books this week - whining on account of rain, darkness

The rain last week cut into my reading time quite a lot.
I don't like this. Over the summer, since I acquired a
computer (with the related time sinks of livejournal and
AIM), most of my reading has been happening outside. This
is great way to spend my commute time, much of which
involves walking and waiting for buses. (Fortunately,
my visual difficulties with moving pictures on movie or
tv screens don't kick in when I'm walking, reading
something I'm holding.)

This past week, half my commutes were in the rain. 2 of
them were in extremely heavy rain. I take heart from the
proverb, "There is no such thing as inclement weather, only
inappropriate attire." Nevertheless, I know of very, very,
few books that will survive being read in these conditions.
(And I don't consider them suitable for buses.) I'm also
concerned that it will be getting dark earlier, interfering
with reading even in dry weather.

Maybe books on tape would help. I don't like the idea...
having a stranger read to me always seems awkward and
uncomfortable, and they usually leave out the wrong bits
and go much too slowly. I don't even have an appropriate
tape player. Are there inexpensive ones with waterproof
cases?

books this week

Alan Garner's The Owl Service. I LOVED this.
The fantastic elements were subtle, but pervasive. The
real focus of the story seemed to be a sense of place,
and about growing up and learning to "know your place"
in a deeply, sadly, class-locked world. A heavier hand
would have ruined it, I think, but it was gorgeous.

It reminded me very vividly of The Snowman's Children,
by someone whose name starts with H. I read it last winter,
and it was the first book that ever made me CARE about sense
of place. Lots of books spend enormous amounts of text
detailing sense of place, as if it matters to the reader.
It never mattered to me before. (I always thought those
travelogue-mysteries were silly.) But _The Snowman's Children_
was set when and where I grew up, and the place mattered as
much as a character. More. As much as the vaguely defined
sense of mesoscale menace that adults recognize and children
don't.

An Imperfect Spy I don't know if this is a mystery.
It read more like a series of LiveJournal posts. Maybe my
perception has something to do with my reading it half a
chapter at a time, while waiting for buses and so forth.
Amanda Cross seems to be having a wonderful time ranting
about academic politics. There were moments I had to close
the book, chortling, and walk over to the nearest building
so I could lean on it and pound on it, weak-kneed with
laughter.

Steven Barnes Blood Brothers I'm disappointed by
this. There's nothing grossly wrong with it, but there's
nothing particularly right about it either.

Elizabeth Moon, Speed of Dark. The character of
Lou is really impressive. It's really hard to write
sympathetic viewpoint character with autism, or even
Asperger's syndrome. (Greg Egan has tried. Personally,
I don't think he's succeeded, but readers with much lower
standards for "sympathetic" might disagree.) The big
problem with the book is the nonsense villians. They're
evil because they're evil - they will take all kinds of
risks for pure spite and malice. Because they're evil,
they don't need actual plausible motivations.