The Courts of Chaos - reading

Finished "The Courts of Chaos" by Roger Zelazny. While this is essentially the denouement of Corwin's story, it is an interesting and fitting end that wraps things up nicely at the edge of chaos.

A Hologram for the King - reading

Finished "A Hologram for the King" by David Eggers. Spoiler alert: nothing happens. Seriously. The main character, Alan Clay, doesn't learn or grow. If anything he shrinks, having gone from a manufacturer/designer who cares about what he did to being a schlock salesman who seems happy to leave the work to his one-dimensional coworkers. The entire time I found myself not liking the character and not caring one way or the other what happened to him (which as I said above is nothing anyway).

The "plot" is about a team of salespeople who go into King Abdullah Economic City ("KAEC", pronounced like "cake") to sell their wondrous hologram technology. They arrive, set up, wait around, get bored and find other things to do. Alan finds himself making the same mundane mistakes of his entire mundane existence. Even when something could have happened, nothing happens. Plus: he's impotent, so even when you think something might happen with the naked woman right next to him, nothing happens. I really don't understand how this could have an average of 3+ stars on GoodReads.com.

tl;dr: Don't waste your time.