It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to update the blog here with my reading, but thankfully that doesn’t mean I’ve slipped on the reading. However, April did end up being quite a light month. I had to make up for it later.

April also marked* the sad loss of my faithful friend – my Hatchard’s Bookmark, visible in the February photo. This gold buddy of mine had been with me for a while, but was found absent without leave on Eastcheap after work one day. I had five minutes to look for him before my bus arrived and couldn’t find him in time. He is missed.

BOOK FIFTEEN – Armada by Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline’s first novel, Ready Player One, was a love-letter to classic video games and in this way, Armada is a spiritual followup; it may actually be a more direct prequel, but as far as I’m aware that’s not confirmed yet. The plot to Armada is a little more straightforward than its predecessor, and holds very few surprises, but it is a fast-paced and joyous ride through Cline’s imagination. It feels more like polished fan-fiction for his own canon than novel, but still an enjoyable and sometimes moving read.

BOOK SIXTEEN – A Void by Georges Perec

Far from just a salutation, “A Void” is a rubric. This book contains a Void, which conscripts this author into a curious and fantastic situation – an adoption of an oddball rhythm of words to match an oddball whodunit plot. A flourish of artistic showmanship that is plainly proud of itself, this book is significant and miraculous in that it was first in francais, and work to Anglo-fashion it was wholly postliminary. Additionally, author and showoff P-r-c distorts classic works to fit his Void, in a twinkling of chutzpah that I cannot but think of months down my road. Idiom aids him in his Void, so too Latin, and so too original words, imagination and willful adamance. Inspiring work, if occasionally confusing.

BOOK SEVENTEEN – Welcome to Night Vale by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink

I started listening to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast years ago, when it first started, and thank the Glow Cloud I did because I’m not sure I could have enjoyed this book as much as I did if I hadn’t. It was full of in jokes and references, and the plot stemmed directly from the podcast, looking to explain one of its long-standing mysteries. It is technically a stand-alone story, and you can read it without having been inducted into the mythos, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it. That having been said, I did enjoy reading this novel. It had the same unsettling vagueness and deadpan humour that makes the podcast so appealing to lovers of weird fiction.

* Pun intended.