Reading Into the Past: Week of 4/16

Blah blah blah Sunday night blah blah blah roll dice blah blah blah 14 blah blah blah blah 1992 blah blah [fx="creaking old book"] blah-itty blah-itty blah:

• In a Word edited by Jack Hitt (4/10)
  I thought it was a book of quotes, but some quick amazoning tells me that it's actually a pseudo-dictionary of newly invented words. I don't think I still have it, and I bet no one uses more than two or three of the words in it -- but it was entertaining enough to read at the time.
• Reality Is What You Can Get Away With by Robert Anton Wilson (4/10)
  Every reasonably intelligent young person goes through a Robert Anton Wilson phase. Really, it's nothing to be ashamed of. When I read this, I was nearing the end of my RAW phase (though I think this came into the SFBC, so I didn't actually spend any money on it), and this pretty much ended it. If you want goofball paranoia, hit The Illuminatus Trilogy. If you're still interested, RAW has some other related books, but be warned: you'll probably suddenly grow up and find it all pointless right in the middle of one of them.
• Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock (4/11)
  Remember these? This was the first of a trilogy that was absolutely huge in the early '90s. You know, the gorgeously-designed books with letters you had to pull out of envelopes to read? Anyway, they were lovely-looking objects, and the writing was perfectly serviceable, but there wasn't much story there. And the third book just petered out. Still: great-looking books.
• With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties by Calvin Trillin (4/12)
  I probably disagree with Trillin on a lot of fundamental political principles, but that doesn't really matter. What's important is that he's funny in that dry, sarcastic way I always enjoy, and that he focuses on picking on the government. (Which is what I've recently realized I like most in my political writings; it doesn't matter which party is in power, or what their policies are, I just want to know about what idiots they are and which boneheaded thing they've done most recently.) This is a collection of his columns from The Nation, a periodical I would never read in the course of ordinary life. But now, every time it's mentioned, I immediately think of "the wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky" and smile. Thanks, Calvin.
• More Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort (4/12)
  OK, what kind of dweeb not only reads this cover-to-cover but actually writes it down in his reading notebook? (A bookish, male dweeb, obviously.) I shake my head ruefully at my former self. At least I got this free from work...
• A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain (4/12)
  Certainly Twain's least-known travel book, and possibly his least-successful one, this is the record of a walking tour of Europe originally published in 1880. I find Twain endlessly entertaining, though, especially when he's writing non-fiction, so this book was a joy to read and one I remember fondly.
• The Elf Queen of Shannara by Terry Brooks (4/13)
  Terry Brooks is a very nice guy who writes enormously popular books that have helped pay my salary for many years now and which delight people worldwide. They're not always to my particular taste, but I am not a churl.
• Dead Irish by John Lescroart (4/14)
  This is probably not a Dismas Hardy book, since I don't think I've ever read any of them. (On the other hand, I'd forgotten I'd read anything by Lescroart.) Damn -- Amazon tells me this is a Dismas book, so I'm 0-for-2. I don't think I ever went back, so it must not have thrilled me.
• Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams (4/14)
  One of the great science fiction novels of the '90s; this book is bursting with invention and verve and practically throws off sparks as you touch it. The fact that it wasn't even nominated for the Hugo just tells you what a great year 1992 was (the ballot consisted of Doomsday Book, A Fire Upon the Deep, China Mountain Zhang, Red Mars and Steel Beach). Everyone who reads science fiction should own this book, and WJW should be massively more popular and influential. And, when I finish up my World-Conquering Doomsday Device (TM), I'll remedy that and many other problems.
• "D"Is For Deadbeat by Sue Grafton (4/15)
  I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea which one this is. But I've liked them all.
• The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (4/15)
  I'm amazed at how old this book is -- I hadn't realized that it was pre-WWW. It would be interesting to read it again, in light of everything that's happened in the last decade and a half. (And I'm sure I'll have time to do that, he said, laughing hysterically.)
• Twospot by Bill Pronzini and Collin Wilcox (4/16)
  This paired Pronzini's Nameless Detective (whose series I was working through at that time, since I like hard-boiled detectives and had a lot of reading time on my hands) with Wilcox's series detective (name completely forgotten, since I never read anything else by Wilcox). It was not quite as good at the usual run of Nameless books, but those (at least the '70s and '80s books) were quite solid detective stories.

As always when I look back that far, I'm impressed by how much I managed to read in the days before Internet, kids and mortgage. But I sometimes wish that kid had read better books...