I'm a few pages into Lestat, and I can tell Rice's writing has improved. The way the 20th Century is compared to those prior is really cool. I'm reading from "The Vampire Chronicles" which collects Interview, Lestat, and Queen of the Damned. Memnock and Body Thief are chapters of The Vampire Lestat, right?

Nope, they're books 4 and 5: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43564-the-vampire-chronicles
Then it's downhill. Especially Merrick, can just ditch that one. Blood and Gold can be nice enough though. But then you have Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle where Rice tried to bring together the vampires and Mayfair witches storylines along with her newfound (or return to) Christianity and that's just... bad.
The return to the Chronicles in her late years was surprisingly good in my view though. Many won't agree, but it felt... right, the whole atmosphere, and Lestat himself. And Prince Lestat is written primarily as a follow up to Queen of the Damned, recognizes the events from Body Thief and Memnoch, makes references to Armand, Blood and Gold and Pandora (from New Tales), but sweeps Merrick, Blackwood Farm, Blood Canticle and Vittorio (from New Tales) under the rug, so can consider those non-canon really, even if they are part of the series.

I can't believe how little time and effort I've dedicated to reading. I'm nowhere near completing my first book of the year, Compleat Cat! I'm not very impressed with my lack of discipline.

With my bookmark now lodged at page 240/812, I wanted to share a couple of words I learned during my last reading session:

"I started to bridle. I told her Polar Bear had a perfectly good character."

"You know perfectly well," he would say, to begin our colloquy, "what happened to me the last time you gave a party."

"But I hope even more that those of you who have never had an animal will hie yourselves to the nearest shelter, and adopt one."

I mean, you decided to bridle a real doorstopper there. No need for any hie though I'd say, the important thing is that you are having a good time reading. It's also cool to abandon a book if it doesn't engage you enough. Enjoying your little progress reports and the fact you're staying in the colloquy ;)

Hie would have been new for me too.

As for doing badly with reading, join the club, just 2 books for me so far this year :/

Two books I've recently begun to read and then given up upon:

Talk Talk and The Harder They Come, both by T. C. Boyle. Of each I read close to 100 pages, but couldn't bring myself to continue. Having read (and finished) A Friend of the Earth (which I liked as far as I remember) and The Tortilla Curtain (which I did not), I feel that Boyle has arrived at a comfortable routine he utilizes to efficiently produce book after book. Only, it's all quite the same pseudo-cool characters with no real dimension or depth where I cannot help rolling my eyes. Shallow, implausible, lazy.

LOL! Thanks for the chuckles! ;) I agree that it's okay to abandon a book if it doesn't engage me enough, but believe you me, the problem in this case is not the book, but me. xD I simply need to seriously make the time to read more. ;)

That reassures me somewhat. :) Well, then, what are we waiting for? We must hie our asses to our beckoning books and revel in their delights! xD

I broke all personal protocals again and took my reading outside of the comfort of my livingroom. It was just a gorgeous sunny day and I figured, why not tackle my reading challenge to a nearby park? Naturally, all parks were busy on such a beautiful day, but I managed to pick a bench away from the herd and in the shade. During my reading session, I think I was interrupted twice: first, by an excessively enthusiastic puppy and later, by an excessively enthusiastic drug dealer. xD

With my bookmark now sitting at page 282/812, if I may, I'd like to share a couple of words I stumbled upon, whose meanings were unfamiliar to me, until now:

"There was, to being a celebrity, whether he liked it or not, a certain element of noblesse oblige."

"I had lost it through the pigeons, by having to fight on two fronts at once — something which has through the years tested the mettle of many another great commander."

"He even managed to give me one good left hook to the stomach, too, just to let me know what he thought of my duplicity."

"Fortunately only one TV hostess who did that had the temerity to suggest what ages she thought it was for."

Imparatia Ultimului Cerb (The Kingdom of the Last Stag)

I’m not at all keen on reading in Romanian in general, and fantasy that’s actually written in Romanian in particular is something that just doesn’t seem to work, or at least my, admittedly very few, past experiences showed that I just can’t deal with it. So my expectations of this book were low, but it seemed promising enough to eventually make me decide to give it a chance, and I must say that the fact that it’s in Romanian actually didn’t bother me, and I'm tempted to think that the tenses used probably had plenty to do with that. And the story does develop in an interesting manner, starting slowly and tamely, the fantasy elements barely even being hinted at for a long time, but eventually picking up and then pretty much exploding and spreading out, encompassing more and more and repeatedly going in unexpected directions.
That said, it clearly feels amateurish. I also don’t know how can something with so many typos be published by an actual publisher, and a particular problem is so weirdly recurring that I kept thinking that it must be intentional, yet I could find no justification for it. And the author also has problems finding names for places but just rolls ahead. But more important than that is that she seems to have a good imagination and plenty of ideas, but not the ability to put much of it into words, the result lacking the depth and complexity required for epic fantasy, with so much that’s left unsaid and unexplained, many events just being thrown at the reader while the occasional explanations are information dumps, so the more the story develops, the more it turns into a fairy tale instead of proper fantasy. And I’m not even sure what to comment when it comes to hero’s luck, because most events, good and bad, simply happen to the characters, Tan probably being the one notable exception, actually acting in a hero’s role. Well, Tan and Lemongreen, of course, but that falls fully under what’s simply thrown at the reader, with no explanations whatsoever.

Rating: 3/5

The Death Ship

Set just after World War I, The Death Ship describes the predicament of merchant seamen who lack documentation of citizenship, making them effectively stateless and therefore unable to find legal residence or employment in any nation. The narrator is Gerard Gales, a US sailor who claims to be from New Orleans, and who is stranded in Antwerp without passport or working papers. Unable to prove his identity or his eligibility for employment, Gales is repeatedly arrested and deported from one country to the next, by government officials who do not want to be bothered with either assisting or prosecuting him. When he finally manages to find work, it is on the Yorikke (possibly a reference to the Shakespeare play Hamlet), the dangerous and decrepit ship of the title, where undocumented workers from around the world are treated as expendable slaves.

The term death ship refers to any boat so decrepit that it is worth more to its owners overinsured and sunk than it would be worth afloat. The title of the book is translated directly from the German Das Totenschiff; in English, they are called coffin ships.

The Road to Infinity by Gael DeRoane. The story is about a young man, Aran Dyfar, who lives in a sheltered village but has an epiphany that he wants to go on an adventure so he might learn to be brave and become a great warrior. The target he sets for himself is to find the Road to Infinity, a fabled but very difficult to find road created by a wizard that allows people to see the whole universe. So he heads out with a few trinkets to assist him and meets various people and creatures that help or hinder him.

I don't recall ever using this word unironically, but I found the book delightful to read. It has a lot in common with Jack Vance in that there are indications that this is a far future Earth in which technology has had an apocalyptic downfall and sorcery has returned to govern society, plus a lot of Vancian concepts and language, but it doesn't have the sardonic quality of Vance's Dying Earth stories (the Earth here doesn't even seem to be dying). Aran is a very nice, well-meaning guy and many of the people he meets genuinely want to help him. He has a few encounters that could go very badly, but generally he comes through stuff okay. The characters are always very well-spoken, which could seem odd but it occurred to me that in a magical world where anyone you meet could be ready to lay a curse on you or simply eat you alive, extreme politeness and clear, intentional speaking would probably be a wise practice for everyone. As charming as the story is, it does make clear that there's real danger everywhere - literally the second page features a demon busting into Aran's village and graphically devouring a woman and some children - so it's not like it's all coziness and lacking in tension.

Supposedly DeRoane was considering doing a sequel, but since this book is currently out of print and he appears to be changing course to be a children's book author, this might be it for straight fantasy from him, but if he ever does a sequel I will definitely check it out.

Updated my list

The current heatwave has dropped from a "burning in Hell" to a "hot summer night". Despite this slight drop in temperature, my apartment remains at microwave oven comfort. So, I decided to go the park on this mosquito-free evening (nice!) and read a couple more pages from my brick of a book, Compleat Cat. I picked a bench close to a city lamp, so that I can read my pages.

Much to my surprise, only one word stumped me during tonight's reading session. As per my silly tradition, I'd like to share it with you:

"I should say that Ms. Stein was not the first to call attention to my predilection for convolution."

Now I know what it means. ;)

Vince Palamara's excellent series of books about the Deep State coup d'etat executed in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963. That was merely the beginning of an ongoing psyop, which has continued to the present day, and spread worldwide, as perpetrated by the globalist cabal. Welcome to the new age of Feudalism, fellow peasants!((;--))

Updated my reading list for the first time in a while.