books

Thursday

A pretty quiet day, aside from the storm that rushed through here. Luckily, I got home ahead of the storm and missed all of the excitement in Manhattan, where apparently the Long Island Railroad shut down entirely. Good times.

Other than that… I finished reading Barry Lopez’s short story collection Light Action in the Caribbean. I liked the collection, even if some of the stories (including the title story) were a little strange, and even if none exactly lived up to “The Mappist,” the final story in the book and the one that introduced me to Lopez. (I heard it on Selected Shorts, where actor Joe Spano does a great job with it.)

And I wrote a little more today, making some slow but steady progress on a short story of my own I’ve been working on lately. I’m hoping to spend even more time with it over the weekend.

Oh, and I posted the cover and contents for Kaleidotrope #10 earlier today. I still can’t believe this will be ten issues, that I’ve been publishing the zine since October of 2006. (Just as I have trouble believing I’ve worked in my office since October of 2004.) I really like this issue, and I hope you will too. (You can pre-order copies now if you’re not already a subscriber!)

Thursday various

  • John Scalzi on finding the time to write:

    So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

  • Janet Potter on the work of Stieg Laarson:

    Which is why, in the end, my problem with the Millennium trilogy is not its genre, or its plot, or its characters. It’s the fact that the bestselling books in the world are poorly written, erotic fan fiction that a man wrote about himself. [via]

  • Roger Ebert on the state of the nation:

    The time is here for responsible Americans to put up or shut up. I refer specifically to those who have credibility among the guileless and credulous citizens who have been infected with notions so carefully nurtured. We cannot afford to allow the next election to proceed under a cloud of falsehood and delusion.

  • Nancy Kress on bad movies:

    When you fall asleep at a movie and begin to snore, that constitutes a review. When no one around you goes “shhhh,” that constitutes another.

  • And finally, the CERN Choir on particle physics [via]:

Wednesday various

Tuesday various

And so begins my vacation

Today marked the end of my summer hours at work and the start of my week-long vacation. My parents are headed off to England tomorrow evening for a week of their own, and I don’t go back to work until Monday, September 13. It promises to be a quiet and relaxing week, just me and the dog.

Today was the last of my half days, though even the people who didn’t take advantage of summer hours got to leave at 3 o’clock, thanks to the Labor Day weekend. Judging by how crowded my train was before two o’clock, I’m glad I didn’t have to stay in the city a lot longer. I also wanted to go pick up my new eyeglasses, which you can see in the photo up above. (Or here, if that’s too extreme a close-up for you.) They’re a lot different (and a little heavier) than either of my other pairs, or any of the glasses I’ve worn in decades. But they’re comfortable, and I actually quite like them.

This evening, I watched (and pretty much enjoyed) 3 Days of the Condor. It’s maybe a little dated and occasionally a little implausible, but it’s a taut and well-crafted ’70s thriller. And how can you not like a movie with the line “You can always count on the old spy-fucker”? I can certainly see how it was an influence on AMC’s new conspiracy show Rubicon — which I’ve also been quite enjoying.

And I also finished reading Paul Auster’s Invisible. I hope to write more about that later, but it’s quite good, if occasionally disturbing and difficult to puzzle out. And I’m not sure how well it hangs together, or is meant to, in the end. I also don’t know that it actually “is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written” (as the New York Times claimed), but it’s definitely a return to form for him after a string of disappointing novels. (Of which, admittedly, I’ve only read Man in the Dark, but that was pretty weak stuff.) Again, hopefully more later.