Atlantis Found

23 October 2005 by Melissa

Clive Cussler

My friend Rana mentioned the movie Sahara, and Clive Cussler books as a guilty pleasure in one of her blog entries, so when I saw several of his books on the library shelf, I picked one at random.

Atlantis Found reimagines the typical lost society of Atlantis and ties them together with a group of Nazi survivors hiding in South America and plotting to take over the world – on the surface not terribly original, except that it’s a Dirk Pitt novel which means there are exotic locations and cool gadgets and a sort of Indiana Jones / James Bond sense of fun.

I enjoyed the book a lot, but couldn’t talk about it because I knew it would be the type of thing Fuzzy would enjoy, and, indeed, he’s been reading it all weekend. I’m not sure I could read Cussler in large doses, but every so often, a visit with Mr. Pitt might not be ill-advised.

Pentagon

24 April 2005 by Melissa

Pentagon

Allen Drury

When I was in high school, I read everything Allen Drury had ever written up to 1984, most of which were novels set in and around the Nixon presidency, Watergate, all of that. Drury tells good stories, and his original characters were fresh and interesting, as well as being multi-dimensional.

So, when I found Pentagon at a used bookstore several months ago, I thought, “Oh, great, something of his I haven’t read!” And I saved it until this month, knowing it was there, but wanting to savor it.

There is nothing worse than when you pick up a novel by a favorite author, and hate it. And I hated Pentagon. The ususal Drury-esque attention to detail was there – if you want to know every last detail about what it was like to work at the Pentagon in the early eighties, this book is for you – but if you want a plot, well, half way through the book I could have drawn a map of the building, but I still had no idea where the plot was.

(There is no available image for this book.)

The Quilter’s Apprentice

30 December 2004 by Melissa

Jennifer Chiaverini
I picked this book up on impulse – it looked interesting, and I’ve had quilting on the brain lately – and was instantly hooked. Some of the formatting is annoying, specifically the lack of quotation marks in the ‘flashback’ sequences, but it does a good job of meshing lessons in quilting technique with the plot.

The story is a simple one, a young couple moves from a Pennsylvania college town to another town a bit farther away, because the husband, who has a degree in landscape engineering, has been offered a permanent stable position, and the wife has recently come to realize she hates her job as an accountant.

The husband’s clients include the owner of an estate that used to be owned by a horse breeder, and the wife bonds with the sister of the dead owner, who agrees to teach her how to quilt. From that point, the narrative is interrupted by flashbacks from the woman in charge of the estate, as well as quilting lessons.

There are, apparently, other novels in the series, as well as a website where you can see the quilts mentioned

in the story (some are ugly).

Stormqueen, and others

24 October 2004 by Melissa

Marion Zimmer Bradley

After a break during which I read some more modern novels, I went back to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, and read all the books that had been missing from my own collection, largely thanks to the folks at Half Price Books.

I’m not going to list every title, but I am going to mention that my favorite of the second batch of books was Stormqueen, though I’m certain this had to do with the weather outside the apartment matching the weather in the book.

Small things like that influence me far too greatly.

Still, it’s a great series, especially if you really want to immerse yourself in another world.

Traitor’s Sun (and others)

6 October 2004 by Melissa

Marion Zimmer Bradley

During the months of August and September, I was under a self-imposed book-buying moratorium, while we packed the house, and moved from California to Texas. However, I was still engaged in retro-reading, and, because I hadn’t read the series in a long time, I indulged in re-reading the entire Darkover series, by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Darkover is one of my favorite fictional worlds, partly because there are so many novels in the series, and partly because the culture is believable. Rather than listing every novel in an independent entry, I offer the list (in series order, not publication order) of the novels I read before arriving in Texas.

Darkover Landfall
Hawkmistress
Two to Conquer
The Shattered Chain
Thendara House
Rediscovery
The Spell Sword
The Forbidden Tower
Star of Danger
Winds of Darkover
Heritage of Hastur
Sharra’s Exile
Exile’s Song
The Shadow Matrix
Traitor’s Sun

The Black Jewels Trilogy

31 July 2004 by Melissa

Anne Bishop

It was my friend Liz who introduced me to Anne Bishop and the Black Jewels trilogy. I read the series as indiviudal novels, but it’s apparently available in an omnibus edition as well.

Essentially, it’s a fantasy series, that takes place in three different Realms (read: planes) of a single planet, and follows the life of a girl named Jaenelle from the age of 12 through her early adulthood. Most of the characters in the novel are witches (or warlords), and the jewels signify the depths of their powers. The fun of the books comes a lot from the names of the other characters. How can you not love a series that has folk called Saetan and Lucivar? How can you not love a race of winged humanoids, or telephathic puppies?

True, it’s not great literature, but mind candy is perfectly acceptable, and I’d argue that reading ANYTHING is better than not reading at all. And these novels may be mind candy, but they’re good mind candy.