Arrived today from amazon:
Babylon Sisters by Paul Di Filippo
posted by kristin at 7:49 PM

Last night was another selection from the lovely pile of half-finished books by my bed. David Brin's Otherness, a book of short stories and essays. From what I remember they were generally pretty good, but I think he's better as a novel-writer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the last essay is about memetics (and specific memes that seem to be spreading these days).

Today I stopped by Powells briefly to pick up Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk to read for a just-forming book group. (We'll see if this one lasts any longer than the last).

I found out tonight that Jared Diamond is going to be doing a lecture here in Portland in February. I think I'll have to get tickets.

As soon as I manage to finish Guns, Germs & Steel I think I need to finish off my backlog of Jonathan Carroll books in preparation for his reading here in a couple of weeks.
posted by kristin at 11:53 PM

I was looking at my amazon order history today and learned a few embarassing facts:

The first non-technical book that I ordered from amazon.com and have not yet read is Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker (ordered on February 26, 1997)
The first non-technical book that I ordered from amazon.com have not even started is Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (ordered on April 30, 1997)


posted by kristin at 1:37 PM

Arrived today from amazon:
The Chronoliths Robert Charles Wilson

Purchased today from B&N:
The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski
posted by kristin at 10:10 PM

User Interface Design for Programmers (Joel Spolsky) was actually quite readable for a technical book. A lot of it was repeat of things I'd already heard, but they were all things it was worth hearing again.
posted by kristin at 11:51 AM

I took a brief detour away from Guns, Germs and Steel to read Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick. All I have to say in response is that I'm glad I'm not schizophrenic. Gubble gubble.
posted by kristin at 10:56 PM

Apparently my post about this the other night didn't quite go through... Saturday night I finished Howard Waldrop's Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, a book of short stories that had been sitting partially finished in my bedroom for months. As always with his short stories, they were quite enjoyable. Some SF, some not.
posted by kristin at 10:52 AM

And I did also go to the Tanasbourne Library book sale today:

Paul Theroux - Traveling the World
Dallas Lore Sharp - Where Rolls the Oregon
Great Books: Shakespeare II (for my parents.. though none of use could remember if they're missing Shakespeare I or II and the set is still in their basement in a box)

posted by kristin at 9:39 PM

I resisted... a little, but I went back to the booksale.

I.J. Gelb - A Study of Writing
Jacqueline Carey - Kushiel's Chosen
J.E. Thompson - Arithmetic for the Practical Man
J.E. Thompson - Geometry for the Practical Man
J.E. Thompson - Calculus for the Practical Man
J.E. Thompson - Trigonometry for the Practical Man
J.E. Thompson - Algebra for the Practical Man
Guy Gavriel Kay - A Song for Arbonne
Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra
George Foy - The Last Harbor
Smoke Blanchard - Walking up and Down in the World
Allen Kurzweil - A Case of Curiosities
Booker T. Washington - Up from Slavery
Julie E. Czerneda - In the Company of Others
posted by kristin at 9:10 PM

Last night I finished Robertson Davies' The Merry Heart, a collection of essays, lectures, etc about books, reading, writing... I'd been working on it off and on (mostly off) for a few years but finally sat down to read the last couple of sections. Some of the pieces I probably wasn't the ideal audience for (like the long one on Dickens -- I've only read 1 of his books). I'm not quite sure if it made me want to tackle any of his fiction or not.

Today on the train I finished John Crowley's The Deep. The beginning actually annoyed me (he does lots of shifts to different characters with no break other than a new paragraph between them) but I liked it a little better at the end. It was his first novel though and he's obviously improved since then.
posted by kristin at 8:45 PM

Purchased yesterday at the Multnomah County Library book sale for a grand total of $38.25

Mark Helprin - Memoir from Antproof Case
Ian Williams - The U.N. for Beginners
Jane Smiley - Moo
Frank McCourt - Angela's Ashes
Alberto Manguel (editor) - Black Water: the Anthology of Fantastic Literature
John Robbins - Diet for a New America
Anais Nin - Little Birds
Marge Piercy - Three Women
Rick Moody - Purple America
Sandra Cisneros - The House on Mango Street
Steven Millhauser - Martin Dressler
Naguib Mahfouz - The Search
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Timothy Ferris - Coming of Age in the Milky Way
Walter M. Miller, jr - A Canticle for Leibowitz (to replace the copy a friend borrowed and then lost)
Tracy Kidder - House
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward
Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Christopher Priest - the Extremes
Prose Poems by Kahlil Gibran
Kazuo Ishiguro - A Pale View of Hills
Sandra Cisneros - Woman Hollering Creek
Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carl Hiaasen - Tourist Season
William Least Heat Moon - Blue Highways (to give away or do a book crossing with)
posted by kristin at 11:08 AM

Destroy All Brains!, a book of short stories by Paul Di Filippo, showed up from DreamHaven Books today. As with the rest of Di Filippo's stuff they were wonderful.
posted by kristin at 12:22 AM

I'm a little bit behind. Thursday night I finished After Silence but was too tired Friday morning to write about it (I read it in one sitting). It's darker than some of his other works and more realistic (in the sense of lacking the weird twist of magical invention that his other novels all seem to have). As always though, I loved the writing so enjoyed the book overall.

Last night I finished up Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues which I enjoyed. The only other book I'd read by Alexie was Indian Killer which I didn't like at all but finished for book group last year. I'm glad I gave him a second chance. Reservation Blues was much less angry and had characters I cared a lot more about. The question now is how do the rest of his books compare. Which novel are they more like?
posted by kristin at 10:26 AM

Yes, Eight Skilled Gentlemen was indeed worth reading, but not worth insisting other people read like his Bridge of Birds is. I think tonight I'll start Jonathan Carroll's After Silence which will leave me with only 3 more of his books that I haven't read (including the brand new one that just came out).
posted by kristin at 9:49 AM

Over the weekend I started Barry Hughart's Eight Skilled Gentlemen, which so far seems good but not quite on par with Bridge of Birds (which was excellent). Last night, however, I took a break from it and finished Rudy Rucker's Transreal!, a collection of short stories, poems, and essays. It had been in that embarassingly large pile of books on my bedroom floor with bookmarks in them for quite awhile. The pile keeps growing because for some reason I have a tendency not to be able to sit down and read straight through books that are non-fiction, poetry, short stories, essays, hardcover books, etc, while I have a complementary tendency to sit down with a novel and barely move until I get through (well, at least reading-time speaking). I should probably work on shrinking the pile, but there's always another novel to be read (and I've got a lot of those sitting around without bookmarks). Other books sitting in that pile currently include Seek by Rudy Rucker (yes, there were two of his), Monkey Brain Sushi, What Book?, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, Otherness by David Brin, and Reading Jazz by Robert Gottlieb.

I started Transreal! so long ago I don't remember the beginning, except to know that it included the entire text of the collection The 57th Franz Kafka which I'd already read. The ending (which is what I was reading last night) is all essays about science fiction, computer science, Lynchburg, VA, and more. I've always liked Rucker's stuff and this was no exception.
posted by kristin at 9:40 AM