All of the Skullduggery books at my library are always checked out. I guess I should just put my name on the list like everyone else.

Also, I just ran into a book that I couldn't bear to continue, and it's very odd. It's by Mercedes Lackey, who I normally like, and an author by the name of Roberta Gellis, and it's set in Tudor England with the Fair Folk influencing who will rule after Henry. I figured I'd eat this up happily, but I'm finding it nigh on unreadable and I'm not sure why. I think there's too much explanation that feels like internal dialogue--or monologue, and the parts that have characters actually interacting with each other are too short and don't seem to say anything.

This doesn't feel like something written by writers--at least one of them--with a few decades experience at writing. It's called This Scepter'd Isle.

Then I picked up "The Sorceress and the Cygnet" by Patricia McKillip and remembered why she's such a stunning writer. In two pages there were evocative character moments and a description of a culture that made sense. She's so good.

Roberta Gellis is a romance novelist who has very good research into medieval life, but I wouldn't say her prose or pacing is very good.

Huh. So I guess Roberta is handling the historical elements and Mercedes is handling the elves. The only problem with the McKillip is that it's all beautiful but perhaps could be a little quicker in the plot.

Hey, not only is today Bloomsday but my friend Kim notes that Ulysses is now in the public domain.

Okay, now I have experienced my first major GRRM character death. By MOLTEN GOLD WTF.

Hehe. Tip of the iceberg! Enjoy!

I just realized I will probably never have a reading year like 2011 again. I discovered and devoured A Song of Ice and Fire, and Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles. Other standouts were "The Night Circus", "The Book Thief" and my very first Pratchett "Wee Free Men".

I love that feature on Goodreads that allows you to see what books you read by year!

That is a pretty great reading year, indeed!

Yeah, that one was intense, but there's way more to come. People in these books die in all sorts of interesting ways. (I'm about a quarter of the way through A Dance With Dragons now.)

People in these books die in all sorts of interesting ways.

I wasn't prepared for that. I figured it was a stabbing here, a beheading there, maybe someone gets pushed off a cliff or eaten by a dragon once in a while.

It does look like I'm in the Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies section of the book. A minor character kicked it recently, and another major character is on his way out.

I wasn't prepared for that. I figured it was a stabbing here, a beheading there, maybe someone gets pushed off a cliff or eaten by a dragon once in a while.

Heh. Nobody dies in these books in a way that isn't worth writing about.