Rejoicing with the Truth

Hmm, interesting meme.  The hard part is limiting myself to only 15, because I pick at least one favorite character in everything I read. And I'm just now over 600 books on LibraryThing, and not finished cataloging. >.<

List fifteen of your favorite characters from different series, and ask people to spot patterns in your choices, and if they're so inclined, to draw conclusions about you based on the patterns they've spotted.

Which means YOU, my dear friends list, get to play psychoanalyst. Enjoy! :p 


1. Albert Campion (author Margery Allingham)
2. Nhi Vanye i Chya (Cherryh's Morgaine books)
3. Kelly Robinson (I Spy)
4. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Shaara's The Killer Angels)
5. Lord Peter Wimsey (author Dorothy Sayers)
6. James Eckert (Dragon Knight series)
7. The Duke of Sale, a.k.a. "Gilly" (Heyer's The Foundling)
8. Sir Gareth Ludlow (Heyer's Sprig Muslin)
9. Simon Templar, the Saint (author Leslie Charteris)
10. John Carter (MacLean's The Golden Rendezvous)
11. Tuppence Beresford (author Agatha Christie)
12. Tyrel Sackett (L'Amour's Sackett books)
13. Donald Lamb (author Erle Stanley Gardner)
14. Aragorn (The Lord of the Rings)
15. Kimball Kinnison (Lensman series)

I used a random sequence generator, so don't make anything of the order. I will volunteer that except for Tuppence, these are all men. :p

(Note - it says "series," but that may be geared toward TV series and I don't do many of those. I'd rather focus on favorite characters, period. Which is hard enough... I know I'm leaving off some dillies...)

Book meme, last seen on suededsilk's journal.

( I DID try to keep it short, I promise. )

Behold, the unveiling of a new and rarely-seen National Weather Service icon!  (I.e., Friday's, with a forecast high of 26.)



I'm glad I won't be going to work that day. Brr!


I've been re-reading the Morgaine books over break, by the way. Man, I love those books!  So my Vanye icon is particularly appropriate, although I'm mainly using it because whatever Jordi did to the picture makes it look cold and snowy. :)

At our home weather station, the temperature fell from 73 to 57 in one hour.  Nice.  Three hours later and it's fallen another 10 degrees.

I AM working on Bible study. Slowly.  Y'know what's the Distraction of the Day?  The Gate of Ivrel.  Yep, I just happened to pick up the Morgaine books again today.  I've read it four times already and it still distracts me.  At least there's no hope that I'll finish it in time to get back to work. :p

I am branching out a little more in Cherryh's work, though.  I read Fortress in the Eye of Time some months ago, based on comments at cj_cherryh that its fantasy setting is closer to the Morgaine books than her other SF novels.  Unfortunately I found it unexpectedly heavy on the magic (very un-Morgaine-like) and, more importantly, unpardonably dull.  So I have no inclination to try the rest of the series.  Other reviews indicate that it's pretty much more of the same.

I did read the Faded Sun trilogy while on my trip to Michigan two weeks ago.  It's a trilogy like The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy, in that it's one story broken into three parts.  It kept me pretty riveted.  To me it's not as good as the Morgaine books (less action, although there's a good amount), but still quite good.

And now I have Foreigner, which is the first of what seems to be her best-known (or newest?) series.  It finally arrived via BookMooch today.  At least I've resisted temptation enough to not open that one up already.  *g*

Acting on jordannamorgan's recommendation of the Mr. Moto films and Wikipedia's description of the Mr. Moto books by John P. Marquand, a couple weeks ago I found myself the proud possessor of four out of six novels.  Unsurprisingly, given my track record, I zoomed through all four in less than a week.

Wikipedia supplies a lot of analysis in a lengthy and slightly disorganized article, which I have not completely read because Wikipedia users are not careful of spoilers. However, it seems pretty clear that, while both are excellent, the Mr. Moto of the movies is a very different creature from the Mr. Moto of the books.  The former is "a benevolent InterPol agent" and "hero-at-large," while the latter is "a dedicated and cold-blooded spy for Imperial Japan."  They take place in the 1930s, when Japan was making steady expanionist progress.

Forcing myself to write about the MacLean books has been good for me. (Don't get me wrong; I love to write about MacLean. It's just work, like anything besides reading is, for me, Work.)  In some ways PaperBackSwap has been a greater temptation than a blessing.  The sheer volume of my reading this year is staggering.  I couldn't keep up with a monthly record, since I couldn't hope to remember everything I'd read in a month.  I'm certain I'm well over 100 for the year, and possibly more like 150.  Plus there's all the science fiction books, novellas, and stories that I've skimmed with varying degrees of attention.  (For stuff that I don't choose, like in sale boxes or in random compilations, I don't make myself read closely at first. That way it's easier to jump ship when Something Objectionable crops up.)

That last brings me to the books I'm going to review.  I feel like I'm making a confession, of all things!  I've made no secret of the fact that I love fiction, and of fiction I love mysteries, and action/adventure, and space opera stories the most.  Most of the time it doesn't bother me, but it's true that the critics (and the general sheep public) look down upon these genres.  I'm not ashamed of loving that stuff - I'm not - but the general disdain makes me feel defensive from time to time.