What I’m Reading Right Now

Sometimes people ask me what I’m reading right now. I usually pick something interesting that I’ve finished recently and talk about that.

This is primarily because I am always loathe to commit much of an opinion to a work until I finish it–if it’s terrible enough that I don’t want to read it, I can comment on why I stopped, but if I’m enjoying it I hesitate to praise until I finish the book. You never know when someone’s going to pull a “this doesn’t finish, it stops“Note that this flaw doesn’t make this a bad book–it was the best thing I read that year–but it certainly alters how I talk about the book, or a “the hand of God literally reaches down to resolve the story“, or a “most hilariously bad misinterpretation of Chekov’s gun in a climactic scene“, or whatever.

The other reason, of course, is that I’m never “reading” one thing. I’ve got books on the go all over the house. (And that’s not including the pile of comics that shows up once a week, or all the time I spent reading pixels.)

Anyway, here’s a snapshot of what I’ve got on the go right now.

Upstairs Living Room: Cameron Rogers, Music of Razors

I think I bought this primarily because of what I read online. I just started this, bit the first dozen or so pages have really grabbed my attention–enough so that I will probably move the book a location that’s more conducive to length periods of reading. The books in the upstairs living room usually have to compete with Sarah, and when she sees me reading, she pretty much always brings over one of her books to have me read it to her. (If those count, then the list is a lot bigger!)

Bathroom: Cintra Wilson, A Massive Swelling

This is actually probably the thing I most look forward to reading out of everything that’s going now. I often keep a nonfiction volume in the bathroom, but it’s been a while since there was anything as fun to read as this.

Wilson is smart, funny, and above all mean, and this book, which puts forth the hypothesis that “celebrity is a grotesque, crippling disease” is cracking me up. No one likes a mean person around all the time, but sometimes it’s fun to go to the bar, and sit having drinks with your cattiest friend while she makes biting remarks about everyone else in the room. Wilson’s book is like that, except she’s commenting on people in the public eye.

Here are two quotes from early in the book that will give you an idea if this is for you or not. First, we have Cintra outlining what she sees as the natural state of mankind:

What nature does not provide in the way of an instinctual deterrent, societal and karmic law handles by providing terrible disfiguring diseases and jail sentences and vast financial punishments. Without these, we would all naturally swerve towards being illiterate and obese sex-crazed criminals, engaging in heroin-addled blood orgies from the time we turn six years old, chain-smoking and eating nothing but bacon and cans of whipped cream and Starburst fruit chews.

and another from a few chapters in when she does her analysis on celebrity and Las Vegas:

Vegas is the limelight graveyard for Caucasian fame-junkies, the only nether-sphere of big-dollar entertainment where aging closet queens and hypervain, sideburned Republican megalomaniacs who refuse to wither and crawl into obscurity draw their last, star-spangled burst of audience attention and surrender to their own brands of frightening and delusional multi-million dollar gluttony.

You will understand why, after just reading the prelude, I found Cintra’s web site, and subscribed to her blog.

Office: Alex DeCampi, Adam au Chromaland – vol. 1: Le Musée de l’imaginaire
I don’t spend a lot of non-work time in my office, and haven’t really done so since the advent of wireless networking, but the nature of my work is that there are regular occasions where I have a sequence of short periods where I am waiting for the computer to do something. They aren’t long enough to work on something else–usually they are a chance to check email, or catch up on some web pages. I often also read something that is amenable to being appreciated in a series of small chunks.

This comic is perfect for that–I want to read it, having quite enjoyed some of DeCampi’s earlier books, and being stunned by some of the artwork–but it is currently only available in French. Now, there was a time when I was fluent in French–right after my months of living in Lausanne–but that was a long time ago now, so reading this is a bit more effort than is conducive to lengthy sessions.

Boy, the art is something, though.

Downstairs Living Room: Martin Millar, The Good Fairies Of New York

I believe I have mentioned this before. This is one of my rare re-reads.

(I could use a new Thraxas book, but only if it’s going to be a good one–the latest one was quite a step down from the first couple.)

Bedroom: Anthology, Places To Be People To Kill

I picked this up because I have a sentimental attachment to fantasy assassins, and because I usually enjoy Tanya Huff’s work. I’ve only read her story so far, which I quite enjoyed, because these days by the time I get into bed it’s very close to “time to sleep”. This was not always the case, but having a child has made made morning come much earlier than it used to.