Half a World Wednesday (On Tuesday!)

[evelyn_b]

I'm posting this week's Reading Wednesday early, because my internet access is still uncertain and I don't know if I'll have any tomorrow. Comments will get replied to eventually!

What I Bought on My Trip

More Anthony Powell, the sequel to Titus Groan, Sodom and Gomorrah (the next Lost Time volume), plus a whole bunch more of my 99 Novels.

Comments

[a_phoenixdragon]

I'm reading Automatic Detective and The Night Circus and having a blast!! Whoot!

*HUGS*

[evelyn_b]

I'm glad to hear it! :D

[osprey_archer]

Ooooh, I'm glad the Balzac book was fun! Someday I must read something by him.

Von's used bookstore is like the Platonic ideal of a used bookstore, except perhaps for the fact that there is no bookstore cat. The perilous stacks! The books piled up on the floor in the aisles! The pervasive bookish scent! It would be an excellent setting to use in a book someday.

[evelyn_b]

You should do it! The bookstore has lots of intrinsic appeal, and it's also a perfect crossover point for your coffeeshop crew, if you wanted to include them.

Eugenie Grandet was so good - better than I thought it was, actually, because it's one of those things where when you're reading it, it feels like just a pile of (excellent) scenes and details, but once you're out the other side, you can see the shape of it. I'm so glad that all those terrible work habits paid off! <3 <3 The Curé of Tours is a little messier, imo, but still enjoyable.

[sue_bursztynski]

Penny Syber's secondhand bookshop in Melbourne does have cats. Three of them! I think she lives above the shop, so brings the pets down to work with her. And a lovely atmosphere - the shop specialises in science fiction and fantasy.

[lost_spook]

Well, the Witches sequence is as follows

[evelyn_b]

Beautiful, thank you! I don't know what it is about Pratchett's chronologies that won't stick in my head. I think something in my brain just goes, "nope, too many!" and reflexively sweeps out the old mind attic, like what happens whenever Sherlock Holmes accidentally learns a fact about the solar system.

I'm glad about Balzac, too! :D It would be too bad if he'd gone and drunk all that sludgy super-coffee for nothing.

So excited about Feet of Clay! There are golems in it! I love golems!

[littlerhymes]

a little like Terry Pratchett minus the dragons

Gosh that is a tempting description.

After finishing Just City, I read the blurb for the 2nd book and it was enough to make me go "meh" and not want to read any further at all...

[evelyn_b]

I wouldn't say (yet) that Pratchett and Balzac are necessarily very similar, just that they made me feel a similar way when I thought about them later on. Pratchett's books are chock-full of jokes and asides, and Balzac's - the two that I've read - are also very lumber-room-like while you're reading them, so there's that. But I do recommend Eugenie Grandet, if you're interested!

I haven't gotten around to reading any blurbs yet! I'm still working out how I feel about The Just City - in a weirdly self-referential state where I'm wondering why something wasn't as thought-provoking as I thought it should be, but wait - does this question still count as a thought that has been successfully provoked? There was a lot that I liked, and then a lot more that I didn't feel much about at all, and then whoops! Gods are capricious, no more city, nothing more to see here.

[littlerhymes]

I have just downloaded it from Gutenberg! I have no idea if it is a good translation or not but anyway, now I have it. :)

Aha, your description of the ending is - not wrong. I could definitely have read a ton more about Socrates questioning the robot workers.