My Reading 2009 #1

I decided to add what I read to this site, just to keep literary stuff in one place. To that end, here are some books I recently finished:

(Some time in the summer): Dune. This was fantastic and well-written. The movies (both versions) and the miniseries don't do it justice. For a sci-fi book, the world-building was amazing and consistent and the characters well-developed.

(Beginning of September): "Girls of Riyadh" by Rajaa Alsanea. Basically, it was Saudi Arabia gossip, though it did give some insight into their culture (from one person's perspective, anyway).

9/16/2009: "The Naked Sun" by Isaac Asimov. It was alright, I guess. I didn't believe a senior investigator would get so flustered by one naked spacer, though. The story seemed pretty innocent and naive, like comparing TNG to DS9. *ahem* Those are Star Trek references. Sorry.

10/5/2009: "Articles of War" by Nick Arvin. Elegant prose; colorful descriptions of a wide variety of situations; and a well-defined main character I couldn't care less about.

10/9/2009: "The Rescue" by Nicholas Sparks (same guy who wrote The Notebook, on which the movie was based). Cute story, but it alternated between feeling like a soap opera and feeling like I'm reading the second or third draft of someone's NaNoWriMo novel, where they're trying like crazy to make their word count.

(The end of October): "Dirty Play" by Sandra Brown. The characters in this book confused me at first, and the author played a maddening game of "I'll tell you later," but in the end, once I got with the tempo, it was a fun little ride.

That's all for now, though I've currently got three books underway. I suspect that November is not a good month for reading, however.