Summer Reads

It’s been awhile since I talked about what I’m reading these days, and this seems like as good a time as any to catch up. A few days ago I finished Table for Two by Amor Towles. What a wonderful collection of stories. His writing is top-notch and I wish I could capture the English language the way he does. On top of that mastery, his stories are wonderful, enchanting, and full of interesting characters. The only bad part about reading this book was that I’ve now read all his books in print and have to wait for the next one. I read these stories slowly, making them last as long as possible. Beyond that, I also finished a four-book SF series on my Kindle. It was entertaining, but not the best I’ve ever read. The writing was good, for the most part, but by the second book the author had telegraphed the ending and all the threads moved that way over the course of the next few books. Still, I enjoyed several of the characters and the inventiveness of a timeline where Earth was conquered by a race that had also been conquered on Earth in the past. What am I reading now? A book-of-the-month thriller on my Kindle and Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson in a hefty paperback tome. The latter is fascinating and scattered full of drawings and paintings by the master, which is nice since that means I don’t have to jump out of the book to search the Internet for the images. I’m up to the part where Leonardo moves from Florence to Milan, a young man of 30ish who hadn’t yet made a name for himself beyond a few commissioned paintings of Mary, the mother of Jesus, contributions to larger paintings by the master he worked for, several commissioned yet unfinished pieces due to his streak of perfection, and a slew of drawings in his notebooks. Fascinating man and fascinating book. My TBR pile is gone and I do believe it’s time to stock up at the bookstore. What awaits me there?