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Reviews still pending
November 19, 2002 (6:31 PM) ( link ) Work still oppresses me. Nevertheless, I have finished another two books: Elven Star (the second Death Gate Cycle book), and The Genocides by Thomas Disch. Neither too strongly recommended, although Elven Star can be very, very funny. (The Genocides, as its name suggests, is considerably less cheery.)
In my copious spare time I have started reading Tim Powers's The Anubis Gates (lots of weird exposition) and the third Death Gate Cycle book, Fire Sea, which is supposed to be far more serious and depressing than the first two. The Anubis Gates is (so far) much better than Expiration Date, the last Powers book that I read. We'll see if the plot continues on its crackling and mysterious pace.
Reviews pending
November 4, 2002 (11:37 PM) ( link ) I am so fancrapulously over-burdened with work this week (the first time I've felt this way in two months of law school--I'm counting my blessings when I can) that although I recently finished both Christopher Priest's The Inverted World and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragon Wing, I haven't had the chance to write reviews for them yet. For my capsule impressions: The Inverted World has a fascinating premise and a deeply unsatisfying ending, and Dragon Wing has an interesting premise but juvenile writing, and is best when it's tongue-in-cheek (during which times, it's hilarious).
I'm slowly beginning my next pair of books: Elven Star, the next volume in the Death Gate Cycle, and Thomas M. Disch's The Genocides, which hardly qualifies as a novel at less than 200 pages. Elven Star is much better than Dragon Wing so far, mostly because it doesn't take itself too seriously. And the chapter with the dragon and the bumbling wizard is hilarious. Unfortunately there are signs that Weis and Hickman are going to make this story serious again, which will be a disappointment.
The Genocides is relentlessly bleak, perhaps the most depressing alien invasion story I've ever read. It isn't helped by its fairly obvious Biblical parallels (though the analogies are bitter, not hopeful) or by its overly hasty pace. But I read it or about an hour yesterday and I'm already halfway through; even if it does end up not much better than it is, I won't have wasted much time with it (unlike, say, with The Mists of Avalon).
In Google news, I now show up third when you search for Elric of Melnibone, and fourth when you search for ficciones borges (though, to be fair, the latter is a link to my old page, which is now defunct).
Site maintenance, Finished
November 4, 2002 (4:18 PM) ( link ) In my brief breaks from work, I'm recoding some of the incredibly unwieldy and inelegant scripts running this site--by adding even more unwieldiness. Sigh. At any rate, usual service will be down for a time.
UPDATE: Site update complete. Now I can put co-authors in. Hurrah.
14-month anniversary
November 1, 2002 (2:13 PM) ( link ) The end of October marks the 14th month that I've been running the book reviews portion of this web site. In the last month I've read only 2 books and written 2 reviews, for a total of 107 reviews written. Also in the last month, 284 people visited the main page (the second highest number ever), for a total of 1519 hits.
I recently discovered that my hosting company, Hurricane Electric (which I would recommend to anybody), maintains statistics on website access. (Unfortunately it only keeps statistics for half a month, so the following figures are only for the period 10/15/02 to 10/31/02.)
So, for the first time ever, the top 5 (and bottom 5) accessed reviews on this site (the numbers in parantheses refer to the number of times the document was accessed):
Top 5 - John Gardner's Grendel (184)
- James Dickey's Deliverance (107)
- Thomas Harris's Red Dragon (104)
- Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (63)
- Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (61)
What's interesting to note is that none of these five books are science fiction or fantasy, even though most of the reviews are. In fact, the highest accessed speculative fiction book is Connie Willis's Doomsday Book, at 7th place with 46 hits.
Bottom 5- Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia (1)
- Robert Charles Wilson's Harvest (2)
- Tim Powers's Expiration Date (2)
- Connie Willis's Remake (2)
- Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (2)
Fascinating stuff.
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