Weekend Hospitality

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or those from which you've read an excerpt. Here are my results: 26 read, 1 partial. 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling  5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger  19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Au...

Whenever I travel, I go to the local bookstore and pick up new reads.  My preferences is for hard science fiction, but as this genre is rather weak these days, I'll read anything in the Fantasy and Science Fiction shelves. Recently, I read "Off Armageddon Reef"  and  By Schism Rent Asunder (Safehold) , part of a series by David Weber.  These are some of the few books that I just could not put down.  They cover a setting where for reasons good or bad, a church was created to keep people from having technology.  Some 750 years later, certain events are put into motion that will incite a holy war.  The politics of government and church are interesting to watch, particularly as the church is corrupt, but still based on religious zeal. In comparison, I read  A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) , which has a very good reputation.  It was hard reading, but cause I just could not get into the story.  Its very complicated and t...

I am a voracious reader. I have a large library (about 500 books) consisting mostly of science fiction or fantasy. Occasionally, I read a book that I can't put down, and so, it makes sense for me to tell you about them. Here are two books that I really enjoyed. Magic Strikes by Kate Daniels (Part 3 in The Kate Daniels Series ) This is a book about a female fighter in an Atlanta where magic and technology are complementary. Sometimes technology works and magic is non-existent, sometimes its the other way around. The first two books were good, but this one is very good. Its a real page turner, with good character development and an interesting world. The Lies of Locke Lamor by Scott Lynch (Book 1 of a proposed 7 book series about the Gentlemen Bastards) This book pulls no punches. Its set in an alternate medieval Venice where magic plays a very minor roll. Its really about thieves and politics. The images raised by this book are painful. People die in graphic ways, and...