FF: Hot Weather, Cool Reads

The weather keeps topping a hundred, but I can escape into a good book.

Hot Weather, Long Fur

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Negima! Magister Magi by Ken Akamatsu.  Manga, volumes 24-30.  (I’d read the first 23 of these, then a gap in library holdings caused me to stop.)  Complicated story proves that additional information sometimes complicates matters, rather than simplifying!

In Progress:

Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip.  Short story collection.  Reading before bed.  Gives interesting dreams.

Onion Girl by Charles De Lint. Audiobook.  A gritty, even bitter, tale.  Excellent audiobook reader.

The Forgotten Sisters  (Princess Academy Book 3) by Shannon Hale.  Once again, Ms. Hale builds a believable political backdrop for her novel.  More than anything, Miri wants to go home.  But if she doesn’t do what the king demands, she may not have a home to go back to.

Also:

Archeology magazine.  An article on a recently discovered Scythian treasure hoard both delighted and annoyed me – and showed once again how often people don’t see what’s right in front of them because they superimpose their own preconceptions.