i have a blog post simmering in my head, based on my somewhat yearly re-read of sheri tepper’s gibbon’s decline and fall. the basic contours are ruminations that the current wave of religious zealotry may be a frightened response to an increasingly complex (albeit better-understood than 250 years ago) world. i don’t know how much further i will get than that, so in the meantime, i offer up alejna’s unread book meme/not meme.

according to alejna (and you should read the provenance of the meme over at her blog; it’s interesting – the top 106 unread books at LibraryThing):

Bold what you have read, italicize your did not finishes, strikethrough the ones you hated, put *asterisks next to those you’ve read more than once, and put a + cross in front of the books that are on your bookshelf.

i’m probably going to add editoral comments [in brackets].

so, continue below the fold for my reads of the unread (as opposed to deads of the undead)… and i apologize for the order in which the books are listed. they are not alphabetized, sorted by author, date of publication, or anything logical i can discern. unless it’s the most-unread to the least-unread (or vice versa), but that would be wholly subjective. and subject to change without notice.
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no point in waiting for the next installment in the wheel of time series. this is why books should be written by millions of monkeys at typewriters.

okay, that’s callous. it is a loss. i liked robert jordan’s books, at least until they started slooooooowing waaaaaaaay doooooooown…….

*sigh* another fantasy polyamorist series dead.

3:10 to yuma. have i ever mentioned i want to keep christian bale in the basement? what? that’s creepy, you say? yeah, it is. but after seeing rescue dawn and 3:10 to yuma, yeah, i want him in the basement. slightly malnourished, slightly greasy looking. (american psycho and the machinist freak me out too much to want him at either extreme.) it’s really not that creepy. there’s a couch down there. and a bathroom. oh, and the washer & dryer, so he could do his laundry.

but seriously, the bale/crowe remake is excellent. (and for reasons far beyond just bale, in case you’re wondering. ben foster took the rather trite role of gay sociopath and made it truly creepy. alan tudyk i will watch in anything, although i’m getting tired of his penchant for taking snuff roles. cut it out already, willya? and logan lerman, who is all of fifteen and unfortunately looks like an ashton kutcher clone, did a more-than-adequate job of playing his own age.) i may have to see it in the theater again, and i can’t remember the last time i said that about a movie. it may have been something with gary oldman in it. but my gary oldman fixation? that’s soooo 90s. new century. new cinematic obsession.

iron man. just caught the trailer for it. robert downey jr., another one i’ll watch in almost anything, and unlike christian bale, he hasn’t starred in the creepiest of bret easton ellis’ books-turned-movies. it appears to have potential (more than underdog, anyway, which i may have to see just because i also saw kangaroo jack. if the logic of that is opaque to you, obviously you’ve never met me), and it was directed by jon favreau.

on the wagon, off the wagon, nailed to the side of the wagon… robert downey jr., you had me at “girls, schmirls!” or maybe it was at “violent ground acquisition games such as football is in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.” anyway. either way. since the mid-80s, and despite the dalliance with molly ringwald. and in a move that struck me as incredibly funny, iron man can fly (gimme a break, i never read the comics). (go read soon i will be invincible.)

all of which bring me to (and by “all of which,” i mean my aside about gary oldman, who was in the fifth element with the lovely star of…)

resident evil: extinction. 10 days to go. and while my theory that i could watch anything with milla kicking ass in it was horribly disabused by ultraviolet, i thoroughly enjoyed the first two resident evil movies. so i’m hopeful for this one. (and damn this imdb overuse! there’s a short that’s a trailer for a remake of gore vidal’s caligula out there! with milla! and i haven’t seen it!)

nuff ‘o that. i’ve mentioned a few movies and a few books. go about your day. i need to get to work.

per alejna’s request, i’m listing my top books… don’t know how many i’ll get to, but i’ll give it a go. i’m not using any particular criteria, just what comes to mind. and no particular order, either.

1. chapterhouse: dune. i was originally going to put down the whole dune series, but decided to pick one. i still have my copy of chapterhouse from high school. i think i like it because it’s almost entirely female-oriented; darwi odrade is one of my favorite protagonists from herbert’s pantheon. i haven’t read brian herbert’s sequel (wikipedia tells me it’s hunters of dune), but given how awful i found his first foray into the duniverse, i don’t think i’m missing much.

2. one monster after another. hands down, my favorite children’s book. my favorite children’s book author, mercer mayer. i still have my original copy (first printing, i think – it’s identical to this one available on ebay).

[aside: as i was searching for a non-amazon link to one monster after another, i came across a site called, "uppity girls and fearless women: a picture book bibliography." alejna, you may want to check it out.]

3. pretty much any of barbara hambly’s vampire, windrose, darwath, and winterlands novels. the darwath trilogy – now numbering five, in an oddly douglas adams-esque fashion – is my favorite of the bunch, but they are all variations on a theme: strong women, useful (if somewhat befuddled) men. the winterlands novels get a bit convoluted, and i think the earlier books are better than the later ones, but the idea of turning into a dragon still appeals to me.

4. and the band played on. randy shilts. much better than his followup book, conduct unbecoming. i read it in high school after it was first published, and have re-read it several times since then. i’m always fascinated; the identification of gaetan dugas particularly appeals to the MPH still lurking within me.

5. the control of communicable diseases in man. years ago, when i felt sick, i would scour this book trying to match my symptoms with diseases. did i have rocky mounted spotted fever? yellow fever? smallpox? the book now has a slightly different name; the particular edition that is near to my heart has the cholera flag design cover.

[aside: i'm noticing that i read all the books so far pre-1989. did i not read anything compelling after high school? i doubt that's the case. let's see if i can come up with five later books.]

6. biohazard, by ken alibek. i read this when i was in my bioterrorism phase, about six years ago. fascinating reading, if you like that sort of thing. (it was a reach to come up with this book – the next on my list was going to be the medical detectives, but i read it in – you guessed it – highschool. again, early warning signs of a future MPH.)

7. archy and mehitabel. don marquis. this, too, predates college, but i’m including it because it was first published in 1927. it was gifted to me by my dad; you know you really rate in my book if i give you a copy of the same edition. dad’s favorite poem from the book is freddy the rat perishes (he takes on a tarantula after eating some rat poison; his line is “i m more full of death than a drug store”), and mom’s is mehitabel and her kittens, which reads in part,

of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me

i’ve always had my suspicions about my mother.

8. thurgood marshall: american revolutionary. this isn’t really one of my favorite books, but i’m reaching because i’m trying to come up with something published recently. of the SCOTUS-related reading for pleasure i’ve done, this one is my favorite so far. juan williams’ style is accessible; marshall is a total cad. and a remarkable strategist. i still haven’t finished justice for all: earl warren and the nation he made, which is a much longer, denser read, but so far it’s also very good.

[aside: i just noticed that none of my favorite graphic novelist's "real" novels are listed.  while quite good, i guess they just didn't grab me.  as an honorable mention i'll include death: the high cost of living, which i notice is due to start filming this year.]

9.   earth, by david brin.  not nearly as fast-paced or exotic as most of his other books, this one takes place on a near-future earth.  global warming has melted the ice caps, radically changing the coastlines; secrecy has been abolished; the internet and gaia are merging.  it was published in 1990, and i didn’t read it until ‘93-’94 or thereabouts.  my copy is dogeared, to say the least.  i also think it’s falling apart.

10. the joy of cooking, or as some call it, “rombauer becker.”  the original version.  need to know how to skin a squirrel? this book has it.  want to corn your own beef?  it’s in here.  i have a paperback copy of the original version, which i bought in college when i needed a recipe for stuffed roasted chicken, and the “updated” 1997 version – vastly inferior, IMO – in hardback.   more proof that there’s a blog for everything: here, someone is trying to cook his or her way through the 1997 edition.  wow.

well, i got through 10 books before losing steam.  jeff, what’re your favorite books?  james?  randy?  maarten?  bueller?  bueller?  anyone?

[query to self: why are the vast majority of my blog links to guys?  is it that more guys blog than gals?  or that i have more male friends than female?  or is there some other explanation?]

day before yesterday a spambot left a comment that read, “phentermine that accepts cod payment.” i thought it was referring to the fish. i’d been reading about the importance of salt cod, you see, in mark kurlansky’s salt.

today the spambot graced my blog with “online bingo” – and i read oingo boingo. because i’m just at that age. (the “i listen(ed) to oingo boingo” age, not the “my eyes are dimming from” age. so stop the snide comments right there.)

if the theory behind spambots is correct, having “phentermine” and “online bingo” in my blog should generate a great many hits. if it does, and someone is reading this because it did, may i direct your attention to the book and the band? they’re far more interesting…

because it seems to me that they could really use a couple of copies of charles duff’s a handbook on hanging. for instance:

“The matter which requires the greatest attention in connection with an execution is the allowance of a suitable drop for each person executed, and the adjustment of this matter is not nearly so simple as an outsider would imagine. It is, of course, necessary that the drop should be of sufficient length to cause instantaneous death, that is to say, to cause death by dislocation rather than by strangulation; and on the other hand, the drop must not be so great as to outwardly mutilate the victim…

[table of rope length to victim's weight omitted]

“…Again, in the case of persons of very fleshy build, who often have weak bones and muscles about the neck, I have reduced the drop by a quarter or half the distance indicated by the table. If i had not done so, no doubt two or three of those whom I have executed would have had their heads entirely jerked off…”

really, it should be required reading for any post-overthrow mob rule.

once again, at p&p:

quite possibly only of interest to those of austrian descent, or european history buffs, or maybe people who love cliff notes?

Sunday, January 7, 1 p.m.
STEVEN BELLER
A CONCISE HISTORY OF AUSTRIA (Cambridge Univ., $24.99)
In this volume of the Cambridge Concise History series, Beller skillfully traces Austria through its many transformations, from before and during Hapsburg rule, to its period as an empire resisting changes and the empire’s subsequent breakup, to the interval between world wars, and finally today as a republic.

and for political buffs (not that there are any of those in this city):

Monday, January 8, 7 p.m.
P.J. O’ROURKE
ON THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (Atlantic Monthly, $19.95)
Satirist O’Rourke, the author of Give War a Chance and Parliament of Whores, shows us why Adam Smith’s seminal work is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important.