flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2010-09-02 10:41 am

(no subject)

August reading aka these long gaps in my memory, where do they come from?

English
Buried for Pleasure

Japanese
Phantom Moon Tower 2
Aoneko 5
--both rereads

Kasho no Yume

-half of which I read in July anyway. This month I only read the title story and almost all of the last one, because the so above it all prince of Sou annoys me, wandering the world and observing tilting kingdoms (yes OK, that's 'declining' but tilt is what the kanji means) to see what will happen to them. Also because I can make *no sense at all* of the arrangement of the palace of Sou whither our prince has gone to report, so screw that.

Kasho no Yume itself is not bad as a murder mystery, bar the detail of not saying what the mysterious artifact at the centre of the mystery is, that I can recall. I know what it does, but is it ever described anywhere? Maybe a bit pat in the resolution, but better than Buried for Pleasure where, for the first and only time in my long life, I figured the murderer before the denouement.

I have a lovely reading lens now that lets me read without glasses. (Have to keep reminding myself that even with bifocals I always needed glasses for Japanese.) Why haven't I read scads more this month? Well, I fancy it's because I only have one lens, and the other eye is the non-dominant, badly astigmatic, cataract-glazed one that simply isn't much help whatever kind of lens it's wearing. So yeah, one eyed reading = tired. Still better than both allergy-dried eyes in fuzzy bifocals and reading glasses, at least in terms of frustration factor. (Though they were fine for reading in July, I note.)
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2010-09-02 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Buried for Pleasure... not bad, but not one of Crispin's best, I think.

My favourite of his for sheer entertainment value is The Moving Toyshop, I think, with Holy Disorders, Frequent Hearses, and Love Lies Bleeding coming in shortly afterwards... well, you see, I discovered him at boarding school in the library, and then read everything of his that I could find. You know how it goes.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2010-09-02 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
The first Crispin I ever read was The Moving Toyshop and it kind of set the bar. Alas that most Crispins after have been slight disappointments.
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2010-09-03 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
It was my first Crispin, too.

(In retrospect, we had a very good school library, thinking about it.)