But I continued reading, of course, and it got better. And then it got good. And then...part one ended and I dutifully stopped reading and turned to Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, the first book of the second Foundation trilogy. (The prescribed reading order according to Someone Or Other.)
Speaking of which...who writes a trilogy that's kind of a prequel but actually a sequel to 1 and 1/4th of the original author's prequels...and which weaves in and out of two of the other books in the series...not to mention that it's written by three different writers. That's really pretty fucked up, ennit?
I thought so.
Anyway...Foundation's Fear started out pretty slow. Benford hit a lot of bad notes. And I was just piddling along, not really all that motivated to get through it. I even stopped completely for a while to check out Famous Men Who Never Lived (by K Chess), which came in for me at the library...but after getting halfway through that I was ready to get back to Benford. (Interesting premise, not very well written. Don't know if I even care enough about it to go back and finish it off. Which is kind of funny, because I was so hot to read this when I first heard about it that I was seriously considering buying the Kindle version, which is something I rarely do for full price books. Matter of fact, I don't know if I've ever done that.)
And within a few pages of resuming Foundation's Fear, I encountered Joan of Arc. And Voltaire. Well. Voltaire was still fresh in my mind from Buckle's comments on him (mostly effusive praise), and Joan was still in my mind from her (to me) unexpected appearance in Shake-speare's Henry VI, Part 1, so that was happy for me. And the book got pretty interesting...though it did veer away from Hari Seldon completely for about a hundred pages, which was strange...and probably not the ideal for structural integrity. But it was good enough for me.
ADDENDUM (8/12/19): Well, that was awhile back. Since then I finished reading Foundation's Fear...which never really clicked for me. And started reading Forward the Foundation (by Isaac Asimov)...and it was just not clicking, either. I abandoned it for awhile, then started back up a couple of weeks back and have been getting into it. I might be able to see this Foundation Project through after all. Of course, I still have those two New Trilogy books to get through, and all I can say about that is that I hope Greg Bear and David Brin are up to the challenge in a way that Gregory Benford wasn't. But first, back to FtF. News as it happens.
AS IT HAPPENS (8/30/19): Finished Forward the Foundation a minute ago, and it ended well, I'm happy to say. I think relegating it to bathroom book status really helped, as that meant I was only reading a few pages per day, but was reading every day. Maybe I'll try that out on Foundation as well, because that's what's walking up to the plate right now. Which is pretty exciting. I last read that book 44 or so years ago.
More news as it happens, of course.
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