Still reading
December 29, 2001 (12:00 AM) ( link )

I haven't been spending as much time doing fun reading as I would like; schoolwork is still getting in the way, despite this being winter vacation. But I'm also enjoying seeing old friends over the break as well. As for reading news, Sophie's World is finally getting interesting: halfway through the book, Gaarder is finally moving past Renaissance philosophy into the more interesting (and familiar) words of Descartes and the more modern philosophers. Here's where my fairly scant knowledge of philosophy might allow me to make more intelligent criticisms or praises of Gaarder's work. Steven Brust's Orca is also pretty interesting; like Athyra, Brust plays with the viewpoints here: at times we see things from Vlad's eyes, and at times from Kiera's (a welcome change). But, like Athyra, Orca suffers a little from being just plain boring. Essentially, Vlad is trying to uncover a financial scandal. Whee! Well, I'm only about 70 pages into it, so it might get more exciting, but I definitely remember the mystery in Jhereg being far more compelling. By the way, I have actually started A Suitable Boy—byt that beast moves more slowly than any book I've ever read. Many, many pages in, and he's still writing about the !@#$)*# wedding! Perhaps it will get better—probably when it suddenly calls out to the hopeless romantic within me.