The Reading Life

I still like to read but I've not had good luck finding new books that scratch the itch.  There's been a few I really enjoyed.:  "The Passenger" by my favorite author, Cormac McCarthy and "The Library at Mount Char" by Scott Hawkins. And I, recently, enjoyed "The Mountain in the Sea" by Ray Nayler.  It's about intelligent Cephalopods and I do love my Mollusca.

But the list of books I put down after a few pages is far taller.  A couple fall into the category of ones I know I'll read someday, but I just wasn't in the right mood. For example, "Anathem" and "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World",  Others fall into the "what was I thinking" category.  I wont name these.  I just did not like the writing.  

 I do have to mention the premise of one of the did-not-finish books as it still makes me chuckle:  man-eating mer-people.  I even gave that one two tries. I heard about it from YouTube, where someone was listing the weirded books they had read recently. I think they said there eventually was mer-sex but I never got that far. 

What I have been doing is re-reading old favorites. 

I reread the ten books of "The Malazan Book of the Fallen" and the three books of "The Prince of Nothing" series. Both are great series that got even better with patient re-reading. You can absorb so much more when you're not hurrying to reach the next big plot point. And there's a lot of absorb in both series.  They are both dark and deep works of fantasy, well worth the effort.

I also reread "Fishboy" by Mark Richard and I am currently rereading "The Wrestler's Cruel Study" by Stephen Dobyns. a couple of books, I picked up on the same trip to Barnes and Nobles back in the mid 90s.  It was a lucky day as they both became favorites.. 

"Fishboy" was still excellent but didn't hit the same way it did 30 years ago. The writing is beautiful and poetic but the story lost a little magic. 

We will see about "The Wrestler Cruel Study". It's a weird mash up of religion, philosophy and professional wrestling that I cannot claim to have understood.  I just loved the tangle of idea.   And who knows, I've listened to a lot of the podcast "Philosophize This!" over the last few years, so maybe I'll absorb a bit more this time.

Books I have already purchased but haven't attempted yet include: Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi", the final Cormac McCarthy book "Stella Maris" and a bunch of science fiction and fantasy.  We will see how all of these go.

Happy reading.

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