{"id":1837,"date":"2008-12-25T10:32:22","date_gmt":"2008-12-25T17:32:22","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-25T11:14:23","modified_gmt":"2008-12-25T18:14:23","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/node\/1837\/","title":{"rendered":"Devices and Desires &#8211; K. J. Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And so it is Christmas. As every year and every holiday I feel like I&#8217;m not up to the task, so I just wait it to pass, thinking the next will be different and me being ready.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime I ordered and received another book:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cesspit.net\/misc\/bookcovers\/devices.gif\"><\/img><\/p>\n<p>On a forum I was criticized because I opened a thread complaining about a book cover, being told that it&#8217;s stupid to buy a book just because of the cover. In fact I never do it. What I do instead is spend a lot of time researching all the editions around the world so that I can pick the one I like the most. The choice to buy the book happens before. Then, when I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m buying it, I start to look for the best edition and if I&#8217;m not satisfied I even happen to buy different copies of the same book.<\/p>\n<p>In this case I&#8217;m rather content. This is the UK edition from Orbit. I have of the same author The Colour in the Steel, still from Orbit, and that edition isn&#8217;t so great. It is a cheap mass market book, rather shallow, barely passable cover and an ugly typeset. Instead I was surprised by this book. It&#8217;s fatter (700 pages), the cover has a very good style and textured paper, the typeset is elegant, paper quite good. It simply look much more &#8220;competent&#8221;, and adds to the flavor of reading :)<\/p>\n<p>I have the habit of reading about twenty pages of every book I buy, especially because months and years may pass before I start the &#8216;serious&#8217; reading. So I read some pages to quench some curiosity and frame the book a bit better. First impression was &#8211; Oh god, not fencing again. The book I&#8217;m currently reading already deals with fencing and the author walks a fine line balancing the technical details and precise descriptions without boring me. She (author is a she) was always successful but I was worried that I was going to read another trilogy that looked too similar. Instead she wins again. Few pages and it grabbed my attention. The five books that she wrote between the one I&#8217;m reading and this one justify the improvement in writing style. Somewhat more balanced and elegant, but still triggering a familiar feel of an author I know (and the reason why I bought another book). Again I found the slight, witty humor and finely crafted, intelligent characterization. Can&#8217;t go wrong.<\/p>\n<p>But it will have to wait. I was just too curious and wanted this edition, but the &#8216;serious&#8217; read will have to wait as I have already four books that I&#8217;m reading, much more on the pile, and still the whole trilogy to finish from the same author.<\/p>\n<p>Two more books on the way, drifting further from the genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And so it is Christmas. As every year and every holiday I feel like I&#8217;m not up to the task, so I just wait it to pass, thinking the next will be different and me being ready. In the meantime I ordered and received another book: On a forum I was criticized because I opened [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-1837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cesspit.net\/drupal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}