FF: Back On

Persephone Looks to the Skies

I’m back on antibiotics which seem to be making me sleepy (which is weird).  Overall, very satisfied with how I’m healing up after oral surgery.  With Bubonicon, I didn’t do as much reading, but I did do some.

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.  I was glad to see some of the frequent commenters back again with really interesting reading lists.

Completed:

Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie.  Audiobook.  Wodehousian characters meet pulp intrigue, complete with masked criminals.  A re-read, but I still giggle at so many of the lines and the ending has a great twist.

Newton’s Cannon by J. Gregory Keyes.  Published in 1998.  Alchemical alternate history.

In Progress:

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi.  Illustrated by Graham Greenfield with maps and charts by James Cook.  This 1980 tome is a delight, encompassing everything from speculative utopias (and dsytopias) to OZ to works by LeGuin, Tolkien, and Lovecraft.  Articles are presented in a “tour guide” fashion, rather than being dryly academic.  Nicely indexed.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.  Not sure why many reviewers thought this “unique” and “original” as I’ve been able to call every plot point and the characters fit defined tropes.  That said, well-written, especially the narrator’s internal journey.

Agatha Christie: The Lost Plays.  Audiobook.  These seen to be plays written for radio.  Finished the first one.

Also:

Not much…  I’ve been writing a lot of notes for my possibly next Over Where novel.