Glen Cook is very shy. I don’t think he’d be comfortable having anyone watch him do anything. But he is a very nice man. If you go to SF Cons, he sometimes has a table selling used books.
One of my girlfriends was the inspiration for Tinnie Tate (no kidding, you’d recognize her if you met her). I love the Garrett books.
As to what I’m reading. Michael Moore’s Angry White Men (he reminds me that I am, unbelievably, a centrist). The Six Sigma Way. And Windy City Blues.
(I’m a big Margaret Atwood fan. Blind Assasin is very good. If you like that and Handmaids Tale, try Robber Bride or Alias Grace. Sometimes she can get a little difficult).
I’m finally finishing up Journey to the West, which I’ve been reading off and on (though admittedly more off than on) for the past 6 months. Journey… is a classic Chinese fantasy novel about a monk traveling with his three disciples to the Western Heaven to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures. It’s stories are very popular and well-known in China, roughly equivalent to Grimm’s fairy tales in the western world. It’s quite long, 100 chapters and about 1,800 pages. I’m on Chapter 91 now.
On deck, I’ve got The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess and How to Reassess your Chess. I’m a rather poor casual chess player and I’ve finally decided to seriously study the game, play more, and get better. I’m already making some improvement, as my game has gone from embarrassingly incompetent to incompetent.
…why is no one mentioning anne rice? In the past week i’ve reread the vampire lestat and i just finished the bell jar (sylvia plath) both fiction… though the bell jar is put down as autobiographical fiction
Well, I’m taking my PhD orals in 28 hours, so obviously I shouldn’t be reading the SDMB, but I am. I’ll probably spend the rest of the day slogging through Piers Plowman once again (ugh) and reviewing sonnets.
Real books:
The Forsyte Saga (slowly, so I don’t spoil the TV version)
A book of short stories called Shakespearean Mysteries. Some gems, many of them truly awful – and both the historical research and the editing are appalling. (My favorite mistake was a reference to Marlowe’s “Homer and Leander” … which, come to think of it, probably is the poem Marlowe would have liked to write if he could have gotten away with it, but obviously not what the author meant.)
[quote]
I’ll probably spend the rest of the day slogging through Piers Plowman once again (ugh)[/qoute]
You have my sympathies. That is probably the dullest book I have ever read.
I’m currently reading Philip Kitcher’s Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, very good but hardly an opponenet worthy of the man’s talents.
What’s worse, one of my committee members wrote a book about it – which begins with a reference to “the excitement one feels when opening Piers Plowman …” Alas, he was not being sarcastic.
I’m still on my Victorian Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror kick (and before Team Pedantic shows up, yes I realize these are not all Victorian and perhaps none of them are, but most people understand what I’m talking about). Right now it’s Dracula by Bram Stoker, which is interesting and good, but is slow going. (The two previous entries were Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales by H. P. Lovecraft. I find it difficult to read more than one book at a time.
Next up I think I’ll take a break from the old stuff. I have a few books on Buddhism I want to look at, and I also have a collection of the Lord Darcy adventures by Randall Garret. There’s also The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay that I got halfway through before being distracted by something else, so I need to start over again.
On the side I have a stack of EC Comics reprints I’m working through, some old issues of “Doctor Who Magazine” I’m reading largely for the comic strips, the d20 Modern RPG rulebook, and some other Doctor Who related books.
Stone Of Farewell, book two of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series by Tad Williams. I’ll probably slip Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in again before I start the third book of the Memory , Sorrow, and Thorn series, since the movie is coming next week. And after the series, I will probably read Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams.
Right now, I’m reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson where he recounts his attempt at walking the Appalachian Trail. It’s very funny, especially when he describes the antics of some of the people he meets.
I just finished Coraline by Neil Gaiman which is about a girl who goes through a door in her flat and finds another flat that is almost like her own, but different in a sinister way. She meets a woman with black button eyes and long, sharp fingernails who claims she is Coraline’s other mother, and she won’t allow her to leave. It’s unsettling and the writing is very evocative.
I’m still trapped in textbook purgatory and am currently reading Human Physiology and Mechanisms of Disease (Guyton and Hall), which is not particularly well written. I am, therefore, supplementing it with Human Anatomy & Physiology (Marieb), which presents the material in a more readable fashion and has far superior graphics. (I’m apparently a visual learner.)
The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle. It’s three books about this one little family in Barrytown, Ireland, and they’re great. The Commitments follow Jimmy Rabitte Jr. as he and his friends bring Soul to Dublin; The Snapper focuses on Jimmy’s sister, Sharon, who gets knocked up by what can best be describbed as her father’s “arch nemesis,” and the trials of hiding the father’s identity, as well as just being a single 21 year old dealing with pregnancy. The story I’m currently reading, The Van focuses more on Jimmy Sr. and his setting up a Fish and Chips van after being canned from his job. I haven’t gotten too far into the Van yet, but the entire trilogy so far has been a great delight, and a welcome departure from my typical fantasy stories.
Right now, The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft. Before that, Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson and the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander (I think). In the future, Stalky and Co. by Rudyard Kipling and The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Currently reading (for the 5th time) “A Bone In My Flute” by Holly Johnson. It’s the autobiography of Holly Johnson, the lead singer of the 80’s group “Frankie Goes To Hollywood”. It is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read. AFAIK, it’s not available in the US. I bought my copy at Londons Heathrow airport. It made the time on my flight from London>Washington D.C. go by so fast.
Just finished The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, and this morning I started Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I am also forced to go back and reread Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to pump up a dissertation chapter.
