Peer pressure. . . cont.

Following yesterday's update on what I'm watching, here comes

What I've Been Reading
Or, Half-Finished Books On My Nightstand

• Would you believe, I'm still trying to finish Death By Gaslight. Yeah, that link leads to a blog entry from September of last year. On the one hand, the book got lost among the boxes when I moved, and I just found it recently. On the other, I've been dreading the ending and so I keep putting it off -- I really only have about three chapters left to go.
  
  So far, I get the feeling that I might have enjoyed the story quite a bit more if the author had used original characters; a book that makes a protagonist of the evil nemesis and an antagonist of the good guy can be quite interesting. However, because these are characters that I have known and loved (except the nemesis) since elementary school, every time they behave out of ... well, out of character, it pulls me out of the story.
  
  Of course, I can also see where the author is coming from. It is ever so much easier to use well-established characters when writing in that the audience knows Sherlock Holmes; almost anyone can at least pull up a mental image of the Great Detective. It is almost certainly easier to write hero-as-antagonist when it's been firmly established for a century just how good the "good guy" is.
  
  But it's just not working for me in this book. I'll write more once I finish, but I get the feeling my opinion won't change much.
  

• The Dragon Lensman. A party favor from a comic-con themed party Ivy threw a few years back. Thin, yet hard to finish, but I hate to leave a book once I've started reading it.
  
  
• The Cheapskate Monthly Money Makeover. Because I am currently enjoying a brief period of respite between living paycheck-to-paycheck and being a broke graduate student -- it seems like a good time to read this book.
  
  
• The Final Solution. Loaned to me by a fellow book-lover who knows what a huge Sherlock Holmes fan I am.
  
  
• Rumspringa. A castoff from my soon-to-be Anthropology student little brother.
  
  
• Under The Black Flag. A birthday gift, I believe from my ex. I do love nonfiction works about things relating to what I love in fiction: this one's about pirates, and next on my list are biographies of Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle.
  

Not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Either "What I'm Listening To" ("To What I'm Listening"?) or "What I'm Doing".