I had a good quarter, reading-wise.

That's partly my nephew's fault. I borrowed a couple of books from him (the Inheritance trilogy by Christopher Paolini), but it became a race between my own ability to finish those two while he finished some other book--both of us ready to start the third volume that was recently published. In the end, his parents took him on vacation and even though I won the race, he had already taken the book with him to Hawaii. I have another three-volume fantasy set waiting to go, but I don't feel like juggling two at once, so I've been reading nothing but Serious Literature and Serious Non-Fiction since then.

And looking over my recent choices, I realize that I have a real predilection for 19th-century novels-especially Russian novels. And I finally got a chance to read War and Peace, one of the books that has always intimidated me!

So, here's what I've been reading in the first quarter of this year:

• Civilization and Its Enemies; Lee Harris
  
• The Curse of Chalion; Lois McMaster Bujold
  
• Paladin of Souls; Lois McMaster Bujold
  
• Vanity Fair; William Makepeace Thackeray
  
• No god but God; Reza Aslan
  
• Year's Best SF 11; David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds.
  
• Bulfinch's Greek and Roman Mythology; Thomas Bulfinch
  
• Will and the World; Stephen Greenblatt
  
• Eragon; Christopher Paolini
• Eldest; Christopher Paolini
• Nana; Emile Zola
  
• Ever Since Darwin; Steven Jay Gould
  
• War and Peace; Leo Tolstoy

CDs listened to today:

• The Guillemots: Through the Windowpane
  
• Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
• Public Enemy: Greatest Misses
• Charles Wuorinen: String Trio
• Luigi Nono: Como una fuerza y luz