Busy Busy

Within the blogging community there are some frequently used words and phrases that pop up in most blogs.  Thanks to the endless repetive nature of them, I have come to abhor the word rambling and would like to put anyone who types the saying "I can't believe it is has been so long since my last post..." into a full nelson.  Yes, that is right, a FULL NELSON.  As a result, it is with great personal loathing that I feel the need to type the next sentence.

I can't believe it's been so long since my last  posting.  Gad, I hate myself.  Cruising blogs has become a perverse past-time of mine.  There is some straight up weird crap out there with some weird ideas of what is worthy to put out into the world wide webby.  I don't know how much time I have wasted sifting through a stranger's family blog.  You know what I speak of.  Those blogs where the parent (usually mother, okay, always the mother) posts daily updates of her five adorable kids doing various mundane things with sprinklings of straight laced Christian sayings so we all know she and her family are proper Americans.  I cannot pull away from this type of blog.  It is like watching a car crash of the American Dream. I always leave feeling a little better knowing that my son calls his Grandma "Darth Vadar", that my husband and I do not own matching anything and that I adore SF.

So let's get to it, shall we.  I have been a very busy busy reader this past month and have some ramblings to share. ( Excuse me while I go run myself over with a bus.)

As you know, having read my review of The Witches of Karres, the witches' story does not end with this book.  Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer collaboratively wrote The Wizard of Karres.  It boggles my mind how three people can work together to create a book but they did and they did it well.  In fact, the writing style mirrors James H. Schmitz perfectly making it very difficult to find fault with this book.  Like the original, The Wizard of Karres and even The Sorceress of Karres are not going to win a Pulitzer.  But I don't read books just for the pure pleasure of watching my brain grow. I read for the fun of it and these books are straight up fun.   Now I must admit that by book three, written by Eric Flint and Dave Freer the story drags on a little.  And with Mercedes absence the ability to mirror Schmitz's style is lost.  Like the new Dune books, The Sorceress of Karres tends to rely on repetition to fill the plot.  Rather annoying but if you need some books for your beach bag and do not want to stretch your grey cells in any way, these three books are for you.

Sprinkled in amongst the witches I read Triggers by Robert J. Sawyer.  Now before I even get into what this book is about let me just congratulate my mother, who does not read SF for reading this book.  Way to go Mom, you have come to the dark side at last.  Now go out and pick up Black Out/All Clear by Connie Willis please.  Triggers is a great summer read.  It is basically one long continuous conversation with a group of people who happen-stance to be at the wrong hospital at the wrong time (or right...!).  Here is a snippet of the plot:  The president (of America, it is always America isn't it) is shot,rushed to the hospital and during his heart surgery something happens that results in a group of people being linked.  That is all I am going to say. I  hate reviews in which the book's content is unceremoniously undressed.  This is a quick, easy SF book to read.  It takes place in "normal" time with "normal" people who happen to have something abnormal happen to them.

And that is my busy busy month.  I am knee deep in summer reading, get ready for all things Star Wars in the  next couple of posts.