This last week has been crazy. I've been busy setting up a writing project and fixing up some formatting things here. I'm working on getting the homepage up and running, too, which has proven to be a bit of a technical challenge.

And of course, real life has gotten in the way a lot.

Anywho, here's what I'm reading now:

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

It's been a while since I've read anything Discworld, and I don't think I've ever actually finished a book. Which is shameful, really. There's so much that goes on at once that when it all fits together it really becomes something incredible. Take the first chapter, which starts off at the end of the scene, then goes into all the myriad reasons why it turned out that way. There are so many tiny coincidences that all add up, and somehow everything still manages to center on Twoflower and the Luggage. And Rincewind, of course, who is more dragged along by the story than by any willingness to have anything to do with the main plot. It's very different to see a main character with such resistance to actually being a main character; at several points, Rincewind is quite obviously pushed back into the thick of things against his objections.

It reminds me of a post I read once -- the idea was that what if there was a person born with hair that was a weird color, and they spent their entire life trying to avoid being the main character of an anime. That character is basically Rincewind. For a book where the characters are focused mainly on Twoflower and his strangeness as the first tourist in the area, it's interesting to see how Rincewind -- determined to remain a side character in the background -- keeps getting dragged back into the limelight.

Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

Still reading this one. At 25 pages a day, I'm about three-quarters of the way through. The differences between Tavi's adventures and those of the other characters are becoming more apparent; Tavi's chapters tend to be more PG-rated. It's an interesting difference that actually sets up the series as a coming-of-age story. It's a concept outlined by Joseph Campbell as a common part of a mythos: the idea is that the hero has the adventures they are ready for. In literature, this leads to the coming-of-age story -- a good example would be the Harry Potter series. I'm really interested in seeing how Tavi changes throughout the series.