Saturday
Let’s keep it short. It’s Saturday. I have better things to do than waste time online writing little missives for myself.
I had planned on Saturday being a productive day … do some shopping, some cleaning, you name it. But last night Jen called and asked whether I wished to join her and Christoph for some shopping — she at TJ Maxx, he at B&N — so I got up relatively early this morning to the sound of Ethan Stoller’s BKAB, showered, had a couple cups of coffee, and headed out the door after 9:30 for a trip west. B&N it was for me; I opted for a few hours of browsing books, music, and movies over clothes, kitchen supplies, and candles this time around.
I was a good boy and held off when it came to spending money. I browsed the books and found quite a few that interested me, so I wrote them down in my notebook; I can check them out from the library later, or, in certain instances, buy them.
By writing them here I do not lose them in case I lose track of my notebook.
Dahlquist, Gorden, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. — I first saw this a few months ago at the University Bookstore. Big, blue, hard cover … it has received mixed but mostly positive reviews … a flawed but promising and ambitious project, so I’ve read.
Albahari, David, Götz and Meyer. — I translated an Albahari piece years ago. Bosnian/Serbian Jewish writer now living in Canada. I almost bought this one.
Foster, M.A., The Book of the Ler. (omnibus edition containing The Game Players of Zan, The Warriors of Dawn, and The Days of the Klesh) — it’s a trilogy published by DAW Sci-Fi, and seems to be a collection of older works. It looked interesting, a tad bit philosophical, perhaps.
—, The Transformer Trilogy. — also published by DAW, same author.
Holt, Tim, Falling Sideways.
—, Dead Funny. — these two looked amusing.
Gaiman, Neil, Fragile Things. — Gaiman’s most recent. If he writes it, I’ll buy and read it.
—, Anansi Boys. — his previous work. I haven’t yet read it.
Kemmer, Julie, Carpe Demon. — by the author of California Demon, it appears to be fantasy-comedy … no idea if it’s any good.
Brooks, Terry, Straken. — now available as a trade paperback.
—, Jaka Russ. — now available as trade and mass-market paperbacks.
—, Tanequil. — now available as a trade paperback. Here we have the three most recent (I believe) Shannara books by Brooks. These are my guilty pleasure books; if it’s Shannara I’ll read it, regardless of the formulaic and increasingly repetitive nature of the novels. They are engaging in a way, but I’ve always been interested in the connection between the world of Shannara as a future history and our time.
Zafon, Carlos Ruiz, The Shadow of the Wind — it seems to be an Umberto Eco-esque or at least Perez Reverte-esque semi-intellectual novel. My type of page turner?
Simmon, Dan, The Terror — it’s new and only in hard cover. I still have to read Olympos. I generally go for Simmons’ sci-fi and have ignored most of his “horror” work, but if I find the time I would like to give this a try.
Donaldson, Stephen R., The Runes of the Earth — the most recent Thomas Covenant novel … these are not a guilty pleasure in the mode of Brooks … Donaldson is a truly gifted writer, but when it comes to his works I’ve only read his Covenant novels.
In the “Bargain Books” upstairs I found Roger Penrose’s massive The Road to Reality for about $6 or $7 … I nearly took it, but I won’t read it any time soon, and I have an electronic copy already. Also in the “Bargain Books” section I saw Roy Porter’s Flesh in the Age of Reason, but the “aesthetics” passages were too anemic to bother with, so it wasn’t worth the $7 or $8 price tag.
On March 9 at 7pm Tad Williams will do a “Meet the Author” deal at B&N (West-Towne-ish store).
I saw a variety of “serious” romance novels grouped together on a shelf — the point was the naming pattern: The Mathematics of Love (Emma Darwin), The History of Love (Nicole Krauss), and The Alchemy of Desire (Tarun J. Tejpal) … why no combinatorics of love, physics of passion, semiotics of seduction …? Those might be in the pipelines already.
I browsed through the computer books downstairs, focusing on the Ruby, Python, Web-Development, and even SQL volumes. I feel I should try Ruby on Rails, but to do so what I should also do is reinstall one afternoon (after, of course, backing things up) and then do a fresh fink or similar install … I want a working X Window system for some Linux/Unix apps. Then get a custom Apache + PostgreSQL + Python + Ruby setup going. And Ruby on Rails. Migrate from PHP (I’m currently just doing my blog-ish stuff with it anyway; the rest is in bash), and so on.
Jen arrived, we met Christoph upstairs, and we ended up looking at movies and DVDs quite a while longer. We finally left, drove to Whole Foods, and sampled a lot of items. Chips, salsa, bread, battered calamari, hummus, brownies, BBQ-beef … if/when one visits Whole Foods one does not need regular meals, for one can just sample his/her way through the store. Drinks extra. The prices are so high that I have little interest in buying things there … but, oh, the stuff is tempting!
I finished Bowie, finished Dead Can Dance, and am now most of the way through Death Cab for Cutie (last song) — Deep Forest (only one album, “Music Detected”) next. Perhaps Aaron’s party this evening.
