Mel Reads

I think I should just make this line standard in every entry:
Note: definite possibility of spoilers!
(and then if I get way spoilery like I did way down below with The Expanse, I'll put it in the title, too!)

Monday, June 29
(Writing in my brand-new journal, a Happy Planner Classic Horizontal)
Currently reading: Leviathan Wakes

I can't resist writing here even though it's early. (NOTE that this refers to the paper journal - I was writing in the July start journal even though it was still June.) The plan is that this will be my book journal - we'll see how I stick with that. There's not a lot of room here so I'll have to write short bits here - unless I get behind, which I often do in my regular journal. And if I have anything lengthy to say it'll just have to go elsewhere! So I'm reading Expanse #1 (the one above), but I've stopped for the moment and I'm reading romance novels instead. My favorite romance novelist is Mary Balogh, who writes characters much more realistic than most, it seems to me. (No matter that her sex scenes are in fact mostly the same one over and over, with some variations. Sex scenes don't interest me as much as they used to, anyway.)

Wed., July 1 - I wanted to read "Someone to Remember" which is a novella so it will go fast, but first I re-read Someone to Honour, which is the book before it chronologically, and which has a plot that intertwines with the novella. (All the books in this series are "Someone to _____" which makes it hard to remember which is which.) I just finished the first one so I can read the novella tomorrow.

Thurs. - So, Someone To Remember is the very unusual romance with a middle-aged heroine. The funny thing is that I noticed the minute the author started thinking of her as a person. For the first few books of the series she was a bit of a caricature, the maiden aunt who stayed at home. Then she started to change, gradually. I became convinced a couple of books ago that she would get her own romance, and she did.

Friday - Okay, I veered off to romance-land long enough to read three books, no less, but I'm ready to go back into The Expanse this weekend, skipping some 4 or 5 hundred years in one fell swoop. (The books are vague about what year it is, but the TV series says 23rd century - not the near future but not unimaginably far, either.)

Saturday - I am 2/3 of the way through Leviathan Wakes, lest you think I read nothing but romance novels all week. I'm just reading in fits and starts. It's funny how I visualize this in my mind now that I've seen the TV show. Left on my own, the way I visualize book characters is pretty vague. I don't really form much of an idea what they look like, exactly (past whatever description is in the book, I mean), although once in a while I'll realize that I've "cast" some character in my head and I'm thinking of a certain actor, usually without even realizing it for a while. Here, I seem to see them now as somewhere between what I originally saw in my head and the TV actors - except Miller, who I'm pretty definitively seeing as Thomas Jane, most of the time.

Monday, July 6th
OK, done with Expanse #1, on to #2, which is Caliban's War, the one about Ganymede, the one where Bobbie shows up. (After that is the one out at the gate, then the one at the planet on the other side of the gate. Then Marco drops his stealth rocks on Earth - that's the next two. Then the ones about, um, the ex-Martians - Laconians, is that it? That makes eight, right? And #9 isn't out yet. So seven more books to re-read, that'll keep me busy for a while.) Will I go straight into Caliban's War? Yeah, maybe I will - well, maybe not right this minute. But I'm pretty sure I'll at least start it before I veer off into anything else. That book is one of my favorites.

Tues. - I'm now a good way in on Caliban's War - 12%, says the Kindle. Prax is a good character, it's a shame he didn't fit into the other books - but what would be their excuse for carrying around their own botanist? (I do think he and Mei make some brief appearances later.) Avasarala and Bobbie both stay around for ages, so you can't have everything. (Now I'm thinking about character deaths and such. They killed Miller off in book one and he was back for two more books. Amos is also effectively dead but it looks like he'll make it into #9.)