Reading

While on vacation and since I got back from vacation I have been able to do a bit of reading, besides Harry Potter.

When I left Norway to go on my vacation I brought two books, one was Harry Potter that I have written about here previously - the other was a Norwegian book called "Hemmeligheter" (English: "secrets"). It is the first in a new series called "Nattöyne" (English: "Nighteyes"), the story I guess is kind of ok, it's about a young girl who is 22 years old, and she's been having these weired premenitions all her life - and now a grandmother that she hasn't met since she was a child contacts her and tells her that she's got some psycic powers of some sort - and that the grandmother is a witch. She then goes on to learn the granddaughter everything she knows - in like 2 or 3 days!!! - because apparently there's a big fight with evil coming soon. Alright, as I said, the story is kind of ok - but it is so badly written - all I could think was that if Bladkompaniet can publish this trash they should surely be wanting to publish my book as well - because mine is a lot more entertaining than this. I still haven't heard from Bladkompaniet since I sent them my novel about 2 months ago - well, except for the standard letter that told me they would read my book and get back to me in 2 to 3 months time. I'm really not very optimistic.

Anyway, the other books I've been reading lately:
Stephen King - "The girl who loved Tom Gordon"
I thought it was entertaining, but not as scary as King's book usually are - but there was a hint of something scary in it - and since it wasn't a very long book I just couldn't put it down till I'd finished with it.

I bought the King book and 2 other books at a store in Kulmbach that sells secondhand books. I have found that in smaller places in Germany it can be hard to find literature in English, and so I sort of had to buy whatever they got. So, besides King I also ended up with:

J Neil Schulman - "The rainbow cadenza"
Set sometime in the future - a really strange book. Couldn't really decide if I liked it or not. In this future, because they've found out how to make sure that the child that is born is of the wanted sex, the men now outnumber women 7 to 1. The reason for this is that the world government feels that in order to secure peace with the Earth people that have moved to other planets, they need lot of men to be ready to fight wars - and because of this all families that gives birth to boys are rewarded for this. But since there are so many men and so few women this causes a lot of sexual frustration among the men which ends in violence, because of this the world governement has decided that all women from the age of 18 and 3 years onwards has to serve in the "peace corps" which acually mean that they have to go bed with 6 to 8 men every day for 3 years to make sure that men are kept peacefull. Those who refuse are sentenced to be "touchables" which means that they loose all their civil rights, and are treated worse than animals, and they're hunted by the ruling class for fun - and sex. The title refers to the ultimate compostition that is to be played on a new kind of light-instrument that is very popular and which the maincharacter of the book is playing. Anyway - as I said - the book is interesting in some ways, but mostly weired.

Last week I finished reading Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth no 9 "Chainfire" - and as usual - this was a great experience. Even though I do see that there are so many similarities between Robert Jordan's "Wheel of time" and "The Sword of Truth" series, I still very much enjoy them both. In "Chainfire" Richard Rahl is searching for his wife, Kahlan, whom everybody seems to have forgot excists, and all traces of her is even deleted from the books of prophecy. As I said, this too is a good one.

This weekend I've been reading Dan Brown - "Digital Fortress". I liked it, but not much more than that. I have read "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angles and Demons" earlier, and I love those two books, they're masterpieces. "Digital Fortress" is also entertaining, but it hasn't got the same touch of mystery and mystic that the two other books have got. It's just another action book, and I was a bit dissapointed in it - having read the two other books I was expecting more from it.

My next project now is of course Stephen King's last book in the Dark Tower series. The reason why I haven't read it so far is because every bookstore I've been to in Oslo have been sold out. Now I think I'll just go ahead and order it on the internet - I'm tired of looking for it - now I just want to buy it so that I can finally get to read it! After all, I want to make sure that I am finished with it when the next book of The Wheel of time comes in October or November.