Well, only a few days to go until I finally get to perform in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. That should be fun, even if it’s playing merry havoc with my gaming schedule – one of a few things, actually.

I can still of count on boardgaming and my Savage Tide D&D game, but my Friday afternoon game is now defunct, and my Sunday Ulek campaign is on hiatus until sometime in the New Year, I expect.

Oh, and Martin’s Star Wars campaign? He’d like to start it, I bet, but that’ll likely be next year… assuming the Dawn of Defiance adventures are released by then. Very, very poor, Wizards.

I’ve bought a bunch of books recently, but I’ve also bought a few DVDs, and they’ve been consuming my time more than the books. The DVDs? Series 1-3 of NCIS and Series 3 of Battlestar Galactica.

The books?

The big ones:

• Terry Goodkind’s “Confessor”, last of the Sword of Truth series.
• Stephen Donaldson’s “Fatal Revenant”, book 2 of the Last Chroncles of Thomas Covenant

The light ones:

• Michelle Sagara’s “Cast in Secret” – an urban fantasy which I like very much indeed. Book 3 of 5.
• Laura Anne Gilman, “Staying Dead” – another urban fantasy; Shadowrunish
• Greg Keyes “The Empire of Unreason”, another book 3 of 4; alternative history (magic in real world) book.
• Laurell K. Hamilton, “Micah & Strange Candy”, compilation of an Anita Blake novella (which I already owned), and a bunch of LKH shortstories. There are some absolute gems here. I really recommend you track down “A Clean Sweep”
• Jeri Smith-Ready, “Voice of Crow” – more traditional fantasy, book 2 of 3?
• Jack McDevitt, “Seeker” – hey, it’s a sci-fi! I really, really like Jack McDevitt, but I haven’t been reading much of his work recently. I need to get a bunch of books, it seems. My favourite of his books is “The Engines of God”, go check it out. “Seeker” won the Nebula award.
• Glen Cook, “The Black Company” – well, the first trilogy, at least. I read the first book back in university, where Andrew used it as the basis for the beginning of the Great Amber RPG, but I didn’t press on with them. Now, I’m back. Steven Erikson – one of the great, great writers of our time – is obviously inspired by Cook’s work, so it’s interesting seeing where things came from. I’m only halfway through the second book at present, and it’s seeming a bit clunky.

You might note a lot of the books are from Harlequin’s imprint, “Luna”. Let’s just say that many are surprisingly good (Michelle Sagara’s books are as good as anything I’ve read in the genre), and they’re also easily available and cheap in Ballarat. That counts.

Otherwise, I’ve been picking up books in Melbourne from time to time – the McDevitt and Cook come from there.

Jess is really annoyed at me because I introduced her to a book by Lois McMaster Bujold – she’s now ordered a bunch more of LMB’s work, so I’d say that she liked it. Given it was Shards of Honor, which is probably one of LMB’s weakest books, Jess is in for a real treat when the rest arrive. 🙂