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Finished Empire of Night by Justin Somper, only one more Vampirate book to go!

Got some graphic novels to read and return to the library like Le Crystal des Elfes sylvains and La Dernière Ombre, Life of Melody, Camping with Unicorns and an absolutely giant Moomin Deluxe: Volume Two (I had a lift to the library that day thankfully). So not picking up another novel just yet.

Liam wrote: "Rereading the Hobbit right now. Its actually very interesting rereading it all these years later as I didn't recall how little faith Tolkein had in his readers to pick up on things. There are so ma..."

I've heard Tolkien regretted his writing style in The Hobbit, thinking it was condescending to kids, his intended audience. He even started rewriting it in a more adult style but didn't finish it.
The narrator's explanations in the book don't strike me as excessive, though, since kids can be slower to pick things up.

Liam wrote: "Rereading the Hobbit right now. Its actually very interesting rereading it all these years later as I didn't recall how little faith Tolkein had in his readers to pick up on things. There are so ma..."

I have read The Hobbit many, many times, and while I have noticed Tolkien's expositions, they never annoyed me. Also, I think the target audience he had in mind was younger kids (I think most of his children were under 10 when he wrote it), so providing some exposition is not really a bad thing.

Irritatingly, I didn't quite finish Marvel's Black Widow: Forever Red before I left on my holiday last Thursday - I finished the last 40 pages at the airport waiting for my flight and now it will sit in the bottom of my suitcase until I return. That aside, I enjoyed it and it provides a lot of back story for Natasha Romanoff.

I do have plenty to read on my e-reader, and I have started Roll For InitiativeI'm about a third of the way through and I have enjoyed it so far.

Cloak of Dragonfire by Jonathan Moeller

My review of The Man in the Maze by Robert Silverberg

/review/show...

I finished Usagi Yojimbo, Vol. 1: The Ronin. This is the first of the trade paperback collections of Usagi Yojimbo (a comic series about a samurai rabbit from the 80s) and it collects all the stories published in other magazines before the series started in its own title.

Finished Sweet & Bitter Magic, too much angst for me, too little actual plot.

Still have time to squeeze one more Shannara this month with Morgawr by Terry Brooks

Also reading Trolls by Brian Froud

Most of my reading this month hasn’t been genre fiction, apparently, which is unusual.

I finished an ARC of Translation State by Ann Leckie at the start of the month; I’d not read any of her Imperial Radch work before and absolutely loved it.

I finally got round to reading Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw, which was excellent and I’m about to start on an ARC of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White having really enjoyed his Hell Followed With Us , though I'm not sure “enjoyed� is quite the right word 😉

(Not relevant to this group, but I loved Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson, which I also read this month, if anyone is looking for queer historical fiction.)

Finished The Wicked King, which I enjoyed a lot, and Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I found quite boring. Now reading Anne of Green Gables—I read and loved the abridged version as a kid but I don't believe I ever read the full novel cover to cover.

Nathan wrote: "I've heard Tolkien regretted his writing style in The Hobbit, thinking it was condescending to kids, his intended audience. He even started rewriting it in a more adult style but didn't finish it.
The narrator's explanations in the book don't strike me as excessive, though, since kids can be slower to pick things up."

Interesting, didn't realize that he regretted his style for that book. As I said, didn't detract too much from the experience for me, but now that I've gotten into writing myself, it really stood out to me more so than it did before, and seemed like something that would not fly by more modern standards if it was written today

Tony wrote: "I have read The Hobbit many, many times, and while I have noticed Tolkien's expositions, they never annoyed me. Also, I think the target audience he had in mind was younger kids (I think most of his children were under 10 when he wrote it), so providing some exposition is not really a bad thing."

Indeed, I can understand in the sense that Tolkein was writing for a very young audience, but even then, I think he was a little too overcautious in that regard. It didn't bother me too much either though, mostly because after the first chapter or two he used the asides and exposition much more sparingly but for that first 20 pages or so it did get a little grating.

Would it be fair to suggest that his audience might have needed more hand holding back then? We are all used to fantasy worlds nowadays, kids particularly as even kid's cartoons often have quite sophisticated world building built in. That wouldn't be the case so much then perhaps?

good point, Robin. I was well versed in fairy tales & had read The Hobbit at least a few times before my class read it in 6th grade. I've never had any patience for excessive wordiness from an author & never thought it suffered from it. Might also be a style of the times. Read some others from around then. Silverlock, Titus Groan trilogy, & such were similar.

Finished Morgawr, the third book in the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara. I'm a bit divided, I had trouble suspending my disbelief (that airships appear out of nowhere using what appears to be neither science nor magic to explain how they work, and then an A.I. wants to use magic as a power source to run its hardware) but on the whole I'm still enjoying the series. Will start the next trilogy shortly.

In the meantime saw this in the library and thought it was a cute take on Dungeons & Dragons (and then discovered its book 2 so had to put book 1 on reserve) - Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Academy: Tourney of Terror by Madeleine Roux. Its a school where all the D&D monsters learn to scare and hunt the humans that play the game :)

My current reads are ACOTAR and The Bone Shard Daughter!

Andrea wrote: " Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Academy: Tourney of Terror by Madeleine Roux. Its a school where all the D&D monsters learn to scare and hunt the humans that play the game :)"

That does look cute! I wonder if my 7 y/o would enjoy it?

With about an hour to go before midnight, I finished Roll For Initiative. This was a generally fun LitRPG heavily based on D&D. It's the first in a series - there are two more, but I don't know if that finishes the series - Michael Anderle, one of the co-authors, does have a number of 8-10-book series to his name, either as the author, or a co-author.

I've been reading on-line background material for the anime series Cowboy Bebop, which I finished binge watching a couple months ago.