I know you don't really wanna unleash the dragon

[venta]

Oxfam are bastards, and they are in league with the buses of Reading.

Y'see, whenever I get to the bus stop (which isn't that often, due to cycling most days[*]) I do it slightly too late to catch the bus which is departing. Which means I have to wait around for ten minutes. And I can either sit about in a bus shelter... or go into the Oxfam bookshop. Just to have a look around, you understand. And pass the time.

Except Oxfam - as well as making the bus run ahead of time so I miss it - have got a habit of putting books with interesting covers at about my eye-height just as you walk in the door. Don't judge a book by its cover, y'say? I find it often works quite well. I originally bought my favourite-ever book because it had a cool cover.

So, interesting black and white cover? Silly-sounding plot? Dragons? Oh, go on then.

The ten minutes' reading I got in on the bus confirmed initial suspicions: I expect the rest of the book to be silly, lightweight, and rather enjoyable.

I'm not meant to be spending money on books, though. Not even charity second-hand ones :(

[*] But not today. Thanks to a rather strange slide-and-kneel-down movement I did on Kilburn High Road last night giving me a sore knee. The odd things was, the knee-pavement impact wasn't even very great, and I had time to think "gosh, that was an odd manouevre, thank goodness I didn't bang my knee hard, and I must look quite silly" before I got round to thinking "aaaargh, that's actually really painful".

Comments

[condign.livejournal.com]

My wife loved these, and kind of took exception to the whole "silly" thing. :) That said, she got the first one free on Kindle, which would seem to indicate that Novik's publishers are fully aware that they're crack, and they're operating on the "schoolyard dealer" theory of marketing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm now half-way through Temeraire (and have put it down to work hard, even though I'm working at home - see me be grown up!) I am enjoying it hugely, but if the idea of an Aviation Corps swooping about on giant dragons doesn't strike Mrs Condign as a little silly, then... well, then I guess she and I have differing definitions of "silly" :)

I didn't mean it as a bad thing...