Day: July 4, 2007

The fireworks here in San Francisco are just about wrapped up. I’m not watching them, but I can hear them all the same as I sit relaxing on the couch after a beautiful day up in Healdsburg. The kids loved time in the pool…and so did I. Hope your holiday was great.

Anne McCaffrey brought her son Todd into the Pern novels a few years ago. As with many other childhood favorites, I have not kept up, but when I found Dragon’s Fire on the library shelf, I was game. I finished this tale several days ago, and you just can’t go back again (sometimes). I know I’m not the only one who’s enjoyed the Pern tales, but I suppose the longer you go on, the harder it is to meet the standard.

Damn, Carl Hiaasen is funny. Nature Girl is his latest, and the one I finished a couple of weeks ago. It is popcorn reading, but Hiaasen is out to entertain — and comes through, which is hard to do consistently.

Alan Dean Foster is prolific. Long ago, I read several of the Flinx novels, so it was easy to grab Trouble Magnet off the library shelf a few weeks ago. Another quick, easy read… and not terrible. But I’ve clearly skipped some stories along the way and I felt the gap a bit. It’s also been too long since I read the earlier novels, and I can’t imagine going back and re-reading them all now. Oh well. If you’ve kept up with Philip Lynx, enjoy.

Note: Big, thorough website, but miserable frameset means you can’t link to anything easily. Mistake.

Apparently John Sandford can write a book without “Prey” in the name. I read Dead Watch a few weeks ago, and until finding the link earlier in this sentence, I couldn’t remember what it was about. That’s a commentary on my attention to this type of book and a condemnation of the book itself. I’d stick with the “Prey” series, even if I can’t remember which title goes with which book.