Reading review...

I just looked back at my schedule and realized that I have been mass-consuming books for February. So far this month I've read:

• A History of Medieval Europe, by Teo Ruiz
• On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
• The Honor of the Queen, by David Weber
• The Short, Victorious War, by David Weber
• Field of Dishonor, by David Weber
• Flag In Exile, by David Weber
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
• Honor Among Enemies, by David Weber
• Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
• Nyssa's Guardian, by Reese Gabriel

Yeah, I finished that chunk o' gristle, and a bad swallow it was to the very end. The writing style tightened up somewhat but, oh!, the irresponsibility to the genre only got worse: along with cornucopia machines our heroine has access to particle-analogue teleportation devices and our hero has a direct neural interface. Both the hero and the heroine (this being a "romance", after all) are rendered completely inaccessible to the reader by dint of their genetic engineering, which makes them so utterly unlike you or me that reading about their antics loses all engagement. Yes, Nyssa learns to embrace her subby nature in the bedroom while in the "real world" Theron comes to accept that she is his "feisty equal whom he could never tame." The catalysts for the whole story are quickly dispatched and their motives quickly disposed, irrelevant really to the two extended sex scenes that make up the bulk of the book. Yawn.

Next up, The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, In Enemy Hands by David Weber, and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

I tried, I really tried, to read Prince of Ayodhya, by Ashok Banker, but I ended up tossing the book in the first chapter. The book is supposedly "Hindu Fantasy," set in an alternity dominated by Hindi myths and terminology in much the same way that most "fantasy" books are dominated by European myths and terminology. But it was hard to swallow when the hero sweeps through is wing of the palace looking for an intruder: "Bedchamber, clear. Diwan-khaas, clear. Gymnasium, clear. Bathing chambers, clear. Enemy not sighted, repeat, not sighted." The scattershot intrusions of modern terminology and patterns of speech were so terribly distracting I just closed it and walked away.

Eyeglasses are freakin' expensive!

This afternoon I went looking for a new pair of eyeglasses, and was shocked at just how much they cost. A pair of frames averaged $250, and my insurance covered barely half of that. The lenses weren't fully covered. Even with insurance, I was looking at an outlay of maybe $230 in cash. Grief!

I'm going to shop around, but I don't know if I can't afford them even with the insurance.