Work, travel and real life precluded any posting this week. And while lacking sufficient ambition to write any reviews, the TBR stack grew a bit thanks to a library trip, bookstore trips (both in and out of town) and receipt of books I’ve agreed to review. This all yields marginalia for the time being with more substantive posts to come in the near future.
- Among the things that went unnoted was Thursday night’s announcement of the National Book Critics Circle awards. Of the winners, I am currently reading biography winner James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips. I’ve read none of the other winners, which again indicates just how far my nominations went.
- As an aside, I was surprised at how many erotic novels were on a “New Fiction” table at a chain bookstore I visited out of town this week.
- You won’t find any in my book journal, which I mentioned in connection with the A to Z lists. Jessica Allen reviews her book journal in the WaPo. FWIW, the first book in mine is The Gulag Archipelago (assigned for a college course) and there’s been 1,450 books read from the start of the journal in 1975 (a year for which it is incomplete) to today.
- Damn! Scott Hudson sold out.
- The NYT seems to be on an atheism related kick. First there’s an article on how atheists are among those most critical of the “neo-atheists,” followed by an interesting cover piece in the Sunday magazine exploring why people believe in God. Wonder if that’s got anything to do with the fact that three books expressly advocating an atheist viewpoint are on the paper’s nonfiction bestseller list, joined by another book that describes the Christian right as one book described as American Fascists.
- ManyBooks.net has a bunch of free and downloadable post-1950 science fiction books. (Via SF Signal.)
- The USHL’s director of photography has launched a blog. (Via USHL Hockey blog.)
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
