have done with less build-up to the point of “OMG a new jump point to Mote system could open up any day now!” and it would have been at least as strong, in my opinion. But I loved reading the build-up anyway.

“Gateway,” by Frederik Pohl. Overall, I really liked this – I liked the concept of humanity discovering strange and temperamental alien ships and heading out to prospect the galaxy in them. I want to read more of the Heechee series by Pohl, and I like a lot of his secondary characters. On the other hand, Robinette Broadhead just pissed me off a lot of the time, and as fun as Sigfrid von Shrink was, I didn’t really feel impressed with the therapy plot thread or Rob’s enormous survivor’s guilt for trying to do the right thing, to sacrifice himself to save his teammates, and getting the timing wrong.

I also had problems with the physics at the end – if you’ve got ships that can somehow circumvent the speed of light, then the event horizon of a black hole isn’t an impassable barrier anymore. I think that the Heechee ships must already cross an event horizon with every trip, so why can’t they get out of the black hole – or if the development of the black hole threw off their targeting, then how could Rob get back home once he passes the event horizon by another means?

A Wizard of Mars, Chapter Fifteen

A Wizard of Mars chapter index.

So, I’m drawing close to the end of my chapter-by-chapter recap of Diane Duane’s novel “A Wizard of Mars”, and I’d like to say that I’ve had a great time sharing this book with you. I’d like to try something else soon, possibly not chapter by chapter, but going through a book in installments as I read it, instead of a single review/book report of the novel as a whole, and I’m setting up a poll to see what possible titles there’s any interest in from my regulars.

So, at the end of the last chapter, Nita teleports into the throne room of one of the Martian royal houses, that of the Shamaska city, and she’s very pissed off and wizardly and competent and magnificent, as Kit said about her a bit earlier. So she tells off Iskard, the king, and Rorsik, his toadying minister, for the way they’ve treated the planet, and wizardry, and their people, and Aurirelde, Isakard’s daughter, and Khretef, her sweetie from the other side of Mars, the Eilitt. Particularly Nita rages on at the blindness of wizards letting themselves slip into an ‘us or them, we have to use wizardry against them because they’d do it to us’ mentality.