I’ve been spending a lot of my free time with my nose in book, mostly sci-fi and/or fantasy: here are the four or five most recent.

Unholy Night, by Seth Grahame-Smith

I’m not quite sure why Grahame-Smith gets the level of derision that he does.  On the other hand, I haven’t read that zombie book, or the vampire one either. Unholy Night is a nice little plot-driven read involving a what-if scenario around the escape of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus from Herod’s wrath.  A little bit of the supernatural shows up here and there, enough to keep it interesting.

The Other Wind, by Ursula K. Le Guin

This last (?) installment in the Earthsea series is by far the most boring, least stimulating, and ultimately dissatisfying of the lot.  while I have tremendous respect for most of her oeuvre, this one is flat, a mere trifle.

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

I’m late to the Gaiman party, and have also weirdly never read Terry Pratchett, but this one was entertaining; a comic look at the Antichrist, switched at birth and brought up in rural England, full of misgivings as the appointed time of the End of Days arrives.

Valis, by Philip K. Dick

This was an extremely hard book to read – Dick mixes in autobiographical elements throughout the fictional narrative of a man with a split personality who attempts to unravel the mystery of a religious encoded message that revealed itself to him in the early 1970’s.  It’s emotionally exhausting and filled with more truth than one usually gets in fictional stories.  Part of a trilogy, written toward the end of Dick’s life; I haven’t yet had the strength to pick up the other two.

 
The Family Trade, by Charles Stross

A thoroughly two-dimensional summertime page turner, rendered palatable only by Stross’ ability to build plausibility into the key plot device: a group of humans who can cross over into parallel worlds.  A far remove from his masterpieces such as Accelerando and Palimpsest.  Having said that, I’m in the mood for light summertime page turners, so I’ll likely continue on to The Hidden Family and beyond (I think there are four or five in the series).

Recently finished a book, my first in a while now, what with being busy jetsetting and all.  The Art of Racing In The Rain, by Seattle author Garth Stein, drew my attention for reasons not altogether literary, which, in that one small respect, joins me at the hip with the million book club members who undoubtedly have chosen this book for one of their monthly get-togethers.

This book didn’t get a lot of critical acclaim.  Unless you count Oprah and Starbucks and a five-star review on Amazon.com as critical acclaim.  I can’t even find a review in The New Yorker, for example, and those snobs with the National Book Award focus all their attention on the Roths and Proulxs and (sigh) Franzens of the world.

What was wrong with it?  It just wasn’t literature.  It was a story, a pretty story, all tied up in a bow with a clever hook that kept the narrative going, but it was just a story.  It was not particularly thought-provoking, except insofar as certain passages would, for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with authorial intent, get me wound up and all self-reflective.  But that’s my personal experience as a reader, and I *guarantee* that you would not have the same reaction to those same passages, because you are not me, and the provenance of your book is/was quite different the provenance of my copy.

Having said that, it was a good story.  I won’t deny that to Stein or to his legion of admirers.  He’s a capable storyteller, and if he’s no Pynchon or Roth or DFW, then I guess I would say “who is?”  Damned few of us, and fewer still as the days go by and literature becomes simpler, coarser, wider and necessarily shallower.  This is both good and bad.  Good, because even as we experience The Death Of the Novel, more people are reading than ever before, and bad, because the supreme effort it takes to write a Ulysses or Molloy or V or Infinite Jest might just be too much for the public and the book-publishing industry to support and encourage in days to come.

Can I survive on such thin gruel?  Doubt it. But there are worse ways to spend one’s time, nose-deep in a book, one’s subconscious busily working out the details of one’s life while flipping pages quickly and with little doubt that there are nooks and crannies within the writing that one has missed.  Nothing between the lines to fuss over – plain and simple.  In coffee-speak, it’s Folger’s, not a single-origin Ethiopian Yirgacheffe served from the pourover bar.

I should mention that Garth Stein was scheduled to teach the second year of the fiction writing course at the UW when I was in the program; a few days before the start of the year he withdrew because his book – this book – was picked up and he had to basically give up his life for a while and do the whole book-promotion thing.  I would have liked to study under him.  Especially now, having read (some of) his work, it would have been interesting.

At any rate, if you’re looking for a useful rainy-Sunday read that serves just enough of its purpose to make it worthwhile, consider the book.  If you’re looking to be challenged, or tortured, or pissed off, or brought into one of the various euphoric states that truly great literature can engender – then look elsewhere.

I’m convinced that there must be some combination of beer, coffee, sleep, environmental stimulus, angst, and sex drive that is optimal for the blogger.  As I write this I have some (ed: or all?) of the above in varying quantities, most notably “environmental stimulus” – I’m sitting in the coffee shop at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, maybe the largest bookstore in the nation/world/universe.  You could get lost in here, and I’ll bet many people do.  In an earthquake, you could quite literally drown in romance or erotica or Persian-studies anthologies.

Earlier this evening, I drank beer at a hipster place up the street, where the big event was the bartender’s announcement that “she’s no longer homeless!”.  A nice young man from South Carolina – or Gresham – tried to sell me a homemade CD of his guitar music, and when I demurred, changed tactics and offered to sell me drugs.  I am currently in the cafe in Powell’s drinking my signature cappuccino.  I had a nap. 

As for the rest of the list of optimal blogging inputs, let’s leave something as an interpretive exercise for the reader.

As I was drinking my beer, I leafed through Portland’s equivalent to the Stranger, called The Mercury, and it was nearly the same in every regard – but, surprisingly, it was a little nicer, a little cleaner cut.  Whether that’s the result of Dan Savage’s blunt, cover-the-children’s-eyes brand of erotica, or whether the Seattle crew has a bigger drinking problem, or whether the Portland advertising purchasers are more family-friendly, like Sesame Street viewers, I didn’t feel like i had to wash my hands (or eyes) after reading the Mercury.  In fact, if there was a single reference to “penis” in the entire magazine I’d be surprised.

Portland has been busy and fun. I arrived Monday after a relaxing, dull-the-senses train ride, exactly what I needed after a couple weeks of anxiety and turbulence surrounding my big announcement that I was leaving my previous job and moving on.  The cascade of untapped emotion that came along with that decision, and the series of inevitably sweet-sad goodbyes with coworkers whom I know and love, has slowed to a trickle.  I’m still convinced it was the right decision, for me personally, and that moving on will open up new vistas.  However, part of me will still clutch to the past, as ridiculous as that is, and I’ll have to be aware to open up and seize new opportunities as they arise.

I had a nice time catching up with a friend Monday over drinks and food at a cool little place downtown.  Tuesday was a U.S. Open Cup meetup at a soccer bar, where I drank too much and watched the Sounders come out on top over an overmatched Columbus Crew team.  Tonight is quieter, which I’m not sure I like.  What I think that means is that distraction remains my friend while I continue to work through things in my head about where I am, where I’m going, and that I don’t want to be too eager to sit still and listen for the echoes as my mind shouts out these questions.

If you would have told me ten years ago that I’d be sitting in Powell’s, arguably THE mecca for book lovers, and ardently wish to be somewhere else, I’d have dismissively called you a meathead and/or slapped your nose, Three-Stooges style.  And yet I am wishing I were elsewhere.  Ah, that will pass, I suppose, for nothing is truly permanent, not even the most finely polished feelings.  The trick, as I summed up in not-so-many words to a friend last night, is to capture the happiness available to you now, in the present moment, and not let the weight of the world (or the weight you take on) crush you, block you, blind you to good things that are available if you were just to reach out.  Life is meant to be lived, not endured.  Suffering is temporary, not transitive.

So – back to Portland?  I think so, yes.  I’ve buried quite a few ambivalent memories here and will be better able to experience the quirks and angles that Portland has to offer next time I return.  There is a lot of city to discover, a lot of serendipity to open myself up to, and the feel of the place meshes well with what I (think I) need right now – young, alternative, diverse, energetic, and literate.

Tomorrow I board the return train to Seattle.  I may catch up on some reading, or I may review a couple things on the laptop, or I may write some code, or all three or none of the above.  Who can say what will happen?  A friend is fond of saying we manifest the things that we need, at the time that it makes sense, so I may think on that and put some thought into what it is I need/want and how to put my world in the correct place to allow that to happen.

We’ll see.  In the meantime, last night in Portland, and on the way back to the hotel I’m going to stop by Voodoo Doughnut on the advice of a friend, and pick up a sweet nom for the MAX ride.  Their motto is “The Magic Is In The Hole”, and how could I not love that?