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New Review: Katsuhiro Otomo's Domu May 14, 2002 (12:26 AM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Katsuhiro Otomo's Domu. Hopefully Akira will be better than this, yeesh. No progress on Mists of Avalon or on A Suitable Boy. The last paper of my college career is due tomorrow; since I then don't have a final until Thursday, I might actually take some time off to read (then again, maybe I won't.) Blah. A Suitable Boy, and The Mists of Avalon May 12, 2002 (9:11 PM) ( link ) To my surprise, A Suitable Boy has proven to be very pleasant reading. It's not gripping, or exciting, or particularly well written, but Seth does an excellent job of introducing and then presenting his characters, who quickly take on their individual roles without blurring into one another. The story moves extremely slowly; except for Meenkashi's (sp?) selfish action, nothing of much note has happened in Part One. Since the book is set in 1950s India, I expect big things to happen soon, external to the various families; it makes the plodding of the narrative so far more bearable to think that all hell will break loose before long. The Mists of Avalon, on the other hand, is beginning to drag. The problem is that it's just not very entertaining. To use an old writing cliche, Bradley spends more time telling than showing; in particular, the various heartaches that the characters go through are painfully spelled out. Also, as non-religious as I am, Bradley's condescending and occasionally virulent attitude toward Christianity is getting incredibly annoying; I think I'll fall off my chair if she actually writes in a good, non-moronic Christian priest, or a member of Avalon who is not wise, gentle, etc. etc. etc. Rainbow stopped; A Suitable Boy begun May 6, 2002 (8:29 PM) ( link ) I've stopped reading DH Lawrence's The Rainbow on Yu Ping's suggestion--supposedly it's not really a great book, it just has some great descriptive passages. Well, hell, I don't need to sit through a really long book for some pretty words; there are more than enough books out there that are fun to read and well-written. In the hopes that Vikram Seth is an author who can write such books, I've begun reading his A Suitable Boy (finally!). But I'm actually going to stick with it this time. Afterward, perhaps Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake, then Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, and then Tim Power's Last Call, which is now at the end of the list because I know I can check it out at home. No progress in The Mists of Avalon; and yet, no impetus to continue. This is bad for a book. Eight-month anniversary May 1, 2002 (10:50 AM) ( link ) Today marks the eighth month that this site (or, at least, the book reviews portion) has been around. In the last month (April) I've read 5 novels for a total of 45 novels read this year; accordingly, I've written 5 reviews for a total of 78 thus far. This month also saw a lot more visitors to this part of the web page--350 hits were recorded, for a total of 693 hits since the beginning of the school year. (See my statistics page for more information.) Eight months is a really long time.

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