A Lion Among Men

Just a tidbit of information - Gregory Maguire's A Lion Among Men (book three in the Wicked Years) is due out on October 14. If you've never read Wicked, or it's sequel Son of a Witch - what rock have you been living under? The man is a brilliant writer. I could only hope to have a 1/3 of the talent that he has.

His books in order of appearance:

• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - a truly brilliant book.
• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - a retelling of the Cinderella story from the perspective of one of the ugly stepsisters. Again, brilliant.
• Lost - a somewhat retelling of the inspiration for Dicken's A Christmas Carol. I truly hated the book, but read it because he wrote it. Not brilliant, at all, at least in my opinion.
• Mirror, Mirror - his delightful retake on Snow White. Hints of brilliance, but not as good as Wicked. Still, the genius is evident. Definitely an excellent read.
• Son of a Witch - the long-awaited sequel to Wicked. The brilliance shined in this book as well.
• A Lion Among Men - the tale of the Cowardly Lion. I'll update this entry once I've read the book. Yes, I'll have it on the release date and begin reading it that night.

I read voraciously at times. There are some authors that I just have to read: Gregory Maguire, Guy Gavriel Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry, Tigana (my ultimate favorite book of all time), The Lions of Al-Rassan, Ysabel - and a few more books), Mary Higgins Clark (sorry, but I absolutely love her mysteries), Lisa M. Goldstein (who hasn't written a book in years), Stephanie Kallos (Broken for You - go buy a box of Kleenex, set aside a weekend, and totally immerse yourself in the shining brilliance of this novel - truly, truly phenomenal), Carol Goodman (The Lake of Dead Languages, Ghost Orchid - just to name a few) and so many others as well.

What am I trying to say with this blog entry? Absolutely nothing. I'm just encouraging people to read, read, and read some more. Go outside your normal reading, take a chance on a different genre. Read until you can read no more. Explore the literary world - every genre; pick up a book because of it's cover, flip through it's pages - you just never know where brilliance might lurk.

S