Maintaining two blogs might prove to be a bit... much. Writing in relative depth about the Camino over at Quo Vadis eats up most of my keyboard time (although quality-wise, you wouldn't know it), but I'm determined to also faithfully keep up with GTv2.0 this year. In brief, here's where we stand:
The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien (544 pages): Rereading 'Return' with new eyes after reading Humphrey Carter's biographies of The Inklings and Tolkien brought real joy to the characters. I'd assumed I was done with them, but maybe there's more there to explore and appreciate.
Sourcery, Terry Pratchett (260 pages): As always, good times and quick laughs. Not my favorite so far, but I'm committed to Discworld, for what it's worth.
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs (352 pages): Surprisingly good find on the Kindle Daily Deal, I'm always a sucker for well done creepiness, stories of physical isolation, and mixed media widgets. Riggs pulls it off quite well, and I'm excited for the next. Supposedly a YA novel, although it's violent and dark enough to make me wonder.
The Description of Wales, Girauldius Cambrensis (41 pages): Brief anthropological and geographical synopsis of Wales from a medieval author, interesting though short.
Ilium, Dan Simmons (730 pages): KT': "You should read Ilium, it's one of my favorites." Me: "I'm not sure if I'm in the mood for hard science fiction, giant space robots or discussions of quantum teleportation." KT': "There's almost none of that, it's about the Trojan War." Cut to Chapter Three: Giant Space Robots Talk About Quantum Teleportation At Length. But it's really, really good.
Saint Francis of Assisi, G.K. Chesterton (134 pages): Rediscovering my love of Chesterton by actually giving him some real attention. I am still confused by Chesterton's method of biography - he skips factual accounting and heads straight for a kind of meditation on character. It's a book that requires time to unfold, and demands a rereading in the future.
The Cosmic Puppets, Philip K. Dick (145 pages): It's been a long time since I read any Dick, and I was halfway through this one before I checked the publication date to realize how early it was written. Almost everything I've read by him was published in his middle or later years, and it was refreshing to read something both firmly in the vein of early science fiction and strongly PKD-like. Short, but great.
A Million Little Pieces, James Frey (430 pages): I didn't read it when it came out, and my intention on finding a copy at base was to read it as fiction. I want to like stories of addiction and recovery, I really do, but I have yet to read one by an adult that didn't scan as trite or boring. This one wasn't any different, and Frey's writing style annoyed me to no end - it seemed flat and choppy.
"It All Turns on Affection", Wendell E. Berry Lecture, 2012 (15 pages): This was recommended by my Camino friend, Brother Sam, and it is amazing. I've never read Berry before, only listened to him on NPR, and the framework he creates in this lecture on the two competing paradigms of American history - 'Boomers' and 'Stickers' (i.e., the conflict between forces of commercialization and cultures that practice sustainability and affection for the land) resonated strongly with me.
So... six weeks, 2651 pages down in 2013. I'll take that as a strong start.
