This was a light reading week for me. I finished one book, The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory, I have a few pages left to go in Star Trek: The Great Adventures, Book 1 by James Blish, and I managed to crack the cover on Bernard Cornwell’s Vagabond. I have three books that are due back at the library and only one is finished. I’m doing my best to read what I have checked out before getting any more. I have a list of books I’m interested in but I’m restraining myself since I have several books at the house that I would like to finish before bringing more home.

My reading always tends to slow down in December. There are so many things to do — shopping, buying a tree, walking it home (We live in a city and, yes, we walk our tree home. We did it yesterday while it snowed. It seemed very fitting.), decorating, parties, visiting friends. I feel like I should be slowing down since it’s the end of the year but there are too many fun things to do to slow down now.

So, two very quick reviews before the tree decorating commences.

The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory — In a small town in Tennessee, a strange new disease attacks the population and the ones that survive begin transforming. In the end, survivors become one of three new human-like races — argos (giant like humans), betas (wine colored humans that show no emotion), and charlies (large, squat almost round humans). Pax, the son of the town’s preacher, was not infected, a skip as people in the town like to refer to the unaffected.  He moved away as soon as he could after the transformation. Now, he’s returning for the funeral of one of his best friends. What he finds in the town changes his life forever. The Devil’s Alphabet was an OK story. The writing was good but the main character, Pax, doesn’t ask a lot of questions and is all right with feeling left out and not understanding what people are talking about. I felt left out too and didn’t care for it. I’m not one for having everything explained to me but it’s nice to know what the characters are talking about.

Star Trek: The Great Adventures, Book 1 by James Blish — I still have a few pages left but did want to mention what fun it is. It’s a box set of 5 books all containing several short stories. Each story is an episode with all the Star Trek nuances that fans have become accustomed to. One small caveat, I think you need to be a fan to get the most out of it. I have watched a lot of Star Trek over the years so these are turning out to be fun, quick reads for me.

Well, onto a new week of reading.