Every so often I want something escapist and easy to read, often in the Sci Fi fantasy line, so I picked up The Magician's Guild in the second hand bookshop at Fiveways, still one of the best 2nd bookshops there is. It's readable and I feel a bit miserly and in saying that it's well enough written as it's got a good flowing style and nothing that makes yo think "ew" don't write that. There is some problem with scale which always happens with these kind of novels - the protagonist is often young and poor, in a an authoritarian country, with minor tyrants in the domestic setting and bigger tyrants ruling above. Often this is dealt with by making the hero work in the kitchens of a huge ruling castle. Canavan adopts the ruling city approach, and actually makes the "tyrants" - the Magicians - a mixture of hateful and sympathetic characters which is interesting, but the problem of scale does arise - just how powerful are the wizards ( and the king they rule for), and where are the larger scale politics? That said I'm enjoying it, it's a Lord of the Rings level read, intelligent enough without being stretching. It feels like I'm damning it with faint praise, but that isn't my intent.
The Letters of Virginia Woolf (vol 6) I picked up in the Open Market bookshop - more geared to first editions and the literary pile, and it's fascinating, and makes me think how much we've lost by having phones and email and Skype instead of letters.
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