Calli, I think The Viscount of Adrilankha was actually a single book that was broken into a trilogy for publication.

Mind, you, it would have been chapbook sized if Brust could drop the damn stylized Mojo-Jojoesque passages wherein it takes six paragraphs for someone to express a sentence's worth of information.

Ya know, that style annoyed me a lot more before, in the recent ones, he had sections without it. It was suddenly a lot more of a cultural note than an overwhelming affectation (though no doubt he thinks it's cute).

Even if (like me) you think Perdido St Station is less a novel than the greatest piece of D&D scenario design in history, and that Mieville has read the Robert Asprin Sanctuary books once too often, it's worth a look. And the (sort of) sequel The Scar is one of the best fantasy novels I've read in years. I didn't get on with George RR Martin. If I want to read about murderous incestuous nobles without any redeeming features struggling for power, I'll read I Claudius or The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy - they have jokes!

But, Sumi, isn't MB just FG? I definitely think so. "Fortress of Solitude" is even better though. (/Lethem likes Brooklyn carrots) Can't say I notice type much, unless it's too small.

Has anyone ever been so bugged by a book's typeface that they can't read it?

Jodi Picoult has changed font with the narrative voice for her last two books, and it's driven me batty.

Oh, ugh. [Adds "Jodi Picoult" to the list of authors to avoid.]

It pisses me off on many levels. (Besides the eye wonkiness, shouldn't you be able to establish narrative voice with something other than font? Because, really, if you just want to put the character's name at the beginning of the chapter, it's cool with me.)

shouldn't you be able to establish narrative voice with something other than font?

In My Sister's Keeper, it might have been the production department/her editor's idea, not hers. (Although obviously I don't know that for sure.) Everyone narrated in first person, and there were at least six narrators. Trying to remember it, though, I thought she did include the narrator's name at the start of each chapter anyway.

Trying to remember it, though, I thought she did include the narrator's name at the start of each chapter anyway.

I'm pretty sure she did, at least the first time each one spoke. Which is why I thought the font thing was redundant. Her new one didn't have as many characters narrating, so I didn't notice it as much.

Last night I finally finished reading Last of the Dandies : The Scandalous Life and Escapades of Count D'Orsay. While I enjoyed it, I was a bit peeved by one conceit of the author: the book is filled with all sorts of excerpts in French, but none of them have been translated into English, anywhere in the book. I feel like a semi-literate moron for complaining about it, but I do think that it was a little presumptuous of the author to assume that all of his potential readers are bilingual.

The next book I'm carting around to read is Die Upon a Kiss by Barbara Hambly. Of course, it is only just now that I discover it's the fifth book in a series that I've never read. (I picked it up on a whim at Half-Price Books.)