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Books 2009: 105-107
105. Daniel Fox, Jade Man's Skin. ARC, courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance.
You might remember a couple of weeks ago I finally came round to reading Dragon In Chains, and raved about it? Well, this is the very shiny sequel, all mine courtesy ofdesperance's generosity. Is it as good? Well, if anything, it's better.
Following hard on the heels of the events of Dragon In Chains, written with a fantastic ear for language and rhythm. Battle, betrayal, love, anger, trust, war, the dragon unchained and a goddess speaking through the damaged and mute. Fabulous Chinese milieu.
I finished reading it at seven o'clock this morning. It is a very taut book. I am very glad to have read it. And very sad to have to wait more than a year for book number three. Seriously, here. Good book.
106. C.S. Forester, The Happy Return.
Horatio Hornblower, captain of the frigate Lydia, has nautical adventures in the Pacific. Storms, sea-actions, a madman, and a lady of quality are involved.
Entertaining.
non-fiction
107. Robert Harvey, A Few Bloody Noses: the American Revolutionary War, London, 2001.
Coming in at not quite six hundred pages long, this isn't light reading. It is, however, very readable: a deft and even-handed account of the American war for independence. It feels - I cannot say is, not having a grasp of the sources - very much like a balanced assessment, both of the causes of the revolution, the course of the war, and how what started as a revolution of the middle and lower classes - quite a radical revolution - was co-opted by an unelected Constitutional Convention dominated by the gentry.
I found it very interesting.
So. It is giftmas. And now family stuff is over! And soon it will be 2010! And my mother gave me a Loeb Classical Library edition of Seneca's Epistulae Morales and loose chai! Best giftmas ever!
Hope things are going well for you, friends, citizens, fellow denizens of the internets. Peace, love, joy, and all the rest of that sappy stuff.
105. Daniel Fox, Jade Man's Skin. ARC, courtesy of
desperance.You might remember a couple of weeks ago I finally came round to reading Dragon In Chains, and raved about it? Well, this is the very shiny sequel, all mine courtesy of
desperance's generosity. Is it as good? Well, if anything, it's better.Following hard on the heels of the events of Dragon In Chains, written with a fantastic ear for language and rhythm. Battle, betrayal, love, anger, trust, war, the dragon unchained and a goddess speaking through the damaged and mute. Fabulous Chinese milieu.
I finished reading it at seven o'clock this morning. It is a very taut book. I am very glad to have read it. And very sad to have to wait more than a year for book number three. Seriously, here. Good book.
106. C.S. Forester, The Happy Return.
Horatio Hornblower, captain of the frigate Lydia, has nautical adventures in the Pacific. Storms, sea-actions, a madman, and a lady of quality are involved.
Entertaining.
non-fiction
107. Robert Harvey, A Few Bloody Noses: the American Revolutionary War, London, 2001.
Coming in at not quite six hundred pages long, this isn't light reading. It is, however, very readable: a deft and even-handed account of the American war for independence. It feels - I cannot say is, not having a grasp of the sources - very much like a balanced assessment, both of the causes of the revolution, the course of the war, and how what started as a revolution of the middle and lower classes - quite a radical revolution - was co-opted by an unelected Constitutional Convention dominated by the gentry.
I found it very interesting.
So. It is giftmas. And now family stuff is over! And soon it will be 2010! And my mother gave me a Loeb Classical Library edition of Seneca's Epistulae Morales and loose chai! Best giftmas ever!
Hope things are going well for you, friends, citizens, fellow denizens of the internets. Peace, love, joy, and all the rest of that sappy stuff.
