Out Of Shelf, Out Of Mind

My books are still in their boxes. They entered these boxes earlier this year when I moved and, well, I never unpacked them. I am reminded of this brute fact because a friend asked to borrow some books that I know I own, but for the life of me I cannot find them, though I did find some books which I didn’t know I owned. Huh.

On that note; either I’m getting stupider or Justina Robson’s Living Next Door To The God Of Love is a little denser than I was expecting. I had to take a week-long break from reading it and when I came back I was thoroughly confused. I intend to exploit this unexpected pleasure and read it again from the beginning. Until someone gives me Endymion (two people have offered so far) this is all I have on hand to read.

Until I wrote that sentence I think I honestly believed it to be true. But then, of course, one stares at the words, and one thinks, wait, that can’t possibly… It’s not even remotely true. Not only do I have three hundred and eighty-seven megabytes of downloaded unread texts, not counting comics, but I have only this very evening discovered, while digging through the boxes, that I also own books that I have not in fact read.

Many of them, I think, are books I felt I ought to read. The category of the acquired-but-unread ranges from the comparatively lowbrow but essential genre reading (say, Delany’s Dhalgren or the entire Moorcock back catalogue) to the likes of David Foster Wallace or Thomas Pynchon. And Dostoevsky. I found a copy of The Brothers Karamazov lying forlornly in one of the bigger boxes, sandwiched between Marcus Aurelius and a Fritjof Capra book which -come to think of it- I haven’t read either. I was halfway through Crime and Punishment earlier this year, before I moved, and now I can’t even find it. And I had forgotten I was reading it.

Started, not finished, and then forgotten that I’d started. Amnesia gives us a further subset. Moby-Dick, for example. Some non-fiction, including the Dawkins-Dennett-Harris New Atheist unholy trinity.

(It suddenly strikes me that this is the ideal post to namecheck Pierre Bayard’s Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus, which would be especially delicious since I haven’t read that either. Nor do I have a copy.)

Alors, unexpectedly cheerful fact: far more importantly than a few bouts of amnesia, I have discovered a vast pile of unread books in my possession and am not actually hostage to Dan Simmons.

Now I just have to get some goddamn bookshelves.

Soaking It Up Like A Sponge

I don’t know how I forgot this one, but in the last few weeks I also finally got around to reading Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which was every bit as good as everyone says. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a comic-book geek in any case.

Speaking of comics: I’m enjoying the SMASHiness of World War Hulk, god help me. And I see Thor’s back. Wasn’t gone for very long, was he? Yawn. The Dark Tower comics are more like the books than I expected, which is a good thing. I keep obsessively re-reading Kabuki – The Alchemy by David Mack, though this one isn’t new. And in current DCdom, I’m not terribly impressed by Sinestro Corps and still not following Countdown properly. Evil Kyle is so totally not working. Also, why are they shuffling Flashes like a deck of cards? Just pick one… Any one. Joss Whedon’s Buffy Season Eight is … well, it’s okay so far. Vaguely Buffyesque, though I’m having a little difficulty recognizing people beyond the core characters. I’ll tell you what’s good, though: Mike Carey’s Crossing Midnight is really going places. I missed the entire Annihilation mega-event, and perhaps because of that I was pleasantly surprised by Annihilation Conquest: Prologue. Not least because Moondragon and the new Quasar -of all people- as a gay couple seems to actually work, and hopefully will not end with one of them getting killed and the other one crying in the rain. Arcana is rubbish. Avengers (both New and Mighty) was a little meh for a while, though I do want to try and follow the upcoming Skrull-invasion mega-event. (Why? I don’t know, I’m compelled. Anyway, it’s not like I’m buying this stuff for money or anything.) Oh, and another unexpected treat is Shazam – The Monster Society of Evil by none other than the magnificent Jeff Smith, he of Bone fame. And I actually am enjoying the extra-vile The Boys by Garth Ennis. It’s very Ennis, only more so.

Television: watched Battlestar Galactica season three. Weak overall with a few nice episodes, I thought. So… goddamn… cheesy. I seem to remember liking the early part of  the season better, but it never really recovered from all the filler episodes in the middle. Unfortunately, I could give a fuck whether Adama Jr. and Starbuck end up boinking or not. And I like All Along the Watchtower as much as the next guy, but that was a rather bad cover version. That said, the finale was… an interesting choice of last-minute-twist. Tigh and the Chief are the only characters I actually like, so expect me to be voting Cylon from next season onwards.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Heroes-hate on certain feeds of my acquaintance. After watching Heroes and Battlestar Galactica back-to-back in the last few months, I have to say: man, I wish Lost was back already. Or Prison Break, or something. Or I need to start watching this Dexter thing everyone’s on about. Or Bones. People are recommending Bones. If it sucks, please, people, tell me now before I risk my fragile brain.

And speaking of risking my fragile brain, isn’t there another Harry Potter coming out or something? Ugh.

Getting A Round Tuit

It’s all square tuits these days.

Old joke. Was taught to me by a gypsy. I tell no lie.

I’ve been trying to write this short story. A friend of mine is editing an anthology and demanded that I produce something. I agreed. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

All right. It’s a little more complicated than that. She has in her possession a handful of first drafts I shared with her a year or two back, and is holding me hostage by threatening to publish one of them. I don’t think she’s actually serious, but those stories are so embarrassingly awful that I would feel much safer actually writing something I wouldn’t be ashamed to see in print. Just in case.

So this short story is taking up my evenings. (It’s got the would-be novel on hold.) I’ve written 1556 words, ending mid-sentence where I ran out of steam a few evenings ago. My notes and first-draft doodles come to about three times as much, and I’ve taken to carrying a big yellow legal pad around with me to write down more notes. The more notes I take the less the short story wants to stay a short story and the more it wants to turn into, I don’t know, a novella. Which is really a roundabout way of saying that I haven’t mustered the discipline to tell a story quickly and efficiently. I’m either green or rusty, I don’t know which. (Both?)

And of course I’ve used this time to discover a new forum that has all sorts of interesting threads to read, catch up on eight hundred unread feed items, open twenty-eight new tabs in Firefox, each one something I absolutely must read. Oh, and read books. In the past two days, I’ve read Hal Duncan’s Vellum, Justina Robson’s Mappa Mundi, most of Accelerando by Charles Stross, and Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (which last was somewhat reminiscent of another book I liked, David Brin’s Kiln People). I’d be hard pressed to say which of the above named books I liked most. (It’s too soon, anyway… I’m still high from reading them all back-to-back.) In a way they’re all about the same thing: identity. I recommend them all most highly to anyone with even a vague interest in sf.

And of course, whenever I read a book (especially all four of the above, which were all good) I have to detox myself. Make sure I’m not unconsciously imitating the style, the themes, the devices, the language of writers I enjoy and admire.

(While on the subject of books: I bought N. three books for her birthday: One Man’s Bible by Gao Xingjian and two Coetzees. She picked them out herself. I feel terribly lowbrow when I compare her reading list with mine. To be fair, I intend to read at least the Xingjian book when she’s done with it. I did start on that one before I gave it to her, but only had time for a few pages.)

Structured procrastination is supposed to be finding the right things to avoid doing: things which seem to (but don’t) have deadlines and seem to be (but aren’t) awfully important. Now I need to find something, some seemingly vital task, to fit into that to-do slot so that I would be writing my short story in order to avoid getting around to it.

Leonine, II

This is something of a followup to my previous “Ted Leo singing cover songs” post, and it’s pretty old news now so everyone’s probably already seen it, but I’m sitting around being bummed out and this always cheers me up. Ted Leo, covering Since You’ve Been Gone and Maps.

Gathering Moss

I just discovered Tumblr -yet another blogging service- and signed up to it on a whim. See the “Linkage” block on the sidebar. Of course, this might be one of those extremely short-lived geek things. Still, anything short of actually writing is something I can spend time on. I actually finished a whole campaign of Battle for Wesnoth. I haven’t spent this much time on a game since… uh, the nineties. Not that I was a huge gamer back then or anything.

I’m a little bummed out about my own procrastination. Always some goddamn thing -and if not some goddamn thing, it’s the goddamn migraines. I am now on a whole new slew of ze drugs. And ze drugs do work. Sort of.