The 1980something cover of THE WESTING GAME, featuring chess pieces on a puzzle with missing sections, beneath one of which is Uncle Sam in a casket.

Recent Reads: The Westing Game

I first read Ellen Raskin’s THE WESTING GAME (affiliate link) when I was about eleven. It was the first, and I believe remains the only, book that I have ever finished reading, stared at a moment, and then gone back to the beginning to read again immediately. I then read it again many, many times in my tween and early teen years, but I don’t remember re-reading it for…well, a very long time. But it came up again recently, possibly in context of Ellen Raskin as a cover designer, and…

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Recent Reads: The Continuing Time

A few years ago Daniel Keys Moran published the fourth book of the Continuing Time, after a nearly 20 year hiatus. I went and bought an e-reader so I could read THE BIG BOOST, and bought the other three books in e-copy so I could read them all one after another. I enjoyed the experience quite a lot, honestly, which was lovely. Anyway, in early September, during my media blackout month, I wanted something to read, and one of the things about me when I’m writing is that I can’t…

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The Summer Tree, Guy Gavriel Kay

GGK Book Club: The Summer Tree, ch 1-4

Welcome to the GGK Book Club! We’ll be reading the whole of GGK’s works in publication order over the course of the year. January’s novel is THE SUMMER TREE, first of the Fionavar Tapestry, and since it’s a tidy 16 chapters, we’ll be reading (or at least discussing) 4 chapters from TST every week. A comment from me as the moderator/organizer of this project: GGK does not work for everybody as a reader. In fact, he seems to either really work or really not, so if you’re coming to these…

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Recent Reads: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Jesus. I read LIES the year it came out, or close enough to count. In the intervening years I’d pretty well forgotten everything about it except that it was tremendously cleverly written and that somebody died, which is to say, there was a specific death I remembered. I did not, however, remember the rest of the appalling brutality that went along with that specific death. It was nearly like reading the book entirely fresh: it was still tremendously cleverly written, but sweet mother of mercy, I was taking unexpected emotional…

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The GGK Project: THE SUMMER TREE

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! The great Guy Gavriel Kay (Re-)Reading Project begins! We’ll be reading a book a month, in order of publication, throughout the year. Our first book, THE SUMMER TREE, has 16 chapters, so we’ll be breaking that into an expectation of reading 4 chapters a week in January. I’ll be posting a discussion blog every Tuesday so we can talk about the books and to offer a deadline for people to read to. I’m very much looking forward to this. I’ve only re-read 4 of…

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