Reading Blues

Unfortunately, my reading pace had slackened last month due to the NaNoWriMo exercise. Because of this, until I finish my current reading list, I won't be able to put up further reviews for the Ex Libris sections of the blog.

Presently, I'm reading Harrison's Viriconium and it's excruciating. Good excruciating, not bad, mind you. (Is there any other kind?)

Harrison's prose is fascinatingly, floridly (is there a word like that?) weird, just like the settings of Viriconium (the city, not the book). However, this means Viriconium (the book, not the city) isn't a fast read because that would do a great injustice to Harrison.

One consequence of the above was that while I was reading Storm of Wings, I had my brain capacity at full tilt doing so. When I backtracked to an earlier story in the collection, Viriconium Knights, to check something out, I blew a fuse. Ah well...

Unfortunately, I switched to reading The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighth Annual Collection for a while for a variety of writing taste. I then up and left it at the spa in forgetfullness (another word I'm not sure of) when I picked up [identity-protected] a couple of days ago.

*slams head against wall repeatedly*

In other news, Matthew Cheney has a great post on story openings.

The best openings are arrogant -- they stand out not because they scream for attention, but because the author clearly trusted their instincts.

Is there a overall meaning to this post? Not really. But then, that's life for you.