The Month In Review and of Things to Come

The End is Nigh! At least for February. Feb-rue-air-e. Worst word in any language, ever. I thought it would be a slow month for reading, considering the limited days and that I was busy finishing a bookcase--the stacks on my floor finally started to bother me.

I made it through five books this month, which is one more than normal for me.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Finovar Tapestry has helped to restore some of my faith in heroic fantasy, previously my favorite genre. It's a trilogy in which none of the three books felt superfluous and the dialogue wasn't cringe inducing. While it leaned heavily on Tolkien's The Silmarillion (of which Kay was the unofficial ghostwriter) it was fun to read in the familiar, 'comfort zone' of fantasy so to speak. It felt like a great writer's first effort. I don't know how the Arthurian legend got introduced in the second book, and I'm not sure it lent any real strength to the story, but I'm looking forward to checking out more of Kay's offerings.

I can't put together a litany of praise long enough to talk about how much I loved Harlem Redux by Persia Walker.

The last book I read this month was The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes. It was weird in a Neverwhere Neil Gaiman kind of way: good weird, though not Gaiman good. Not painful by any means, but underwhelming to the end. I don't say this as a bad thing, but to me, it felt decidedly, "English," if you know what I mean. If the awesomeness of the title triggered your imagination to think something awesome, keep looking. Sadly, the awesome that the title suggested to you is not in between these covers. In consolation of awesome there is, however, a good story.

The Ron Barcelo Imperial Rum along with another I'll be reviewing in March were easily this month's greatest discoveries. And speaking of next month, I'm going to try a little something different; not with the drinking, rather my reading: Non-fiction.

Kinda foreign territory for me. Steven Hawkin's A brief History of Time is of true interest to me because I'm a nerd. It is also the only book with more reprints and hundreds of different editions than the Christian Bible. Nabokov's Speak, Memory is surely more than the greatest title for a memoir ever. And Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf made me laugh out loud just reading the preview. Any one have any crucial non-fiction suggestions for me?

I plan to sneak some fiction in there as well. I have three relatively short volumes that I think I can add to my reading load without cause for worry.

Oh, yeah, I also plan to not buy any books in March as a cost saving venture… we'll see how well that goes.

Harlem Redux by Persia Walker

I had initially planned on writing one of my little commentaries on Harlem Redux by Persia Walker. However, the best of problems arose while reading the book and stopped me from doing so: I enjoyed it too much.

I never took notes on the writing or the affects the book had on me as a reader. This was simply one of the most pleasurable reading experiences I've ever had. Now that I've finished the book and enjoyed it so much any commentary I could offer would be an inane list of superlatives rambling on for pages.

I don't read a lot of historical or crime fiction so perhaps I was merely taken with what a new-ish-to-me genres had to offer. More so than any literary device employed was the social commentary, inherent to the book, that was pertinent at the time of the story's telling and equally so today.

Walker succeeded in giving the reader a lot to think about long after the story is done. I can think of no greater victory as a writer. I haven't re-read a book in years. I plan to do so with this one shortly.

If I were one to do, 'best of' list or rattle off my personal favorites, this would be somewhere in the top five. Harlem Redux has it's share of problems, but it struck a chord with me, and if I have any influence at all in making suggestions to readers; the summation of the commentary I would've written would be: essential reading.