Books--finished

[muninnhuginn]

I'm actually in the middle of about three other books, but these intervened, and have now been dispatched. I'm aiming to finish the other three I'm currently reading this week--or give 'em on up.

1. Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
2. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies
3. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
4. ed. The Lifted Veil, 19th Century Women's Stories
5. Bremner, Bird, Fortune, You Are Here
6. Polly Bird, How to Be an Effective School Governor
7. Jean Estoril, Ballet Twins
8. Andre Norton, Judgment on Janus
9. Granta 89, The Factory
   
10. Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
11. Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor
12. Patrick McGrath, Dr Haggard's Disease
13. James Barclay, Dreamthief
14. Paul Cornell, British Summertime
15. Ken Macleod, Dark Light
16. Evelyn Lord, The Knights Templar in Britain
    Flat, poorly written, with the kind of errors editorial--"loose" for "lose", missing apostrophes--and presentational--Dorset missing from a map highlighting sites in the south west, meaningless labels on bar charts--that are really unpardonable in a book written by the "Course Director of the Masters Degree in Local History and [member of] the Board of Continuing Education at the University of Cambridge" and published by Longman. It's a book without a compelling narrative and without a cogent argument. I think its purpose is mainly to use data about surname analysis and apply it to inhabitants of Templar sites, which it does tho' to little effect. Having found obvious errors in the telling, I'm not sure how much I'd rely on the information contained in the book. Still it's a useful list of the sites. The cover sucks.
17. Eric Brown, Deep Future
    One of M's purchases at Easter that he passed on as of potential interest, it's too sameish--bereaved husbands or fathers figure in too many of these short stories, the time/space portal devices open up too often. Most amusing is the typo: in the heading of almost every right-hand page is the title: "DEEP FUITURE".