Rediscovering Reading. . .

Thank you, thank you, thank you, my Sisters, for giving me The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It's *exactly* the kind of book I like - it has flaws, but it's *interesting*, original (surprisingly so, since many elements would appear to be lifted from Tolkien, at first sight), slightly monstrous. . . It contains a whole world.

This, it seems, is a good year for reading. In the last few years, I only discovered one book of that kind a year. This year, I've already discovered two. (The first was Michael de Larrabeiti's 'Borrible' trilogy whose praise I have already sung here repeatedly.) I've also read some less impressive but nevertheless very satisfying stuff, such as the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold, and the Harry Potter series.

I'd almost forgotten how much I love reading, immersing myself in a book. I was too busy, the last two or three years. I'm still busy, but it's a different kind of busy - until recently, there always was some nagging awareness of neglected duties at the back of my mind that made it impossible for me to relax. Now I'm between universities, between countries, between responsibilities. I'm free, kind of. And I can read.

I have quite a few books still on my 'to read' stack - among them some very welcome recent additions, mostly birthday presents - but I love making lists of books I want to read, so here are a few things I want to read when I'm done with the books on my 'to read' stack:

- Jonathan Carroll: The Land of Laughs
- Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
- Dan Simmons: Hyperion
- Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett: Good Omens
- Iain Banks: Feersum Endjinn (or maybe some other book by Banks, haven't quite decided yet)
- Robert Zelazny: The Chronicles of Amber
- Ursula LeGuin: The Earthsea Triloy/Quartet(?)
- Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog (See, veritykindle, I rememeber recommendations!)
- Steven Brust: The Book of Jhereg
- Samuel Delany: Babel-17
- Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination
- Cordwainer Smith: Norstrilia

Yes, it's all geeky stuff. So what? I'm embracing my geekiness, nowadays. ;-)

Anything you think I should definitely read? Recommend it to me, here and now! I always remember recommendations, even if I only come around to reading them a few years from now.

As for non-geeky literature...

well, I'm pretty certain I want to give Dostoievsky a chance, sometime soon, now that I've determined that Tolstoy is not quite my cup of tea.

There are other authors and books, too, but somehow, I never find it as easy to recite my non-geeky 'to read' list off the top of my head as my geeky list. I guess the geeky stuff is somewhat closer to my heart. ;-)

Here's a quiz for ankae... *g*

How evil are you?

Things we do for love... or obsession:

I just spent an hour or more on ICQ with AnduraNova, surfing ebay and various sex shops for an orange-red latex skirt and top to dress AnduraNova up as Sikozu at the Bochum comic fair. Dashan will dress up as Chiana, I will be Zhaan, Nager will be Stark, and Bettina will be Scorpius again. You wouldn't believe how many hours of shopping - or rather, hours of searching for things without much success - go into each of these costumes.

But we will get to meet Virginia Hey. In fact, we'll have breakfast with her. And she'll probably think us total nutcases for appearing in full costume for breakfast, but we have no choice - the comic fair starts right after breakfast, so we can either get into costume *before* breakfast or not at all.

I sense that this has the potential to become the most embarrassing day of my life.