Busy is good / summary

I have been busy with work, which is a good thing. And coaching soccer...also good! I have also been busy reading, and actually getting to more of my writing. This is great. However, I have been silent on the reviews and notes, which is less good, if not actually bad.

Here is a list of some of my recent reading, some of which I Intend To Blog About (fanfare):

Anathem, Neal Stephenson (audiobook) = my new favorite / the destroyer of many drafts of my own work

A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter Miller: at long last, not entirely without enjoyment, and an interesting contrast and overlap with Anathem

Deliver Us from Evie, M. E. Kerr: a read-in-one-sitting, something I picked up because of a brief mention in another review, and my new model for pithy dialogue

Night Watch, Terry Pratchet: every bit as good as what I had hoped in a book with Sam Vimes as the protagonist

Journey to the River Sea, Eva Ibbotson: a reread, aloud for the kids, and full of great voices


in process:

Islands of the Blessed, Nancy Farmer: the third Sea of Trolls book, reading aloud to the boys, the second I've read (we listened to #2, first, on audio)--I'm having too much fun with the voices

A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (audiobook): my commute salve, which fortunately the boys only hear parts of - they're fascinated, but disc 12 has a lot of profanity, for some reason

Longitude : the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time, Dava Sobel -- a denser, less sprightly, more focused version of a James Burke look at development of fascinating ideas and technologies by three-dimensional people in exciting times

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I've also been reading online and in snippets about geophysics, astrophysics, and plot development. These are connected, for me.

More later.