My reading project continues and the books are slowly coming off the shelves. I've got about three dozen to go (for the uninitiated, these are books that I've bought over the last few years but have not read, including a pile of new and gift books), which means if I read three a week, I could be done by May. Of course, I know that I'll never be able to read three of these a week, especially since some of the ones up and coming are rather thick (including some epic tomes by Peter F. Hamilton, George R.R. Martin and Neal Stephenson) and I'll be working out of the house for a few months this spring, reading student papers all day long. Experience tells me that the last thing you want to do after that is dig into a thick novel.
Still, I've gotten to some good books. I've been a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's since I first met him about 20 years ago at a MiniCon. His outlook on life and science fiction were refreshing, as were his decided left-wing politics, which while always a part of the genre, sometimes get overwhelmed by the right-wing military nuts and the libertarian Robert Heinlein followers. His latest series about global climate change the politics around it concluded with Sixty Days and Counting. At times, the various plot threads didn't seem to want to come together -- and I have to admit that anything involving politics bores me deeply -- but by the end I understood what Robinson was doing with his characters and his story. It ends with a surprisingly positive message -- that it isn't too late, and that we, as humans, have shown the capacity to change our behavior in the past and can do so again. Meanwhile, Robinson's descriptions of the natural world are supreme, from the lonely challenges of hiking and rock climbing to the lung-stealing nature of extreme cold (in the series, winter temperatures in Washington D.C. sink down to 50 degrees below zero).
I needed a break after that, so I turned to Naomi Novik's latest Temeraire book, Empire of Ivory. It's a jolly fun ride through an alternative earth where the Napoleonic wars are fought with dragons. This time, stiff Brit Laurence and his dragon Temeraire travel to Africa in a desperate search for a cure to a disease plaguing the English dragons. There, they come face to face with the slave trade and resentment from the native people and dragons. The book is fast-paced and written in a delightfully clear style that hides some issues in plotting (often, characters act in a way that befits the plot instead of a rational decision) and the rather flat human characters. (The dragons, on the other hand, are wonderful -- full of recognizable traits, but also clearly the product of a non-human species.) Novik also has a great talent for description, bringing each location to clear life. Empire of Ivory also ends on a rather nasty cliffhanger for our heroes, and I really can't wait for volume five.
On other fronts, I haven't decided if I truly like Ashes to Ashes or I'm projecting my love of Life on Mars onto it. I think the show has great potential, especially since it is clear that the situation for this time traveler is quite different than Sam Tyler's (I'd say more, but plenty of people still haven't seen the end of Life on Mars). I'm hoping the show creators have the verve to take this into those directions. Sam's "am I dreaming or what?" crisis isn't going to work here -- so can the creators find something as compelling to keep the series moving along?
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