Reading is Fun-damental, Part III

I've dropped some books from my list. The are:

Seven Men by Max Beerbohm--I may come back to this one, but it wasn't what I thought. Max Beerbohm knew a lot of really interesting people and I thought this book was about them. It's not. It's fiction so I've dropped it for now.

Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself by Robert Montgomery Bird--I dropped this because I think I was afraid to read an American novel written in the 1830s. Stupid of me. It's going back on the list.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham--I've already read this book twice and I really don't need to read it again. Still, this is the book from which Paul Kantner lifted every line for the Jefferson Airplane song, "Crown of Creation."

Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum--I've already read it and decided that now was not the time to invest in books I've already read. I really would like to eventually own a copy though.

Gipsy Moth Circles the World by Francis Chichester--Exactly the same situation as the Joshua Slocum book above.

So, the books I've finished so far are:

Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote
In the Court of the Crimson King by S.M. Stirling
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bones by Jonathan Kellerman
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Goshawk by T.H. White
Blaze by Stephen King
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
Split Image by Elmore Leonard
A Gypsy Life by Clare Allcard
The Big Knockover by Dashiell Hammett

That breaks down to:

Sci Fi/Fantasy: 4
Nonfiction: 4
Suspense/Crime 5
Dog Books 1
Sailing Books 1

Whee!

Arlen Specter Jumps Ship

Nate Silver posted this interesting commentary about Pennsylvania's Senator Arlen Specter leaving the Republican party for the Democrats... and how this is a pretty big loss for the Repubs but barely a win at all for the Dems.

Once a Month?

Hell, I would be too embarrassed to even attempt to drive traffic to this site. If I can't post one to three times a day, I can't grow or sustain a web site like this. More thought is required.

Based on previous action, I guess I'll be back to chat about this again some time in April.

We'll see.

A Sane Well Thought Out Opinion

Obviously, it's not mine. Check out King Ryan's take on Google Latitude.

I Think I May Move This Blog...

I've been told by people far hipper than myself that Tumblr is the blog site I should be on. How could they be wrong? After all there is no letter E between the L and the R. It MUST be cool.

And I've continued to plumb the depths of this social networking thing as best I can. It's a little difficult for me to do. I don't have much to say these days and, historically speaking, what I've said over the years on the subject has been, well, wrong. (I wrote a delightful piece about 12 years ago, for instance, that hailed email as a software miracle leading us toward a new literate society. You can see how that turned out!)

Still, I'm playing songs on blip.fm and a few people listen and seem to like it. I now have well over 10 friends on FaceBook. I know that wouldn't be a lot for most people, but for me? I would have bet the under on 5. I tweet on Twitter and I've just started a particularly goofy one called Plinky that asks you dumb questions.

It's fun.

I'm going to be looking at tumblr this weekend I guess... after I paint the bathroom. Unless I get 20 or 30 posts demanding I stay here on Blogger, I may just pick up stakes and go.

FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, et al

I'm sitting staring blankly at the FriendFeed "badge" here on my blog. It cheerily invites all who see it to sign up to a feed from my Facebook page and Twitter and my Picasa page. Stranger, it also offers people a glimpse at my Netflix queue, my Amazon wishlist, and what I'm guessing is an RSS feed of this blog. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I mind. I'm not overly worried about my privacy (if I was, this wouldn't be the sort of stuff that would concern me). Besides, nobody reads this blog anyway. The fact is, I'm the one who put the badge on here in the first place. I just don't see why anyone, other than a lover or a stalker, would want to know that much trivial stuff about somebody else.

I'm supposed to be working right now but there's something weirdly fascinating to me about a blog that sits unread. So I look at it a couple times a day, checking for responses and then trying to figure out what the lack of comments say about me. (I actually did get a comment once. It was quite a good one but I didn't read it until weeks after it was left so that was the end of that.)

Ah well, back to the job. Follow me on Twitter! Or become my blip.fm listener!

Reading is Fun-damental, Part II

Here's my current book-reading status:

• Just finished: Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S. M. Stirling


• Now reading: Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson


• Next up: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

What are you reading?

Reading is Fun-damental

These are some books that I plan on reading this year. I've only listed the books that I don't own. I finally bought a copy of The Big Sleep, so that's not on the list.

Seven Men by Max Beerbohm
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself by Robert Montgomery Bird
The Last Coin by James Blaylock
The Digging Leviathan by James Blaylock
Gipsy Moth Circles the World by Francis Chichester
The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester
Rifleman Dodd by C. S. Forester
The Big Knockover by Dashiell Hammett
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
In Hazard by Richard Hughes
The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk
Split Images by Elmore Leonard
The Golden Ocean by Patrick O'Brian
We Always Treat Women Too Well by Raymond Queneau
Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By by Georges Simenon
Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
Names On The Land by George R. Stewart
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
The Goshawk by T. H. White
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
Black Sun by Geoffrey Wolfe

Weird, I know. The whole thing started when I found myself looking at the list of classic books on the New York Review of Books website. If you look, you'll find that the majority of the books on the list are actually published by NYRB.