Reading it.

At the moment:

Finished Cloud Atlas.

Really excellent book.

The stories inside twine together wonderfully in a way I've not seen before, either because I only read Bazooka Joe comic strips or because he's good at what he does.

I recommend it for people who like reading books.

Then I picked up Why We Suck (which was lovingly provided by one Danielle N. Stockley for mine Birthday) by Denis Leary.

Quite frankly, I was more impressed with his bile and vitriol and acid tongue when I was in 8th grade.

Not to say I'm not enjoying it, but I have to be in the mood.

Also, a book that warns you how offensive it is and guarantees that you're going to laugh "...a lot", really has to work harder than a book that's just, you know, funny.

It's that kind of posturing that makes my eye roll.

Like pep rallies or high school football.

I'd rather watch Rescue Me.

While I was darting in and out of the irascible miasma that is Why We Suck, I also picked up Snow Crash because I'd heard so much about this Neal Stephenson character, I wanted to see if he was worth it.

Oh my goodness is he.

Phil told me that I would freak out when I realized just how ahead of its time this book was and, misreading the copyright page, I did,totally, thinking that it had been written in the late 70's.

Turns out that was the date the cover image had been painted.

But, for this book to have been written in 1992 is right up there with Neuromancer and whenever that was written.

Overall, a great book, except for the PAINFULLY long library research/background information scenes.

It takes a great author to do crazy research and then pass the information subtly to the reader and that just was not the case in this book.

Whole chapters were cut and paste (or so it seems) from Stephenson's notes with the occasional "Go on", Hiro said, thrown in.

I don't care if it DID take place in some cool virtual library with a snarky hologram, it was goddamn boring and thicker than bad fudge.

But fucking Raven was the DEFINITION of badass.

Glass knives indeed.

Anyway, I just finished that yesterday and thought the ending was a bit abrupt.

I didn't need three more chapters, but maybe one.

Whatever the case, for a first book, it was tight like a duck on a drum.

Just yesterday I embarked upon Joel Lane's The Lost District, yet another literary boon from the Good Doctor Swarth.

I've just read the first three stories thus far, but I can tell this is going to be a cold and desolate ride.

Lane's settings are so bleak and monochrome that you can feel the tired, gray air emanating from these stories (I shouldn't really even call them stories; more like scenes form a worn down, broken world where things happen, sometimes, but never good things) and the rust under your fingertips as you turn the page.

Some of it actually evokes Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men more so than The Road), but instead of the dry, scouring heat of the desert, it's the damp, dull chill of these nameless little towns and villages and districts in Britain.

Very lonely, cold stuff.

After this, one Miss Jessica Wade has provided me with The Tesseract by Alex Garland, which, if I remember correctly, is a final boss in Doom II, and, although she "can't remember anything about the book except that it's excellent and the writer is hot", I am very excited.

When book people give you books, ninety nine times out of a hundred, it's going to be the bee's knees: covered in cloying clumps of pollen.

I may also have two or three other things to be excited about coming up, but who the fuck knows until they're already over and done with?

"Not I" said the guy typing in the dark.

Not I.