potentialities

What I've been reading

I read the Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen eARC. When the Vorkosigan series was at its peak, each book incorporated plot, character stuff and theme into a perfect, seamless whole and it was truly beautiful. This book I would say is pretty much entirely character stuff, with the barest minimum of story stuff to hang it on. Objectively speaking, I would probably not say it was a very good book, and it would be hard to recommend without a lot of caveats.

( Subjectively, I loved it. )

I read Career of Evil, J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith's new Cormoran Strike book. ( Mild spoilers )

I read The Copper Gauntlet, the second book in Holly Black's series co-written with Cassandra Cla(i)re that is often a bit meta about Harry Potter, among other things. Although I don't like it as much as my favorite Holly Black solo books, it continues to be fun. I'm especially interested to read the next one after something happens at the end of this one that one might expect to be saved for the end of a series.

I read Shopaholic to the Rescue, which is essentially the second and also more entertaining half of the last book in the Shopaholic series, which I complained about ending abruptly. I'm totally going to have to keep reading these books to discuss them with my mom even if they get terrible, so I was glad that they returned to acceptable form for an entry in a series that isn't as fresh as it used to be.

I read Detection Unlimited, which is the last mystery novel that Georgette Heyer published before her death. It features a particularly twisty mystery, as though she were pulling out all the stops, including the classic, a character who himself writes murder mysteries.

I read/skimmed How Not to Read: Harnessing the Power of a Literature-Free Life. Aside from the selection of better book titles, which is a schtick I have enjoyed, it wasn't very good. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard is the more intellectual but also much funnier version of this book that I recommend instead. It has no pictures, though.

Somebody at Baen Books has had the clever brainwave that, instead of printing up Advanced Reading Copies, sending them out for free, and then watching as they inevitably oozed onto the open market where die-hard fans bid them up to top dollar which neither the author nor the publisher would share in, they could just make the ARC available to anyone who wants to read it in advance for fifteen bucks. Which is what they have done, here. (It is technically not completely proofed, but LMB and her betas do very professional work. It is completely worth your $15.)

( HERE BE SPOILERS! )

Talk Vorkosigans with me, people!