Tikal!

This is not a book but a new game we finally got since it has been reprinted. It's basically an "Adventure through Mayan ruins" game, like Indiana Jones. We have not played it yet, although I looked through the game last night and read the rule book, so yes, I guess it does kind of count as a "What is SunPath Reading" entry.

It has the drama of "exploring" a jungle by each player drawing and placing a tile on the board, which initially is mostly just deep foliage, except for 4 explored areas - 2 temples, a base camp, and I think the 4th is a blank jungle.
After placing the tile, they "have 10 action points to explore Tikal" - which means that they can spend these points in a variety of ways - placing workers or leaders, establishing base camps, digging up treasure (treasure tiles have an area where the treasure tokens are placed - players who have a worker in that tile can grab treasure and get points fo it), moving workers or leaders, and "uncovering" temples. The uncovering is really interesting as physically you are actually placing numbered tiles and "building" the temple higher (kind of like in its cousin game Torres) but the concept is that you are "uncovering" them.
As the point totals get bigger the tiles are smaller so in the end the temple actually looks like a temple with some structure.
The game box is also nicely designed - each of the 3 sizes of temple tiles has its own place, as do the treasure tiles, etc.
The scoring rounds happen when a player draws a volcano - the hexes to explore are sorted by letter appearing on their backs, so the volcanoes I think appear in B, D, and F - the letters go to G, so there are 3 scoring rounds plus the final scoring round at the end.
So I am looking forward to playing this if Dave is not too tired after coming back from the As game, and this is certainly distracting me from working....

Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King

So I was trying to upload the book cover using BloggerBot but it didn't seem to be working, maybe because they now have Blogger Images.

Anyway, I loved this book - I got it as an advance reader's copy courtesy of Dave and Kepler's -- it's the 8th book in a series about Mary Russell, a strong woman who's also a detective in her own right, but who happens to be married to Sherlock Holmes.
This story takes place in San Francisco, where Holmes and Russell go to settle the estate of Russell's parents, who died in a tragic accident which Russell blames herself for.
But of course a mystery unfolds and not everything is as it seems.

I was initially scoffing at this since King doesn't have to work very hard to establish Holmes' character - she gets a free partner for Russell, whom everyone is already familiar with.
However, I changed my tune when I got to the part of the book that is third person in Holmes' voice. Most of the book is first person from Russell, but it is really fun to read something that is coming from Holmes' perspective, as even in the original tales we had it filtered through the eyes of Watson. (and this story is told while Conan Doyle is publishing Watson's stories - apparently Conan Doyle is cast more as Watson's literary agent than as the actual author).

I read on Amazon that this is the first book with a part told from Holmes' POV - the previous 7 books in the series were all from Mary's standpoint.
Very fun also that it is set in San Francisco, just 18 years after the big 1906 earthquake, and people are "discovering" things like crossword puzzles, etc. A lot of entertaining details from the time period. Although one of the Amazon readers pointed out that a big plot point hinges on Mary's father planning to enlist in the army in 1914 when the US was not even in WWI yet. Details...Details...