Tuesday, March 08, 2005

more about emily zilch



today i read three novels. the first was, as i mentioned in an earlier selfserving post, codrescu's messi@h, from which i learned that Galgal haMazal is how you say Wheel of Fortune in modern israeli hebrew. i liked the story, i liked the weirdness and the female messiahs. the writing was good, but not mesmerising.

the second was a reread: the classic joe haldeman novel the forever war, which has two 'sequels', of which one is a complete rewrite scrapping the entire setting of the original novel but featuring a real-life pub i could hit with a rock from my front door. this novel is a literary response to heinlein's starship troopers - an intellectual challenge to the problematics and quirks of that novel. this prompted several other authors to respond in turn, including le guin, orson scott card-hates-fags and, as i mentioned, haldeman twice more.

third - i just put it down - was the philip dick novel Lies Inc., which was quite the mental strain. it was good, but my favourite dick novel remains, sans doubt, galactic pot healer. the glimmung along is worth it.

if you want to know about the glimmung, read the novel. hell, go read it anyway. it's one of my favourite books of all time, i mention it whenever possible.

anyway, it's 2200h and i've bin not watching television these last few days. i've bin reading and suchlike. i seem to now be able to focus on reading without instant boredom and sleepytime, and i am sooooo pleased this is happening. television is misery, and when you can't focus sufficiently to watch anything less ADD - like, for example, the internet - it sucks. a lot.

the weather is very strange today. now there is frozen hail and snow covering everything, but in the house we have fresh bread, fresh meals, good coffee, good books; it's all good, man. if only there were more women...

anyway, here endeth the lesson. go to bed or something.

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