Finished Book #1 for the year: The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes.
It’s about time, I suppose. I’ve started reading several books and flirted giving Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series a reread since the beginning of January. There’s a blogger on tor.com that’s going through Jordan’s books at a breakneck pace before the last one comes out this fall. I’m too slow of a reader so that quickly fell by the wayside. Anyway, The Somnambulist. I started reading it via Harper Collins website. They were offering it free in a sort of "streaming" manner. My occasionally slow and variable internet connection interrupted my reading so often that I checked it out from the library.
A mystery set in Victorian-ish London, it’s a book that should be right up my alley. Unfortunately, the novel has pretenses that wore thin for me. Every character is odd. There’s Edward Moon, a detective of supposedly supernatural ability who is also a magician and enjoys the occasional dalliance with bearded ladies. There’s the Somnambulist, a mute indestructible giant that guzzles milk. There’s Skimpole the albino with the crippled son, Cribb the time traveler, and (of course) Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book’s narration is ornate as well, full of warnings and asides. It just too much. Barnes has a light narrative style and creates an interesting version of London, but oddity is tiring when it’s the norm.
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Watched Saw V. Yeah, the series is wearing thin. I was a bit bored during this one. There wasn’t much to figure out and nothing was terribly inventive. They’ve continued to use two characters that look way too much alike, and we’re not really given reason to care about any of the other characters.
Feeling creaky today, especially in my hands. Baked banana bread. It came out alright, though Eric finds it to be too much like spice bread to be to his taste.
Simple Tricks & Nonsense 