Though I didn’t blog any of them, I did actually participate in the latest 30 Days of Lists during September. I used a $1 Hello Kitty notebook and list template graphics from Creativity Prompt and did the whole thing by hand. Had the month been slightly less crazy I may have blogged the thing or at least been more creative with my lists, but I just wrote them down, filled them out, and occasionally included some little note about what I was doing that day. But hey, at least I finished! :D
The journal. Yes, it’s “lenticular”, which means Kitty winks when you move it. It’s kind of unnerving, actually.
A random middle page. Sticker courtesy of The Guilded Age.
The final day!
by Stephen King: I have found I prefer King’s non-horror stories, and this was no exception. This is a serial novel in six parts (and I actually own all six individual books, in addition to the six-in-one paperback), so I’ll review each one separately.
by Stieg Larsson (unabridged audiobook read by Simon Vance, translated by Reg Keeland; 16 hrs 21 min on 13 discs): Mikael Blomkvist, fresh from a libel conviction, has stepped down from the editor’s desk of the magazine he founded, Millenium. Shortly thereafter, Swedish industry tycoon Henrik Vanger hires him to research the disappearance of his niece Harriet nearly 40 years before. Meanwhile, 20-something antisocial genius Lisbeth Salander is slowly attempting to put her own life together. Eventually the two meet and begin working together on the case. The plot is complicated, with almost too many Vangers to keep track, but I definitely enjoyed it. I felt the suspense and was saddened by the sad parts and cheered at the victories of the Good Guys. I learned that I know pretty much nothing about Sweden and Swedish history, and was a little concerned at how misogynistic the society is portrayed. There was quite a bit of graphic rape, murder, and mutilation, to the point where some of it felt rather gratuitous. (Likewise with Blomkvist’s sex life: does he sleep with every single woman he meets or just most of them?) Still, I found the story engrossing and just had to know what happened next. More importantly, I have a real affection for Salander and I look forward to reading of her later adventures in the rest of the trilogy.
by Walter M. Miller Jr.: This is one of those books that routinely shows up on lists of Best SF Books Evar and is often grouped with other dystopian stories like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. In the first section of this novel, Brother Francis of Utah stumbles upon some artifacts from Saint Leibowitz himself: the sacred shopping list and the holy blueprints, among other things. This beginning sounds silly but the story is anything but. We begin about six hundred years after mankind has more or less annihilated itself through nuclear war and is just now beginning to rebuild. The Order of Leibowitz is a group of monks following in the tradition of a man who led others in the storing and memorization of books in the face of the mobs who wished to burn them. Like monks of the Middle Ages, they spend their days copying – and illuminating – blueprints, math textbooks, and other findings. I enjoyed this first section the most. The other two sections were difficult to follow. The second, taking place several hundred years after the first, explores some of the first rediscoveries of ancient technology, such as electricity. The third is several centuries after the second, and man now has space travel, colonies on other worlds, and – you guessed it – nuclear weapons. I wish I’d understood the whole deal with the ancient pilgrim/Benjamin/Eleazar. I wish I knew even a tiny bit of Latin, as I had to skim several passages in that no-longer-dead language (though this also served as a constant reminder of the fact that the book was written before Vatican II). In short, I’m not sure how I feel about this book because I’m not entirely convinced I understood what it was trying to say. I’m glad to have read it, but I’m not positive I would recommend it to someone else. This is often how I react to the rapidly growing pool of Classic Literature I Don’t Get.
by Isaac Asimov (unabridged audiobook read by William Dufris; 15 hrs 47 min on 15 discs): This time around, Baley is sent to Daneel’s home planet of Aurora, the first and most arrogant of the spacer worlds, to solve the “murder” of Jander the robot. Along the way he must deal with his own crippling agoraphobia, the Auroran prejudice against Earthmen, and foreign sexual mores. That last bit was the most unexpected: the lengthy and detailed discussions of sex and sexual practices, compared and contrasted among Earth, Aurora, and Solaria. I had trouble not thinking about Asimov’s doofy muttonchops, turning these passages even more surreal. It was certainly a well-written book with lots of interesting speculation into human societies, but it is easily my least favorite in the series. That said, it was particularly fascinating to read this after reading 
fame), I start to wonder just how many of Asimov’s books take place in the same universe.