Over the past few weeks, I have managed to cram in a fair amount of reading. A number of the books I read, based on recommendations from various sorts, I’m not about to mention. Some of them I decided not even to finish. Of books currently available, I enjoyed Louise Marley’s collection of stories [Absalom’s Mother] and The Hercules Text by Jack McDevitt, although that is one of his earlier works. I also read the advance reading copies of two other books. The first of those was Only the Stones Survive, by Morgan Llywelyn, which is a story about the last chieftain of the Tuatha de Daanan, the ancient Irish people, during the period of the invasion of Ireland by the Gaels. It won’t be published until next January, however. The other book I liked was Allen Steele’s Arkwright, a science fiction novel that spans the time from the first World Science Fiction Convention to the first human interstellar colony. It’s scheduled for publication next March.