Today's WFA Reading: 2/18

A package from Wizards of the Coast today, who are submitting just one book. It's an interesting strategy, and it certainly draws my attention. I'm not a complete snob when it comes to books -- I've been known to praise sharecropped novels before -- so I wasn't going to immediately dismiss their output offhand anyway, but it is interesting to have someone say "we think this is the best book we published this year."

(Looking again, I may have misunderstood; the letter is from an "I," rather than from "we" or "Wizards of the Coast." I'm not even sure who the person is, so he may not be the only one from Wizards who will send me books. Still, it doesn't change the essential point: he thinks this is the best book WotC did, and he was willing to take the time and effort to pack it off with a personal letter to all of the WFA judges.)

It's the weekend, so I'm reading for work rather than the WFA (so A Feast for Crows will have to sit until Tuesday). It's also Saturday, so I had very little time -- Saturday is "boys' day," and I spend it running around with Thing 1 and Thing 2. Today we went to the Harlem Globetrotters with a Cub Scout group, which was fun. (Though I miss the famous 'Trotters of my youth, the ones who were on Scooby Doo.) I'm trying again to read on my Palm, since I have a new one (Tungsten E2, much better than my old m130), and so far, so good. It's relatively comfortable to hold, and the screen holds enough words to make it worthwhile. I do get some submissions electronically, and this is immensely more portable than a manuscript. I even read for a while during the game, which I could never do with a book, much less a manuscript. This does have possibilities.

(What I'm actually reading this weekend is last year's short fiction -- Jonathan Strahan turned in Best Short Novels: 2006 to me last week, so I'm going through that. I've also been trying to get through the Hartwell/Cramer Year's Best SF, but that can only be done at home, so I'm just grabbing a story here and there.)