I finally have time to read...
I've finally had time to read. Running a fever for most of a week does that to me. I have well over a thousand books, keep buying more, and perversely have no time to read most of them because of the very career that gives me the ability to acquire them. I've got a database here, which I need to massage and update, listing most everything in my collection (thanks to a barcode scanner and web services from Amazon and the Library of Congress -- by the way, there are a lot of cataloging errors in both). I'll probably be hooking that up to the web site at some point so people can be suitably impressed. :)
So what have I managed to read in the last 2 weeks of vacation and illness?
 | The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian: The Original Adventures of the Greatest Sword and Sorcery Hero of All Time!
by Robert E. Howard
Read more about this book... |
I suppose most people don't realize that Conan the Barbarian (and Kull the Conqueror) were both based on a series of short stories written by Robert E. Howard, who died a tragically young age of 30 years. If you remember the narrator's voice from the movie (the wizard, played by the late, great Mako), that's actually about how the stories read. Not Shakespeare, but if you're going in for barbarian adventure, it's probably what you want.
I was pleasantly surprised by the His Dark Materials trilogy. I tend to get off on rich world development, which tends to lead me toward Tolkien, CS Lewis, Frank Herbert, JK Rowling and the like. While I wouldn't compare Pullman's work to them -- it's a little lightweight by comparison -- it's definitely got a relatively well-developed cosmology that he leads you toward by bits and pieces.
The only real disappointment I had on this regard was that it faltered toward the end; the big climactic battle was, well, rather mundane. The characters involved were hardly there, and even the foray into what should have been epic-danger territory was less dangerous than a paper-cut. One supposedly key character spends her entire time weaving baskets (pretty much literally), and doesn't really do anything more dramatic than a pep-talk (if that).
No real sense of peril, unlike, say, Cirith Ungol.
But still a decent read.
Once upon a time -- about 15 years ago -- I was Feyd-Rautha, the Sting look-alike in wingéd underwear, much to the detriment of my GPA but the eventual benefit of my resume. Ya hya chouhada...
I really like this story, and that's about all that need be said. It rightly deserves every accolade that's been heaped on it, and more.
My wish for the 50th anniversary would be a leather-bound, gilt-edge, illustrated volume. They release one every 5 years, it seems, for Lord of the Rings, and even The Children of Hûrin's first release: why not Dune?