50 Book Challenge

Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher. 529 pages

Book 2 of the Codex Alera.

After the events of Furies of Calderon, young Tavi has the place he coveted at the Academy in the capital, but his lack of furycrafting makes him the target of bullies amonfg his fellow students. But with threats to the First Lord , Tavi's family and the survival of Alera itself emerging on several fronts, that's the least of his problems…

No matter how bad a day I've had I can read a Jim Butcher book secure in the knowledge that his characters will be having a much worse time than me. This one is no exception. Book three is on order :)

I'm still behind the pace for 50 books this year, but I have a couple more I'm almost done with and will be posting about soon.

Book #9 was "Moab is my Washpot" by Stephen Fry. I've liked Stephen Fry in just about everything I've seen him in and figured his memoir of growing up would be funny, and it is. Not everyone who can do comedic acting roles can also write funny, but since I knew he and Hugh Laurie wrote the material for their terrifically funny TV show "Fry & Laurie" I should have known it'd be a blast. My main complaint is that he ends it in his early 20s and doesn't get to some of the juicier bits later in life, but his recounting of the first 20 or so are pretty entertaining. It covers him coming of age and coming to terms with his homosexuality in his teens and his kleptomania and arrest for credit card fraud in his teens, his relationship with his bewildered middle class English mother and eccentric genius inventor father, and the very beginnings of his entry into the comedy circuit. Being a self-described "word nerd," I also enjoyed the word play and his relish of the English language throughout. A highly entertaining read.

Book #10 was "The Last Olympian" - the fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. I liked this book a lot and appreciated that Percy and his friends had some character growth over the arc of the book. He wrapped up many threads from earlier books in a satisfying way. I'm not sure if I want to read his second demi-god series, but I enjoyed this one a lot, especially the way the author digs deep for some of the more obscure mythology. I also think the reader for the series on audiobook - Jesse Bernstein - is just about perfect.

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