Menage à Trois Bingo

Fiona...is sitting in a library in a big old house in Westchester NY with Corwin.

This morning I decided it was time for my quasi-sesquiannual reread, or in this case re-listen, of the Chronicles of Amber. My commute takes three chapters.

I recently reread (or re-listened) to two of the other books on the quasi-sesquiannual reread list: Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay and The Lord of the Rings; this is the remaining one. Those three books (or series) are, along with The Fionavar Tapestry, my desert island book list: the books I cannot live without, no matter how well I know them I have to reimmerse myself in their words and their worlds every so often.

(I spent the walk in from the car trying to determine what is the appropriate word for 'approximately every year-and-a-half'. Can't use semi- as a prefix to mean 'about', since in the context of a measurement of time it always means 'half'. Guess we better go with quasi-. Not sure I've ever actually seen or heard sesquiannual, but it ought to mean what I want it to, so.)

I've been reading a lot more actual books lately (along with my continuing obsession with H/D fanfic). Now that I have the shiny new Kindle Fire, I've used the library's ebook checkout as well as reading some from our existing Kindle library and buying a couple new ones, and I've checked out some actual dead trees as well.

But I seem to have recently lost the 'must read to the end of any book I start' compulsion that I used to have. I've gotten a fair bit of practice in giving up on unsatisfying reading with the fanfic: if the author's style annoys me, if there are more than 1 egregious typo or grammar error on the very first page, or if I don't yet trust the author (from having read zir other works) and they mention something that might possibly be squicky or not to my taste, the back button is my friend.

So this last couple weeks I have used the virtual back button on (I think) five? different actual books from the library.

• Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace by Scott Thorson
  I nearly finished this one but eventually realized I just didn't like either the author or Liberace based on their behavior as written
• Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
  This has gotten a lot of positive reviews but I just couldn't deal with the style and I didn't like the apparent protagonist. I lasted through about 15% of this one.
• The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
  I bounced off this on the first or second page. I couldn't even say why, but I have no inclination to try again to find out.
• The Compleat Dying Earth by Jack Vance
  This has been mentioned as a classic, but I lasted one chapter. Purple prose and a plot that sounded like bad D&D gamefic complete with absurdly named spells and limited spell memorization (maybe this book was the inspiration for D&D's magic system? I would not be surprised)

Yeah, I know that's only four. I know there was another one but I can't remember what it was.

On a more positive note, I've also read several books I really enjoyed.

I read our copy of Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and enjoyed it so much I immediately bought, downloaded and read the sequel Red Seas and Red Skies. I had to wait to buy Republic of Thieves, the next book in the series, due to budget constraints and although I've got it now I haven't read it yet.

Last night I read Half-Off Ragnarok by Seanan McGuire, a worthy successor in her InCryptid series that I devoured from start to finish (a very pleasant change after three bounced-off books in a row), and this morning I read the sample chapters of If We Shadows by my friend D.E.Atwood and immediately bought the book. Locke Lamora's continuing adventures are going to have to wait a bit longer, since I've already started this. Got to know what happens to Jordan!