I shifted to doing individual comments back in October 2008, but I still haven’t figured out what to do with this weekly wrap-up.  I tend to share interesting quotations on Teaser Tuesday where a larger audience (I assume) will enjoy them, and that and the weekly preview were its main functions once I started updating several times a week. I also like them for indexing purposes: the shorter lists are easier to use than scanning archives for every single title.

I avoid quantitative ratings in my comments/reviews in favor of gut reactions, but rating books on Shelfari has lessened my resistance somewhat. I still don’t like trying to stick numbers on art, but just for the sake of mixing things up a bit, I’m going to try including a rating scale on these weekly reviews. I’ll use a ten point system with decimal points to narrow things down.  Don’t take it too seriously, though. I just type numbers in until it feels right.

1 is Dismal, 10 Outstanding and 11 is Star Trek Destiny.

Last week:

• Seize the Fire, Michael A. Martin.  6.8
• Rough Beasts of Empire, David R. George III 8.2
• The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell. 9.5
• Over the Hills,  7.7
• In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson. 9.0 . I haven’t done full comments on this yet, though I finished it Monday night. I wanted to delay it until well after the annual review was up.

This next week’s potentials…

• The Evolution of God, Robert Wright. I am halfway through and generally enjoying it with the occasional caveat. 
• The Age of Absurdity, Michael Foley
• Star Trek TNG: Reunion, Michael Jan Friedman — probably. This is the original Stargazer novel, which sees Picard reunited with his old comrades. Friedman later wrote a series of books set during Picard’s first years commanding it.
• Redcoat, Bernard Cornwell. I could not find the Arthurian stories series — not a single book in it, even though they were all logged in.  I got this instead.
• The Mind of Egypt, Jan Assmann