Thunderblizzard 2011

Hello, fellow readers.

Thunderblizzard 2011 really set my blogging back. I'm still reading Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card and Warren Ellis' Planetary (regular Volume 4, or Absolute Volume 2, take your pick). I'm also still reading The Stand by Uncle Stevie - man I miss his Entertainment Weekly column - but haven't picked it up this month yet. Which is OK, since I'm ahead of my pace.

I meant to write something while I was snowbound, but chose to indulge in (the demon) television instead, watching episodes of Invasion (episode 9) and Battlestar Galactica ("Scar") instead. I was going to watch Sherlock from the BBC, but my copy of the dvd seems to be all screwey. I suppose I could have read one of Doyle's originals instead, but I was dozing and fell asleep early anyway.

Watch this space for new posts. I may write something as early as tonight. The worst case scenario is that I post something new this weekend.

Now go read something today already...

The Electric Ant

Well, it is finally January, and I still can't decide what it is I want to read. I've been reading The Stand, and I'm on pace for January with this epic read. Since I finished How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe I've bounced around trying to decide what I want to invest my time in next. I've read parts of Galactic Pot Healer, Transition, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, but nothing seems to hold my interest. And time is running short, the busy season at work is almost upon us, so I don't have a lot of time to invest; ergo I guess it's time to implement my "one short story a week" strategy.

I received The Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick for Xmas, so I read "The Electric Ant."

Take out his spare ribs for $100.

Garson Poole is the protagonist; he just lost his hand in a hovercar accident. He wakes up in the hospital to find out that he can't be treated there, because he's not human at all: he's a robot. And hospitals are for people, not robots, so he moves on to a robot repair shop. Garson winds up being billed for his treatment at the hospital for the time up until they realized he was a robot; just a funny little detail I liked.

What happens when an android changes his programming, especially in regards to how he perceives his own reality? I won't go into detail in my review here; suffice it to say, I had been looking forward to reading this story for a long, long time, and it more than exceeded my expectations. PKD manages to push all of my favorite PKD buttons in a story just 10 pages long or so: robots who don't know they're robots; identity crisis; paranoia; altered reality; twist ending.

Highly recommended.

Check back at the Reader next week when I review another short story. I don't know which one yet, but I'm going to try to (a) read one per week; (b) never read stories in any two consecutive weeks by the same author; and (c) try not to repeat authors within six weeks of a story by the same author.

Now go read something for yourself today!
rr

Reading and Writing Goals 2011

Every year I try my hand at some ambitious laundry list of goals for the coming year. This year, I've decided to come up with some more moderate goals for the next year. These are my reading and writing goals for 2011.

1.) Write six short stories. That's right, one every other month. I know it doesn't sound moderate, but that is 50% of my original proposal of one every month. Possibly even using one or more of Max Barry's suggestions.

2.) Read one short story a week, from January until May.  Frequent readers know I've been stockpiling short story collections for this very purpose. I've found even more collections since my last post. Hello, Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. One a week is certainly do-able, and I'm not going to freak out if I don't.

3.) Read one novel or book every month from June until December. This is where I got in trouble in the past. You should see my reading goals for 2009. I identified no less than a dozen books to read and left plenty of wriggle room to read more. In some alternate universe, I'm still reading in 2009. Realistically, for 2011, I figure this means one book by Ian Fleming (probably Thunderball, which was on the 2009 list!), one by Stanislaw Lem (probably Solaris), and one from my ongoing "read everything I was supposed to but didn't" project (to be determined).

4.) Finish The Stand. If I keep to my projected pace, that shouldn't be a problem.

5.) Use Amazon less and my local library more. 'Nuff said.

6.) Keep up with the Reader. I've enjoyed writing it, and hope to do so for the forseeable future, trying to keep to a M-W-F schedule, with a QOTW every Saturday.

That's pretty much it. I want to read, but I also want to be realistic about it.

And a very happy (early) New Year, everyone!

Short Stories

The busy season is almost upon us at work. That means that I will be less likely to be reading novels (except The Stand, of course) between late January and the end of May.

So my strategy the last few years has been to read short stories during that time span. I had the idea a couple weeks ago to gather together all of my books of short stories into one place so I could see what I have to choose from for next year.

I thought I had 3 or 4 books of short stories. It turns out, I have about 20; this includes works by Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, Isaac Asimov, Connie Willis, William Gibson, Robert Heinlein, and Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as anthologies of time travel stories, post-apocalyptic stories, and artificial intelligence stories. Which is to say nothing of the individual short stories I may have accumulated over time.

I was going to stock up, but turns out, I already did.

New Links

I've added a couple links at the side:

Book Blogs is an organization dedicated to people who blog about books. I'm hoping that by joining this group, I can increase traffic at the Reader. There is a nifty button at the bottom of the column, too.

Good Reads is kind of the nuts and bolts of what I'm trying to accomplish at the (more prosaic) Reader - a collection of the actual titles on my actual shelf, and a short review of each. It is going to take a while to get everything keyed in, but it is a pretty neat concept, so I think it will be worth it.

Check them out!

PS - I have attained my reading goals for December for The Stand. I'm considering resting it a while, although I may continue reading it in the hopes of finishing it earlier than anticipated.

The Empire never ended

I finished VALIS on Wednesday: this book is a masterwork of religion, history and philosophy. I'm not sure I can completely understand it, short of a PhD in those disciplines. Philip K. Dick was either completely brilliant, or thoroughly mad. Possibly both.

I don't think this is for PKD beginners, but once you've read even just a few of his books, it is nothing to be afraid of. (I used to think his novels were impenetrable. They're not. It's just a matter of getting used to his style.) Also, I'm not particularly religious, but PKD's take on how all religions are unified was a fascinating journey to watch unfold.

Interestingly, while the book was featured at least a couple times on the tv show Lost, I think it bears at least a passing resemblance to some of the themes in that other great mid-00's sci fi tv show, Battlestar Galactica; especially Chapter 7. In Chapter 7, the protagonist Horselover Fat discovers that early christians knew how to reconstitute themselves after death, and that it had been going on since before humans came to Earth. It's not a complete 1:1 ratio, but the themes of death, resurrection, and monotheism central to the cylon characters is all there, and it may enhance my understanding of that show as a result.

Also, I'm basically where I want to be on The Stand. After being behind for most of November, it seems like I could be finished with what I want to read in December by the end of the weekend.
Good stuff. Now to finish The Wordy Shipmates...

The Long Read

I like to read an epic every year or so, too; then I pace myself and knock it out in about a year. In 2009, I read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, which by the way, is a great book about codes (both computer and signals intelligence). There are three or four main stories, but they take place in the present day world of computer programming and the World War II era at Bletchley Park and in the Philippines.

For a variety of reasons, I kind of fell away from that last year, but have picked up again recently. I am currently reading Stephen King's The Stand, with a projected end date of December 2011. It's good so far. I'm about a third of the way in. I'm way too busy to read only The Stand. If I tried to tackle it all at once, I'd probably get bored and abandon it. But I really want to finish it - both because I really want to read it, and I really want to feel that sense of accomplishment.