What I’m Reading Right Now…
I’m concurrently reading three different books right now:
1. Encore by May Sarton, a journal she kept in her 80s (softbound)
2. Of City and Stars / The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clark – (Kindle app on iPad)
3. Pathways to the Future by David Mills (Kindle app on iPad, iPhone)
I’ve written in other notes about the May Sarton book. I’m about half way through it now, Usually I read 2 or 3 of her journal entries before I go to bed at night.
May is pretty self centered. One of her favorite topics, when she’s not talking about her illness, pains, and doctor visits, is the attention she receives for her books. She is very busy exchanging letters (she isn’t an email user, just learning to use a word processor in 1993) and phone calls with acquaintances who are writing about her life and her books. She loves giving interviews.
In a recent journal entry she comes right out and says:
“The fact is that nothing interests me as much perhaps than myself at this stage of my life. I have so much to think about.”
This would be boorish if it weren’t that she is 80 years old and regularly notes the deaths or dementia of her older friends. So, she can be forgiven for applying her social journalism skills of documenting and tying up loose ends while she still has the mind to do so.
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Arther C. Clarks “Of City and Stars / Sands of Mars” is a SF classic. I’m really just beginning to appreciate traditional SF. I’ve always been put off by narrative that blythly assumes that personal rocket ships that routinely transports people and aliens among the stars is old news but the author is obliged to refer to the obvious advantages of negative ion hyper drive over solar wind powered vehicles operated by malicious robots while the humans are in a deep state of suspended animation. Clarke is a master at this imaginative wishful thinking. But weaved in the characters dialog is usually some pretty powerful social statements.
For instance, in “Of City and Stars”, he outlines a utopian city where no one is required to work, but rather to indulge in their personal interests, whether it be art, engineering, philosophy, whatever, within the bounds of the city. This seems like sublimity until one of the residents breaks a sacred taboo and yearns to explore outside of the city. Suddenly, the reader see’s how static and narrow such a utopia could be.
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David Mills is not an accomplished Sci Fi writer in my opinion. He has a theory about the direction and future of mankind (its not good) and doesn’t want to be restrained by practical matters such as feasibility of or social reaction (adoption) to technical change to declare the end of humanity.
He does understand that porn sells books. I don’t think he is very good at that either but porn is a highly subjective genre and perhaps I’m just not kinky enough to appreciate his skills here.
Lastly, David suffers from a particular writers conceit. He is familiar with a particular geographic region, that of Seattle and suburban areas, and he flaunts this knowledge in his writing. This is kind of like dropping names to those who are also “in the know” and alienating to those who don’t. He could easily make up totally fictitious names for cities, neighborhoods, and streets and still use the layout of the area. This would not have taken anything away from the plot and he wouldn’t have to straddle fiction and reality every time a certain time/distance/direction vector did match the real world.
This book falls into the category of a summer read for when I don’t want to think. Unlike the Arthur C. Clarke novel above, I don’t expect it to change my way of thinking dramatically.
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I’m not sure whats next on my reading list. I tend to be spontaneous when I run across a title that sounds interesting.
Cheers,
jgp