5K, Templars and Treadmills

Well, I ran the Reindeer Run 5K yesterday and it was a good time (and I had a good time). It was a pretty chilly 18 degrees at race time. I managed to get pretty close to the front - I think there were probably about 500-600 people in it as it seemed pretty large, so I didn't want to get "stuck "as I did at the start of the Turkey Trot.

I managed a pretty decent race and, most importantly, accelerated into the last mile, so I feel like the numerous longer runs have really helped in that regard.

In other news, yesterday I finished The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury. A decent read but it sure did feel like a first novel (I think it was Khoury's first). I thought the end was a bit of a cop out after the way the "mystery" of what the characters were looking for was revealed.

And, today I hit the treadmill again after a few days back outside. Was planning to do a longer run (probably 7-8 miles) but got to 5 and was aggravated by the inaccuracy of my Nike+ on my treadmill, so at 5 I decided to try to calibrate my Nike+ with a mile run. I did that but didn't realize that mile didn't "count" for my runs. Stupid thing :-/ I was going to go another mile but was too irritated. Now I'll need to do a longer run during the week at some point.

What has Lee been reading for the last, oh... 7 months?

So it's only been, what, 7 or 8 months since my last post, right? I'm sure you're wondering what on earth I've been reading, right?

Well, here you go!

I can't remember the order of everything, exactly, but I know when I last posted I was about to read Time's Eye. I ended up enjoying that book quite a bit.

The others:

• One of my favorites (yes, I'm a kid at heart): Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. This is the second in a series of books that are essentially an alternate telling of the Peter Pan story. Very good and a pretty quick read. Another suggestion from my son.
• Another recommendation from my son, which I felt was far too much like just a set up for a continuing series, though it was still fun, was Monster Blood Tattoo by D.M. Cornish.
  
• Mammoth by John Varley. I've really enjoyed a lot of Varley's work in the past (I especially liked the Gaean Trilogy and Red Thunder). I also liked this one a lot. An interesting twist on time travel.
  
• I've been traveling a lot more than normal in the last year, so I've read a few of what I think of as "airport crap" - books I normally wouldn't read but they are common in the airport bookstores and are usually a light read. Lately, that would include Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston and Map of Bones by James Rollins. A few years ago, I read The Codex by Preston and didn't realize Tyrannosaur Canyon had the same characters until I was a hundred or so pages in. Whoops. I still enjoyed it in a this-is-kind-of-a-dumb-story kind of way. As for Map of Bones - it was so similar in structure to The DaVinci Code that I couldn't believe it. Still, a fun read and I enjoyed it enough to put a few other books by Rollins on my Amazon Wish List.
• Next, a few "serious" sci-fi books: Darwin's Children by Greg Bear and Transcendent by Stephen Baxter. Darwin's Children was the second (I think) in a series about a set of mutations sweeping through the human population very quickly. An interesting read and I enjoyed it. Transcendent was the third in Baxter's "Destiny's Children" series, which have all been typical Baxter story lines - long term evolution and growth of humanity coupled with a more straight up "space" sci-fi component.
  
• I've also returned to an author I haven't read in a very long time - David Eddings. I read a lot by him about 20 years or so ago and always enjoyed the books. I just read The Elder Gods which is book one in his series The Dreamers. A very light read (after some of the heavier stuff I've been reading), almost to the point of not being interested. The characters were all just a bit too stereotypical for me. Which doesn't mean I won't read the rest of the books now, of course :-)
• For Christmas, I asked for Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz upon a recommendation from a co-worker. I really enjoyed the book, though it was another odd story - a man who could see dead people, but as the character says, "I do something about it!" A good build up over the course of the book to what you expect to be a really cataclysmic ending, which it almost is. An interesting twist, too, which seems obvious after the fact.
• Last but certainly not least, is Lamb by Christopher Moore. This was suggested by the same co-worker who suggested Odd Thomas to me. I have to say that I have never laughed so hard reading a book in my life. I also thought Moore did a great job combining parts of biblical lore with some more historically-based parts of the story. I can not recommend this book enough for anyone who likes a good laugh and isn't easily offended by someone painting the life of Jesus in such a down-to-earth kind of way.

Hopefully, my next posting won't be quite so long in the future!

Wow, it's been a while since my last update, huh?

It's been a long time since I've posted - so long that every time I thought about posting, I thought, "Gee, it's been so long, I don't think I can catch up!"

Well, here I am again, finally. I'm going to post a series of things with updates from the last few months.

First - my reading since my last post.

I finished The Mask of Atrues - It was quite an enjoyable, if not entirely unpredictable read. I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys the genre.

My next read was Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. I picked this up in the book store based on the description and some blurbs. I had high hopes - unfortunately, a bit too high. It was very (!) long and a lot of it didn't seem to be progressing the story. Not necessarily bad but I kept thinking, "When are we going to get to the exciting parts?" "When are we going to get to the mysterious reason the "Amarantin" (a race of aliens) were destroyed??? " Well, it turns out that we got there about 30 pages before the end of the 580+ book. Also, the captain of one of the space ships had some strange virus that forced his crew to keep him frozen. Descriptions and passages of the book about him took up WAY too much considering the relatively minor role he ends up having in the end.

Way too much build up with a payoff that just fizzled in my mind. Not recommended.

I finished that book on a trip and ended up picking up the 10th (!) book in the Terry Goodkind series about Richard Rahl. This has become another one of those (like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books) that seems like it's never going to end. This one, at least, has some interesting reading. The book was Chainfire . I enjoyed it (like I've enjoyed all of these books - much lighter reading than the Jordan books and not *so many* characters that you can't remember who's who from one book to the next), but it was a bit long-winded in parts. Several sections of the book could have dropped pages without significant change in the story; for example, several places where Richard ponders some particular issue go on and on and on and on and on...

For fans, a must-read, though.

Next up, another one suggested by my son - Maximum Ride. This is a book by James Patterson, who I've never read but appeals to me in the if-I-needed-a-book-in-the-airport-I'd-buy-one kind of way. The book is targeted at a younger audience, and the writing style was very brisk - 2 page chapters with a page in between generally meant you'd move through pages about twice as fast as any other book. Still, I enjoyed it and, while I probably won't read the next one (my son is looking forward to it), I'd recommend it even if you don't have kids. For "tweens", I think it's a very good read.

Have just finished that book last night, I'm now about to start in on Time's Eye - by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. I've read several books by Baxter - I've enjoyed them mostly but often find the endings not completely satisfactory. I haven't read anything by Clarke. I'll let you know how it goes!

April 2006 Reading!

Been very busy late reading. In my last update on what I'm reading, I had just started reading The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime. I finished that about a week and a half ago and really enjoyed it. Jasper Fforde has a real funny and unique way of combining stories you know as "real" with the detective genre. I really enjoyed the murder-mystery about Humpty Dumpty in this and it kept me guessing. Highly recommended.

Since then, I've been reading a couple of recommendations from my son - first, Ulysses Moore: The Door to Time was entertaining but felt a LOT like it really should have been like the first quarter of a full book. Trying to stretch it out into a series like I haven't seen before...

The second, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, was a much better book and I really enjoyed the combination of the classic Greek mythology stories with a kid-oriented contemporary story line. It felt like it would really appear to a lot of kids for a lot of reasons. I'd recommend it to any 10 year old boy :-).

I'm just about to start a new book I picked up kind of at random at Border's this past weekend - I hadn't planned to get it, but picked up the paper back in the store and thought it looked interesting - it's titled The Mask of Atreus and from the blurb on the back sounds a whole lot like The DaVinci Code. We shall see.

Reading these days...

I (finally) finished Broken Angels this past weekend and have now started the latest book I have by Jasper Fforde - The Big Over Easy : A Nursery Crime. So far, I'm really enjoying the new book - same silly kind of plot lines as the Thursday Next books but now about nursery rhymes!

As for Broken Angels - I did not like it as much as the previous storey in the Takeshi Kovacs series (Altered Carbon). Where Altered Carbon was an interesting combination of the "hard-nosed detective" book and a sci-fi storyline about being able to download yourself into other bodies, Broken Angels was about the same main character but primarily focused on hard-to-decipher plots around trying to claim an alien species artifact. A slow read...

Here's hoping that The Big Over Easy is a step up!

Current Reading...

So I finished Something Rotten this week while travelling and have now started the next book on my stack - Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan. This is a sequel to Altered Carbon which was an interesting combination of science fiction and a detective story.

The basic "hook" is that the story takes place in the 25th century and humans can download themselves into "stacks" (never really described all that well - but essentially digitizing your "self" and storing it in a computer) and then you can be downloaded into another body. Makes for some interesting moral situations.

I enjoyed Something Rotten - it contains some interesting surprises for readers of the series (which I won't divulge here) and more general time-travelling, book-entering, croquet-playing silliness.

Recent readings

Some recent readings (over the last 4 months or so)...

Currently, reading Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde.

I just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (recommended by my son)

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Whiteout by Ken Follet (an airport purchase when I finished my previous book mid-trip)

Legend by David Gemmell

Exultant by Stephen Baxter
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Evolution by Stephen Baxter

Other things in the last year...

I read the Runelords books by David Farland earlier last year. Enjoyed those a lot.

Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind