Reading occurred at a leisurely pace for most of March; mostly because I was reading thicker books. I finished rereading Robert Jordan’s Path of Daggers after I got hooked on the story again. It’s really different rereading it this time because this is my first time systematically rereading all volumes of the Wheel of Time almost continuously (there was a big break while rereading the first three volumes) and I’m finding that really rewarding. I’m now rereading Winter’s Heart. Soon, I’ll be reaching the first Sanderson novel in the series and after that it will no longer be a reread because I’ve yet to read the last two books in the series. From my recollection I did not find the Sanderson novel objectionable but I kind of took a break from super-thick fantasy books for a few years.
Other books I’ve been reading includes Doris Lessing’s Love, Again, and her first science fiction novel, Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta. Since I have to co-author three Lessing academic articles, I’ve pretty much fallen into a Lessing rabbithole, and even joined the Doris Lessing Society (I also told my supervisee to join). On another academic front, I was so hooked and impressed by Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle that I’m writing a conference abstract (and paper/presentation) about it today. It will likely be a sole-authored academic article later this year.
My Patricia A. McKillip reread continues. I’ve finished rereading Winter Rose and Something Rich and Strange. Right now I’m rereading The Bell at Sealey Head which is one of my favourite McKillip novels. Apart from that, I’ve finished Nghi Vo’s The Brides of High Hill. I love The Singing Hills Cycle so much and cannot wait to read the other novellas!
There were a couple of DNF’s but I’m nice enough to not want to talk about DNFs or books I do not like on this website (or anywhere online, to be honest). If the DNFs turn into belated reads I may talk about said books. But not if I loathe them. Because I do not want to harsh other people’s squee.
Chess Notes: A mixture of checkmates, stalemates, losses and winning by timeout. I’ve actually slowed down on the PvP aspect of chess lately because of intense academic writing plus not being so well (heat, stress etc) but I’ve been playing with the NPCs on the chess apps and doing puzzles/lessons. Nevertheless, I’ve remained in the crystal league on chess dotcom (I don’t really want to be in the Elite League, can do without that pressure!). I’m waaaay better at offense, reading chess notation (and checkmates) and have internalised several openings now (I still like the Reti opening but tend to default to d4). I do need to work on my middle game and my end game strategies, though. My ELO is somewhere between 690 to 720 (it yo-yos!) but my blitz rating remains quite low despite having quite a decent showing on division leaderboards. Time will likely fix that, if I’m consistent. That’s good enough for now. Chess is a great way to manage my stress and makes me happy.