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A Return to Books.

Posted by John on January 18th, 2009 at 10:34 pm · 4 Comments

I often think of myself as lazy, but I’m finding it surprisingly hard to sit on my ass all weekend long. If Jana weren’t around as the doctor’s enforcer, I’m sure I would be nursing a hematoma the size of a blood orange right now.

The silver lining on my dark couch is that I’m ignoring the computer and gleaning stories and chapters in the big stack o’ bedside books. This weekend has been an eclectic journey through space and time:

  • A story about an unexpected Christ figure in rural Argentina in Jorge Luis Borges’ The Gospel of Mark (in A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-five Imaginative Tales About the Christ)
  • Evidence, set in the grotesque and misshapen biopunk world of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station (in The New Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer). Wikipedia has more about the New Weird.
  • The first chapters of Alison Bechdel’s award winning autobiographical graphic novel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.
  • A few chapters in Stephen Baxter’s sweeping and episodic history, Evolution (the story arc covers at least a billion years of combined past and imagined future), which tells of the birth, life, and extinction of primates (including our very own genus).

I’m having a good time jumping around non-commitally, but I may sink into one for the next day or so.  I’ve narrowed it down the following:

I promise to update my GoodReads, too, for those of you who follow it.

Tags: Uncategorized

4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 G // Jan 19, 2009 at 7:26 am

    THAT’s what’s been missing… I need minor SURGERY to return to being the bookworm I once was.
    thanks for the tip! I’ll go see what I can schedule. :)

    (my own stack of bedside books have been pretty pissed at my neglect lately.)

    enjoy your page-turning.

  • 2 jjohnsen // Jan 19, 2009 at 8:15 am

    The Road is excellent, it’s probably my favorite book for the past two or three years. i haven’t read Nasty Bits, but Bourdain’s kitchen Confidential is a fantastic look behind-the-scenes of how restaurants everywhere actually operate.

  • 3 Elaine // Jan 19, 2009 at 10:01 am

    I have to second the Bourdain…he can be so snarky in the most delightful way (if you’ve ever seen his cable travel/food shows, you’ll know what I mean). I haven’t read Nasty Bits, either, but I’ve read most of Kitchen Confidential (and really have to finish it). Good stuff. :)

  • 4 Sideon // Jan 20, 2009 at 2:55 pm

    Gene Woolfe is fantastic. I read “Shadow of the Torturer” as a late teen and have felt echoes of those images for decades.

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