I'm Ba-a-a-a-a-ck!

Cat boxes are clean, Duncan is collected from the garage, where he was patiently awaiting a mouse to kill, and here's my

Current Reading

Actually, I am currently reading Disorderly Knights (Edit: I'm an idiot. The first one in the series, the one I am reading, the one whose title I see every time I pick up the book, is The Game of Kings. Sorry for the confusion.) the first in Dorothy Dunnet's Lymond series. I read and loved, loved, loved her Niccolo series and this is the third (?) time I've tried the Lymond series. I've gotten further this time then ever before so I am hopeful of making it through...the first volume if not the entire series. (Man, I gobbled up the Niccolo series like so many bon-bons.) ML, have you tried these books? I think you might like 'em. They are rich and dense like fruitcake...

But this weekend I took time out from Lymond and read Stephen King's Just After Sunset, a collection of short stories, some of which were great. And I read the first of the Harry Dresden books, Jim Butcher's Storm Front. It was a good enough time-killer...but I don't know that I'll be racing out to find the rest of them. Though I might read another one if it threw itself at my feet.

But I also read The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. What a great book! Original and gripping. Where to start? Todd Hewitt is an almost-thirteen-year old boy on a planet that his family and others settled 20 years earlier. He lives in Prentisstown and has learned his planet's history: how they settled the planet, how the human were attacked by the native life form, the Spacks, how during the way the Spacks released germs that killed all the women and made the thoughts of the the men all audible. (This constant stream of every man's thoughts are called the Noise.) The germs also made animals able to talk...to a certain extent.

But then he discovers a crashed space ship and...a girl who was on it. The first girl Todd has ever seen. Her parents were killed in the crash, but they were scouts for the second wave of settlers. And not only is she alive, not only are her thoughts unreadable....but meeting her triggers events that call into question everything that Todd has ever learned.

It's exciting and sad (I cried at one point) and I can't wait for the sequel.

Edited to add: In the interests of full disclosure, I guess I should say that one beloved character dies in this book and there are scenes of violence that are pretty grim. But really....great book!