On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, John Williams wrote:
> Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> Oh, I got a copy of
>> _Anathem_ on Friday, didn't get it started until today, and didn't get
>> the chance to get very far into it, but it's intriguing enough to have
>> caught my attention,
>
> I felt like it took me about 50 pages just to understand most of the
> vocabulary. How far in are you?
About 8 pages, hope to make more progress today. The vocabulary is going
to take some getting used to, but I read the intro and am prepared for
that. :) I ought to be able to read another 20, at least, if I have my
lunch eaten *before* I go to pick my son up from school. (I get there
early and read while I'm waiting in the car. I get more read if I'm not
eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as well, since I don't like
dripping jelly on my books.)
>> against most of the 5 other books I'm in the middle of.)
>
> Five! Are any of those five SF books?
2 of them are fantasy, both written by Texas authors who were at FenCon.
I think I'm going to get through the Rachel Caine before I'm through with
the Shanna Swendson book. (For this group, I'll recommend the Rachel
Caine before I recommend the Shanna Swendson, but if you're trying to get
someone into "chick lit" interested in fantasy, the Shanna Swendson stuff
is good for that. I probably wouldn't have gotten into any of it myself,
except I've known her since my freshman year of college and figured I
owed it to her to at least give it a try. It's somewhat fluffy, but
sometimes you just want hot cocoa with whipped cream instead of coffee or
tea, and it works for that.)
The other fiction book is a Patrick O'Brian book, and those read like
space opera, so while it's not SF, it gives me some of what I like in
space opera. (I had Patrick O'Brian recommended to me at a panel at the
NASFiC in Anaheim in 1999, basically people were recommending non-SF
things for when you'd exhausted your local library's supply of SF.)
The nonfiction books I'm reading are _God Created the Integers_, edited by
Stephen Hawking, and I'm trying to read a few pages a day until I'm done
(I'm on page 1162 of 1326 at this point) and a book about influenza, with
some focus on the 1918 epidemic.
Julia
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
