New Reviews: Lots of them
December 27, 2001 (12:00 AM) ( link )

ADDED reviews of David Eddings's Magician's Gambit (completed 12/20/01), Castle of Wizardry (completed 12/21/01), and Enchanter's Endgame (completd 12/22/01); Steven Brust's Phoenix (completed 12/22/01); and Connie Willis's Doomsday Book (completed 12/23/01) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (completed 12/26/01).

As you might be able to tell, I got a lot of reading done over vacation. Eddings's books were all right: pretty good, but not stunning. Brust's book was OK also. But Willis's books were two of the best books that I have ever read: indeed, Doomsday Book has the distinction of being only the second book I've ever given a 10.

I started reading Jostien Gaarder's Sophie's World, which is supposedly a history of Western philosophy wrapped up in a cute mystery. Right now I'm finding the mystery a little dumb, and the philosophy a bit simplistic, but Gaarder does explicate some fairly complicated concepts very well, and he is doing an excellent job so far of showing the progression of philosophical thought (something that other, similarly ambitious books often fail to do). I'm still reading about Aristotle at this point, so I can't say too much about the book; it'll be interesting to see how Gaarder treats philosophers whom I've actually studied, like Kant.