Elephant in my Pajamas

I’ve got about a hundred pages left in L.E. Modesitt Jr’s The Magic Of Recluce. Despite the cliched nature of the story and the somewhat questionable writing talent of Modesitt, there’s something that keeps drawing me back to the book.

I’ve already gone out looking for the sequel in our local used book store (I really can’t justify paying full price for it if there’s a used copy out there) but to no avail. There’s another shop I still have to look through.

The story concerns a young boy sent off by his country to discover himself. Along the way he finds out that he is actually a wizard. Like I said, cliche’d to the core, but I’m hopeful for the series since it takes place in the same universe, but over a huge span of time. The sequel, as far as I know, doesn’t have anything to do with the first book, except for the setting.

This is both a good and bad thing, since it’ll be nice to see the world from a different angle, but I’m worried that with only a hundred pages left to read, The Magic of Recluce might wrap things up too quickly, with no hope of an immediate resolution or continuation.

I don’t have to worry about that for a while since I always try to mix up my reading habits. So instead of diving right into the sequel, I’m going to postpone it while I read a couple books from some different genres. I’ve got a beautiful hardcover version of Wicked staring at me. It was a gift from my wife, and I can’t wait to crack it open, but since it’s hardcover, it’s rather heavy and I’m a little worried about transporting it to and from work every day.

There’s also Asimov’s Foundation sitting on the bookshelf upstairs. I read it once when I was in Jr. High and am eagerly anticipating reading it again. There were some elements I think that were lost on me at the time, which I’m sure (read: hopeful) I can pick up on now. If I still want sci-fi, I also found a copy of Clarke’s Rendezvouz with Rama. Aside from some sort of obvious rendezvouz, I’m completely in the dark on what it’s about, whihc might just bump it ahead of Foundation in terms of readability.

Then there’s Down and Dirty Pictures, which is about the rise of independant cinema. It’s hardcover, which is again a downside, but the blurbs on the back and inside jacket make it look fascinating. The author’s previous book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is almost universally praised, so that’s a good sign.

Finally, I’ve got a shelf full of Tom Clancy books. I like Clancy because it’s a change of pace from what I usually read, and he’s so damn popular that you can pick up used copies of his books for super cheap. The only downside is that he’s rather verbose and his books are a tad too long. Especially when I look to them as more ‘in-between’ literature.