I've gotten a bit behind on recording reading here. No apologies, just a comment.

Last night I finished Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck. I was trying to figure out if I would have liked this better than I liked East of Eden when forced to read it in high school. Which lead through a whole thought process to why do we force feed "classics" to kids at all. Isn't it better to actually get them reading something they might enjoy? I suppose not everyone's meant to become a serious reader though.

A few days ago I finished Declare by Tim Powers. It's a spy novel with genies thrown in. I liked it, but not as well as others of his (like The Anubis Gates for example). The first half was a bit slow going, but it picked up some after that. This book did manage to spill into my dreams one night. I dreamt that I was a spy for some unknown country and my mission one day was to go to Target to buy and return things. Somewhat disturbing, but it could have been worse.

The day before that I polished off Life Form by Alan Dean Foster. It was hardly the best written science fiction I've ever read, but there were a few interesting ideas. It made ok waiting room, train, etc reading. And before that I finally finished The Very Slow Time Machine by Ian Watson, a book of short stories that I'd been working on gradually for quite awhile. It was the first book of his that I'd read and I really liked some of the stories so I may well pick up another book at some point.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 10:42 AM