Oops, I'm ten books behind on posting. Perhaps a new record.

Minister Faust's The Coyote Kings and the Space-Age Bachelor Pad was a good, if a bit odd, first novel. I'll likely read future books. It's probably the only book I've ever read set in Edmonton, Canada. If it's not, it's the only book I've ever read set in Edmonton, Canada that involves D&D playing geeks, dishwashing, and wacky mystical mysteries.

James Gleick's biography of Isaac Newton wasn't bad, but wasn't nearly as good as his biography of Richard Feynman. Granted, Feynman was probably the more interesting character from a personality, as opposed to science, standpoint, and there's a lot more source material.

Don and Emily Saliers' A Song to Sing, A Life to Live is a father-daughter collaboration about the interplay between music and spirituality. It had good moments, but overall was a bit fluffy.

Rob Brezsny's The Televisionary Oracle had more wacky religion than Minister Faust's novel but in this case radical feminism instead of something vaguely unexplainable. Fun reading. The entire text is available online if you want to take a peek.

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is one of the books I'd been moving around for far too many years without having gotten around to reading it. The immigrant experience as told by women transplanted from China to San Francisco, along with the stories of their American daughters.

Newcomer's Guide for Seattle by Monica Fischer and Amy Bellamy is exactly what the title says. I decided I should probably buy and read at least one book on the citynow that I live here, and this one seemed reasonable.

Stella Gibbons' The Gentle Powers wasn't as good as Cold Comfort Farm but was a quick light read. It did make me wonder though if there's a reason CCF seems to be the only book of hers ever available easily in the US.

Amazons by Cleo Birdwell (Don DeLillo) was probably the only book I'll ever read about hockey. It's the imaginary memoir of the first woman to play in the NHL. Fortunately for non-sports-fans like me the hockey itself was kept to a minimum.

Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman is a history of making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Worth reading.

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town I read entirely online. Wireless networking evangelism meets urban fantasy? The one thing I was left wondering was whether A* (the main character whose name changes throughout) is really a "normal" human in everything except personality.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 12:02 AM