maybe I should pick one

[kaigou]

Currently reading -- and yes, I do mean all of them --

Done Wrong — Eleanor Taylor Bland (mystery)
The Steel Remains — Richard K Morgan (fantasy)
Water Touching Stone — Eliot Pattison (mystery)
Havemercy — Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett (fantasy/steampunk)
The Hero's Walk — Anita Rau Badami (literary)
A Companion to Wolves — Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (fantasy)

A chapter of one, a chapter of the next.

I'm thinking maybe I should pick one and stick to it. Most likely bet would be The Hero's Walk — a gracious and incredible and gorgeous work of poetic verse with a deep heart — but it also deserves to be savored, not chewed through or swallowed whole. So when I start getting anxious about sitting in one place for too long, I move to sit somewhere else in the room, and look, there's a different book right there.

Bad habit, I know, but a very old one.

Comments

[cyphomandra]

Not a bad habit at all! (okay, so the last time I set out to list my books in progress I hit 24 without counting fanfic...)

I thought Havemercy would have been considerably improved by turning Rook into a girl, actually, but this is almost certainly a minority opinion.

[kaigou]

I think Havemercy would have been considerably improved by having a plot, actually, but this is almost definitely a minority opinion.

(It's simply too clever by half, and that cleverness doesn't cover -- for me -- its lack of conflict anywhere in the first two chapters. My life is too short to waste on books that are busy amusing themselves, so I moved on. Nothing to see there.)

[arkessian]

Yes, re plot! Also characters with more than one dimension. I read to the end, and still don't know why.

[cyphomandra]

Well, yes. In fact, having just checked my own review, I see that there's a plaintive bit where I say that even if I'd liked the characters more, I'd still want them to have something to *do*...