Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

What are you reading now?

Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell. I'm about two pages into this, so all I can really say is that I like the narrative voice so far. Again, recommended by papersky and downloaded from Project Gutenberg

Liars and Outliers, by Bruce Schneier. Nonfiction about trust and security; again, I'm only a few pages in.

What did you recently finish reading?

The Spy Princess by Sherwood Smith. A fun story about an 11-year-old princess who gets tangled in rebellion> She spends a chunk of the story in a magical valley, but while it's a refuge, she and everyone else there is well aware of what's going on outside. [This has some implied spoilers for Smith's Inda tetralogy, but not sufficient that I would worry about reading it first.]

The Story of Julia Page by Kathleen Thompson Norris. This one was worth reading for the characterization, and for Norris's ability to keep surprising the reader. It's an early 20th century novel about a woman who grows up in a working class family with relatives who are mostly resigned to their circumstances, but manages to educate herself (in appropriate behavior more than the math/history/grammar sense), and marries a well-off doctor, and what happens afterward. Norris has a good eye for double standards and the limiting effects of sexism: realistically, the protagonist sees that it's unfair, but also sees that no men and few women will agree with her. She's also very much a woman of her time, thinking not that extramarital sex is no big deal, but that it's unfair that while such things are wrong for everyone, socially men get away with it and women don't. Note: there's some careless stereotyping of Chinese-American speech. I will probably read more Norris.

The '44 Vintage, by Anthony Price. This is one of a couple of dozen thrillers about the same characters, of which I have now read three or four; it's set the earliest, but I think was written relatively late. The viewpoint character is a British infantryman, sent to France in early 1944, and given "detached duties" after admitting to knowing German; from there, everything gets rapidly out of control, as many of his apparently comrades turn out to be untrustworthy, and almost everyone's motives are unclear.

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another Barrayar novel, with Miles (and the rest of the Vorkosigans) entirely offstage. Ivan Vorpatril is very much the same Ivan we've seen in previous books, trying to do well enough to satisfy and never well enough to get noticed. There's a romance tangled into an adventure novel here, but it's not the standard romance plot. It reminded me of John Dickson Carr's The Bride of Newgate, which also involves a hastily arranged wedding (to save the title character's inheritance, in that case) between two people who take for granted that they won't be married in any meaningful sense. Ivan and Tej both find her family somewhat overwhelming, but she does rather better with his mother than he does with hers.

This book is definitely better than Cryoburn; they overlap in time, and neither would be a spoiler for the other. I don't think I'd start with either.

I also read several short stories, one online, a few in back issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction when I had a couple of extra hours at the library, and about a third of an Elisabeth Vonarburg collection, while visiting Montreal last weekend.

What Do You Expect to Read Next?

Hallucinations, by Oliver Sacks, if I don't have to return it to the library too soon. I took out this and the Bujold at the same time, on two-week loan, and have another eight days for it. The Schneier book is the current hardcover/read at home book, and the Gaskell is the kindle book.

[meta: I'm doing these posts only in weeks when they wouldn't be "same as last week."]