Finished reading - on Thursday night, actually - Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: the last of my six-volume Mark Twain set from the book of the month club.
Interesting to read a book so old that the big plot twist is that fingerprints are unique.
I've no idea what I'll be reading next. I may not have any unread books left in my ever-shrinking library.
Finished - late enough Saturday night that really it was Sunday morning - reading Roughing It by Mark Twain.
This is where the Book of Mormon is described as "chloroform in print". (Which comment, along with the rest of the two chapters devoted to trashing the Mormon church, seemed a little harsh to me.)
I think I have one or two yet-unread Mark Twain books, probably boxed up in the closet somewhere. Perhaps I'll fish them out and read them next.
Finished - last night, just before bedtime - reading The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois.
It took me two months to slog through all 641 pages. This year's collection was a bit uneven, compared to previous years; some of the longer stories were the least interesting (which might be why it took so long to finish).
Destruction of the Earth - in some cases, of the entire universe - was a recurring theme. Here's hoping the twenty-sixth annual collection is less apocalyptic.
Finished - last night, somewhat later than was perhaps wise - reading The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume 5: The Eye of the Sibyl by Philip K. Dick.
The stores in this series are arranged in chronological order by date of composition (as opposed to date of first publication), so volume five contains the last stories Dick wrote. The usual themes are still present - reality vs. delusion, that sort of thing - but they're considerably darker & more disturbing than his earlier stories.
I still have a few unread Dick novels in my library, and I've seen a few more in bookstores that I haven't bought yet, so I'm not quite finished with the collected works of Philip K. Dick. But I imagine one of these days I will be.
Finished - last night - reading Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson: book two of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
It's a long book (590 pages), and rather intricately plotted. I think just about every character and location from the first two trilogies is going to show up in this series before it's over. Keeping them all straight is proving difficult.
The first hundred or so pages dragged a bit: too much angst & chatter, but nothing much happening.
Donaldson managed to pull of a pretty impressive finish, with a cliffhanger that'll keep the fans chattering until book three (Against All Things Ending, coming one of these years).
A few things about this series are starting to bother me, though:
The Land is a pretty stagnant place. The current series is set seven thousand years after the first trilogy, but the Land hasn't changed much. It's still largely empty, with just a scattering of small villages.
Insane characters, wandering through the story & muttering incoherent foreshadowings of Bad Things To Come, seem like a cheat. I didn't mind Adept Havelock in Mordant's Need, but for some reason Anele in Fatal Revenant was just annoying.
(Updated, 7/24.)
Finished - last night, somewhat later than was perhaps wise - reading The Inland Ground: An Evocation of the American Middle West, by Richard Rhodes.
This was the revised edition, published on some anniversary (30th? 40th?) of the original. It was interesting, but only mildly. Perhaps I shouldn't have read the foreword, in which Rhodes says (more or less), I wrote this when I was young & annoyingly overopinionated.
There did seem to be an unpleasant whiff of Look at me! I am a keen-eyed observer of the human condition, and I have profoundly insightful opinions! throughout the book. And for some reason it bothered me to know that just about everything mentioned in the book is thirty (forty?) years old - i.e., long gone.
The Inland Ground is too old to qualify as current events, but somehow doesn't work as history, either. (And that whole chapter about Cupcakes was just plain dumb.)
Finished reading The Minority Report: The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume 4 by - who else? - Philip K. Dick, which book waited on the shelf for sixteen years until I got around to reading it.
I guess I don't need to watch the movie Minority Report, now that I've read the story.
Finished (last night) reading Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It) by William Poundstone (which sounds to me more like an insult than a name: "Go pound stone, ya loser," etc.).
I would summarize thusly:
Numerous examples are provided of elections gone awry due to flaws in the voting system: Edwards vs. Roemer vs. Duke, Lousiana, 1991; Bush vs. Clinton vs. Perot, 1992; etc., etc.
Much attention is given to arguments between proponents of different voting systems. (With lots of, "You're an idiot!" "No, you're an idiot!" "Am not!" "Are too!" and other such childishness.)
An interesting read.
Finished - last night, rather later than perhaps was wise, given how early the alarm goes off in the morning - reading His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cyril M. Kornbluth by (who else but) Cyril M. Kornbluth.
It's a big book - 670 pages, with the last hundred or so pages set in small type so as to pack in more text.
Reading fifty-year-old science fiction is a guilty pleasure. The writing isn't always top-notch, the science is occasionally way off, but the stories are great fun to read.
And now I think I've finished all the books I received as gifts last year, with no prospect of receiving more until Father's Day. What to do, what to do....
Finished reading Roadshow: Landscape with Drums - A Concert Tour by Motorcycle, by Neil Peart.
I get the feeling he couldn't quite decide which title to stick on his book, and in the end piled on all of them.
