The Eternal Conundrum: What to Read Next?

There are a bunch of things competing for the next slot in my reading schedule, all of about equal importance, so I figured I might as well make it a poll. (I'll start reading something before the poll closes, and probably even before there's any sense of which way the poll is going -- but it would still be interesting to see.)

The Contenders:

• Hugo-nominated Feed by Mira Grant
• Hugo-nominated The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
• Hugo-nominated The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
• Embassytown, the new novel by China Mieville
• Bright's Passage, the first novel by singer-songwriter Josh Ritter
• Swamplandia!, acclaimed first novel by Karen Russell

What Should the Hornswoggler Read Next?

Vote early, but, please -- do not attempt to vote often! Arguments, pro or con, can also be made in comments.

Update: You don't need to stop voting, but I should probably mention that I'm now reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which was in the lead when I had to pick, and I see is in the lead again now. Swamplandia! will almost certainly be next, since it's a library book and the clock is already ticking. After that, I may need to set up another poll; it's the rest of those books and then another few (Butcher's Ghost Story, Block's A Drop of the Hard Stuff, and Swanwick's Dancing With Bears) that are already settled in my head. And, unless I can find a way to read vastly quicker than I currently do, that will take me most of the way through the summer.

Fireworks: Jingoistic or Not?

I've been very quiet on this blog for the front half of this month -- things have been busy at work, and I've been so tired/lazy at night that I've mostly been playing online games and generally wasting time instead of blogging. (Plus the kinds just went back to school, which means schedules are now both different and busier.) That means I've got a backlog of things I wanted to blog about, which may finally spur me to activity. (We'll see.)

First up is the question of fireworks. The Sunday of Labor Day weekend was Pompton Day -- most of the towns in my area have a street fair-cum-Whitmanian celebration of themselves at some point during the summer, and this was our turn. As usual in the US, a civic holiday in the summer means large explosions once darkness hits, and so there was a fireworks display over the local lake. (The town is Pompton Lakes, after all.)

The choice of music during the pyrotechnics was aggressively Amurrican -- almost entirely rah-rah patriotic, from Kate Smith to those flag-waving country songs that people who drive pick-ups love so much. And that got me to thinking.

I wondered if this is a particularly American phenomenon -- perhaps influenced by our national anthem, which is, after all, about watching "shells bursting in air" as the enemy attacks one of our forts -- or if fireworks displays are just vehicles for nationalism wherever they appear.

And I could have continued to wonder, but I decided I would, instead, ask you folks, in an utterly unscientific poll, how fireworks displays work where you live.

I'm going to try to embed a poll in the body of this blog to ask that question. I'm using an online poll service -- I expect to see a number of comments about how I've chosen the wrong one, and how this one is crashing various people's weird homebrew Linux rigs running on tree bark -- for the first time, and I expect bugs. If all goes well, it'll sit up at the top of this blog for about a week. If all goes wrong...I'll try something else; maybe a Blogger poll in the sidebar.
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Listening to: we are soldiers we have guns - Songs That No One Will Hear
via FoxyTunes

Fireworks Poll

A minor point of clarification: I'm not asking Americans to identify themselves as Red or Blue, but their communities, since I suspect, e.g. Alabama is more likely to have flag-waving in any random civic context than e.g. Vermont. Given that I'm from New Jersey, which is both quite Blue and full of patriotic music during our fireworks, this may not turn out to be the case.

Update: This fancy poll isn't working properly; the "vote now" button leads to the homepage of the poll service. (I guess you get what you pay for with free web apps.) I will tinker with it as much as my (very minor) coding skills allow, but this link goes directly to a page where the poll can actually be taken.

Are the fireworks displays you see typically nationistic in theme?

• I'm an American (God-fearing Red State division) and I say Yes.
• 
  I'm an American (God-fearing Red State division) and I say No.


• I'm an American (tree-hugging Blue State division) and I say Yes.


• I'm an American (tree-hugging Blue State division) and I say No.


• I'm a Canadian (insert your own characterization in comments) and I say Yes.


• I'm a Canadian (insert your own characterization in comments) and I say No.


• I'm British and I say Yes.


• I'm British and I say No.


• I'm from somewhere else in Europe and I say Yes.


• I'm from somewhere else in Europe and I say No.


• I'm Australian and I say Yes.


• I'm Australian and I say No.


• I'm from somewhere you neglected to mention, you fascist enthnocentrist you, and I say Yes.


• I'm from somewhere you neglected to mention, you fascist enthnocentrist you, and I say No.


• I wish to object to this poll on technical grounds, which I will enumerate in tedious detail below in comments.


• I am not satisfied with any of the above answers.


• I just like making trouble.

view results
Free vote poll