FF: Closing In
Hawk Investigates BirdbathI had to share this picture of a hawk visiting the bird bath right outside my office window. No, we don’t live in the country, but open spaces less than half a mile from us do bring in the wildlife.
For those of you unfamiliar with this column, 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 magazines. 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. And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading.
Completed:
The Life and Times of Chaucer by John Gardner. The author of Grendel (which blew me away when I first read it at sixteen) turns his fluid and graceful writing style to examining the man who wrote The Canterbury Tales and other influential words. I definitely enjoyed.
In Progress:
Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Audiobook. I might even finish this one tonight. I’d forgotten how many plotlines there were to resolve, but Vinge is hitting all the beats with elegant timing.
The Dabare Snake Launcher by Joelle Presby. ARC. A near-future novel about the complexities of building a space elevator. Set in Cameroon, where the author lived for many years, and full of lovely detail about the local cultures, clashes between traditional and modern, and differing expectations
Also:
Archeology the current issue. The cover article had little new, for me, but then I’ve done a lot of research into that time period in Egypt. I still enjoyed the synthesis.
