Reading Into the Past: Week of 4/1

This time our magic number is ten, and here are the books I was reading at the end of March 1997:

• Linda Obst, Hello, He Lied (3/24)
  One of those Hollywood memoirs that proliferated in the mid-90s (with the rise of the independent production companies, I bet). Obst may have written a more famous book before this one (or I may be thinking of someone else), but this is the one I read. It has not stuck in the mind, but I still like that title.
• Brian Aldiss, Remembrance Day (3/26)
  A contemporary novel, I believe -- and I think there was some terrorism in it. I wonder how it compares to this year's new novel, HARM?
• Les Daniels, DC Comics (3/26)
  A big fat coffee table book with lots of comic panels blown up a bit too large. I believe Daniels did a Marvel book first, which was a hit, and so I was looking at this follow-up for the SFBC. I can't remember if we offered it or not, or much about the book itself.
• The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe (3/26)
  Another art book from the man behind Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials and the much later Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy. He always had a naturalist's eye, which made him a great painter of aliens and other interesting creatures -- I believe this book was loosely themed around those strengths. I haven't seen anything from Barlowe in ages; I wonder what he's doing these days?
• John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke, The Mask (3/27)
  First comics series about the character; one of the movies was probably coming up at this point (I am too lazy to investigate right now), and I was thinking about them for the club. Decent early-'90s over-energetic comics, but I doubt they've aged well.
• John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke, The Mask Returns (3/27)
  See above.
• Masamune Shirow, Appleseed Book One: The Promethean Challenge (3/27)
  I imagine I was reading this for the SFBC as well. I recall mostly liking it --the characterization was pretty good, and Shirow has an art style that's interesting, if a bit busy -- but I've never been a big giant-robot fan, so I didn't seek out any more of the series.
• Walter Jon Williams, Days of Atonement (3/28)
  I finally caught up to this novel a few years late; It was published around 1990. This is probably Williams's least skiffy novel, being a near-future police procedural, and I enjoyed it, as I've liked all of his novels.
• James White, Final Diagnosis (3/29)
  It's not actually the last "Sector General" novel -- there was one more, a few years later -- though it sounds like it should be. I wish there were more books like these: fun but not flyweight, serious but not dour, adventurous but not violent.
  
• Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (3/31)
  First of two novels in an ugly brown-paper Modern Library edition; I'm afraid all I remember is that they're about upper-crusty English types in the middle of the last century, and that I was supposed to figure out a lot of scandalous real-life details, since it's a roman a clef. (Mitford was one of a slew of daughters from an aristocratic family, and they all keep popping up in the oddest places in 20th century English history -- one married Oswald Mosely, and one ended up writing The American Way of Death.) I felt as if I needed to read five or six good history books to properly appreciate this novel, so a lot of it just went past me.
• Scott Adams, Casual Day Has Gone Too Far (3/31)
  A Dilbert collection. 'Nuff said.
• Nancy Mitford, Love In a Cold Climate (4/2)
  The other novel in that ugly Modern Library omnibus, which I think was a sequel to Pursuit, and left me equally cold.

I seem to be writing these up during the week, and saving them to post on Saturdays (when I don't have time to sit down at the computer, usually). Perhaps I should shift my weeks to accommodate that? (Of course, if I did, then I'd suddenly start posting these at completely different times, for whatever reasons.)