Currently Reading
It's becoming increasingly apparent that how I read ill suits itself to maintaining a meaningful "currently reading" list. Yes, everything in the sidebar is a book I haven't finished and intend to. Attitude I've been reading a little bit at a time, and am within 4 pages of finishing. Everything else I haven't much looked at in a while, having spent more time lately reading The Big Book of the Weird Wild West, Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction, 18th Annual Edition (last year's: stories from 2000), Ted Chiang's new collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, and reading entirely Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret and, yesterday, Bradley Denton's Blackburn.
Deep Secret strangely capsizes itself by having its climax offstage, then backfilling it in an epilogue. Blackburn is a blast. I understand why Avi recommended it to me: its title character has a voice and psychology much like that of the protagonist of one of my stories. And, um, is a serial killer.
Today I started Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction.
One morning after a wild electrical storm, Amanda woke to find a strange inscription on the palm of her hand: a single "word" written in some obscure alphabet.
All during her yoga exercises; during her garden-pagoda breakfast of poached salmon, strawberries and cream; during her astrological plottings down on the creek bank, she puzzled over it. She considered it as she and her baby rolled and giggled in the yard grass, she pondered it during her lunch of frog legs and coconut milk — even that afternoon as she circled the lake in her orange and purple sailboat, a choir of eight peyote buttons singing in her head, she probed its enigma — though, in truth, the inscription seemed less mysterious than funny to her then.
The following day — the inscription would not wash off — she researched it in the Library of Anthropological Yearnings. To no avail. She sent photostats of it to young Jewish scholars who had loved her. She tried tvelve times to decpiher it during trance. Pleading letters she wrote to the Ministry of Esoteric Knowledge, Division of Archaic Titillations.
She never did learn what it meant, although one night years later in an Armenian restaurant, a very old musician took one glance at it, handed Amanda a heavy iron key and ran down the fire escape.
Gotta love it.
Ah, Blackburn. One of my favorites, although I'm a little more partial to Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede. If I remember, I'll bring the two Blackburn stories that aren't in the book for you to borrow.
Posted by Timprov on August 7 2002 01:11
Ooh ooh, and The Calvin Coolidge Home, sweetie, don't forget to bring Zed The Calvin Coolidge Home!
Posted by Mris on August 7 2002 06:43
I've got One Day Closer to Death out of the library, and started "The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians" last night. It seems to have only one Blackburn story, though, so thanks, Timprow!
(See what I mean about it being hard to maintain a "currently reading" list?)
Posted by Zed on August 7 2002 07:00
Yes, I'm silly, one of the Blackburn stories is in the same volume as The Calvin Coolidge home. This is why I'm working on our short story index, so that I don't have to know these things. The other one is in a chapbook.
Posted by Mris on August 7 2002 07:40
We have DSL again!
OK, I'll skip bringing up "One Day..." but will try to remember "Blackburn's Lady." Do you want to borrow the Buddy Holly book and/or Wrack and Roll?
Posted by Timprov on August 13 2002 15:45
=v= Dang, Zed, I was a little late in reading this entry, but I'm pretty sure I was 4 pages short of finishing Attitude the same night you were.
Posted by Jym on August 20 2002 09:51