(no subject)

[geekchick]

Back on track, almost.

5. Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi, Raficq Abdulla.
   These words of mine are no stones
   To pick and throw at passing fancies.
   They're yeast-sounds, bread waiting
   To be broken whilst they're still fresh.
   Leave them overnight and they become
   Hard as rusting bolts, not fit for eating.
   My verse is harboured in lovers' hearts,
   expose it to the indifferent world
   Busy with its traffic and it chokes to death.
   Like a fish it swims in the lover's blood,
   Land it on the rocks and it gasps for life
   Then slowly dies, cold and stiff as an icicle.
   You must be rich with metaphors,
   Like an ore of gold waiting to be mined
   If you are to digest my words
   When they're fresh. Know this,
   My friend, it's nothing new,
   These words are turned to bliss when you
   Read them with your own imagining heart.
   - Divan 981 (Raficq Abdulla, trans.)


6. Batman: Gotham by Gaslight. I've never really read Batman comics, and mostly I picked this up because of the Victorian setting/steampunk-ish angle. The first half, "Gotham by Gaslight", was excellent, with Batman pursuing Jack the Ripper through 19th-century Gotham. The second half, "Master of the Future", wasn't nearly as compelling.


7. Grave Peril, Jim Butcher. Book three of The Dresden Files. I accidentally lost my hold on book two and there are now 11 people ahead of me, so I skipped ahead to book three when it came up on my hold list. Harry and his friend Michael, a Knight of the Cross, have got to deal with angry ghosts (and figure out who's stirring them up), a whole honkin' lot of vampires, and Harry's fairy godmother. Kind of amusing to read Bianca in this book after watching the recent interaction between Bianca and Harry on the TV series. (As Jim Butcher says, "The show is not the books. It is not meant to follow the same story. It is meant as an alternate world, where the overall background and story-world is similar, but not all the same things happen.")


8. Mistral's Kiss, Laurell K. Hamilton. I am really glad I got this from the library and didn't spend any money for it. Sheesh. Essentially a 200-something-page sex scene that advances the plot by about what -- four, five hours? At least this time there is some plot advancement, miniscule though it might be. While I will read the rest of the books in the series, I think I'll continue getting them from the library rather than the bookstore.