Hornswoggler! The Movie Soundtrack

If my life were a movie -- and I know that it is not -- but if my life were a movie, this would be its soundtrack (according to the meme I just picked up from Keith R.A. DeCandido):

• Opening credit: "Baby Gonna Leave Me" by Tom Waits
  Well, that's suitably ominous, and it starts quietly enough to work.
• Waking up: "Allegory" by Murray Attaway
  Again, it starts quietly and almost dreamlike, so it's plausible.
• Average day: "Dona Nobis Pacem" by Tanya Donelly
  A capella chanting in Latin; whose average day is that?
• First date: "Walls (No. 3)" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
  It works.
• Falling in love: "Hard on Me" by Richard Thompson
  Pardon me while I snicker. This is completely random, though.
• Fight scene: "Amity Gardens" by Fountains of Wayne
  It could work, maybe, as a wistful montage of scenes showing the broken-up people going about their separate sad lives afterward. It wouldn't go with a more active kind of fight.
• Breaking up: "At the River's Edge" by New Colony Six
  A random old Sixties thing from Nuggets, which I don't recognize at all. But the lyrics work as a break-up song.
• Getting back together: "In My Place" by Coldplay
  It's certainly sappy enough.
• Life's Okay: "Ugly Truth Rock" by Matthew Sweet
  That seems to fit my personality, I suppose.
• Mental Breakdown: "Lucifer Sam" by Pink Floyd
  A song about a cat, by Syd Barrett. Good enough.
• Driving: "Pharoah (live)" by Richard Thompson
  Too slow and quiet to work that way.
• Flashback: "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself (live)" by Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve
  If it's a very sad, depressing flashback, sure.

What kind of movie is this? No Ending Credits, no Getting Everything Done Very Quickly Montage, no I Am Now Depressed Montage, no Montages at all. And the order of events is very weird, too. Plus there seems to be lurking grammatical trouble. This will just not do.

My own version (and, this one, I'm going to cheat slightly and use a file of my four- and five-star songs; but there still are 3029 of them), with some new themes for songs and a new, more logical order for the plot, is below. I chose all of the themes and put them in this order before I ran the random songs.

• Opening Credits: "Last Cigarette" by Dramarama
  I'd go see a movie that started with that song.
• Introducing the Protagonist: "That's All, Amen, Close the Door" by Richard Thompson
  One would think a song with that title should be somewhat later in the movie.
• Meet Cute: "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" by Power Station
  Hey, if I can't have a one-night stand in my own movie, I might as well give up, right? But I don't think "cute" is quite the appropriate word here.
• Separated by Fate: "Where the Hell Is Bill?" by Camper Van Beethoven
  I'm laughing while typing this, and, honestly, really, this was the next random song.
• Unhappy Montage: "When It Rains It Snows" by They Might Be Giants
  A quietly demented polka of quirky sadness. This movie is not going for pathos.
• Reunited/Happy Montage: "Destroyer" by the Kinks
  Maybe this is as happy as I get...
• The Big Break: "Message in a Bottle (live)" by the Police
  This version would actually be good over an action scene; maybe someone's being kidnapped?
• Flashback: "Space Travel Is Boring" by Modest Mouse
  As we remember Commander Bill's tour of duty in the Astro Defense Forces...
• "I Can Fix This!": "Human Behavior" by Bjork
  This is a creepy song that could work over a montage of unsettling stuff. But I don't think the audience is rooting for this relationship to succeed by this point.
• Fight Scene and/or Car Chase: "Koka Kola" by the Clash
  Not a very long fight and/or chase, and one that loses energy about half-way through. Hey, I'm tired from all that stuff I did during "Human Behavior."
• Clinch, Fades into End Credits: "Useless Stuff" by Cracker
  It actually could work, assuming the movie could survive a song that starts "I'm so f*cking sick, I'm the king of the world."

Today's WFA Reading: 6/9

Two books today, a week after the deadline, after nothing for a while. Book One is to help support the cause of getting A.N. Author the Life Achievement Award, while Book Two is one that various people (up to and finally including the author) have been asking the publisher to please send to us.

Still more books than I know what to do with, I'm still pulling things back out of the "settled" pile, and only a few weeks left...

Other Books Read in May

Same disclaimer as the last few months: I don't necessarily list everything I read (if there's a reason to keep something secret), and I'm not listing anything I didn't finish (and I read just parts of quite a number of things). Anyway, here's what I will mention:

• Andi Watson, Little Star
  Watson does real-life comics that aren't self-indulgent autobiographical ramblings, which makes him very rare -- his comics have stories like real books do, just with great pictures, too. This one is so good I might even try to make The Wife read it -- and she doesn't read anything.
• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
  A re-read for ulterior motives, and a firm no comment.
• Antony Johnston & Christopher Mitten, Queen & Country: Declassified Vol. 3: Sons & Daughters
  A dreary sidebar to a comics series I seem to be enjoying less and less. The "Declassified" mini-series are supposed to be about past events that happened to some of the main characters of the Queen & Country series, but I don't remember any of these people from the main series. I don't care much about their mania for killing each other, either.
• Carol Emshwiller, Mister Boots
  No comment.
• Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
  This is book seven of the "Dresden Files" series, which has moved way up to be my top current guilty pleasure. Butcher has toned down the bathos and sentimentality that annoyed me in the earlier books (mostly by now showing instead of telling ,which I entirely approve of), and I now enjoy these without reservations. This one has a zombie T. Rex in it. 'Nuff said.
• Hal Duncan, Vellum
  I shouldn't say anything about it, but I do have to mention that it's probably the most ambitious novel, in or out of fantasy, I've seen in at least ten years. Duncan is not afraid of anything, and that's impressive.
• Brian Fies, Mom's Cancer
  A semi-diary in comics form, with a very animation-derived "clear line" style. I didn't love it, but it's well-done, and has moments of real power.
• Deborah Layne and Jay Lake, editors, Polyphony 5
  No comment.
• Jay Lake, editor, TEL: stories
  Sine commento
• Frank Beddor, The Looking Glass War
  A modern "everything you know is wrong" take on Alice in Wonderland, by a writer who takes pride in an introduction in telling us how much he hated Alice as a kid and thought it was a girl's book. (This strikes me as a bad admission, even if it's true, since the audience for a revisionist take on any classic is mostly going to be the people who actually read and liked that book.) Other editors who've read it loved it; I wasn't quite that enthusiastic. But I did expect to loathe it, given that introduction, so it won me most of the way around.
• Steve Rasnic Tem, The World Recalled
  No no comment comment.
• Tony Ballantyne, Recursion
  A competent enough first SF novel about the rise of the AI overlord of mankind, by someone whose name I'm pretty sure I've been hearing about. And goodness knows I see enough incompetent novels, so I don't mean to damn it with faint praise.
• Patricia A. McKillip, Harrowing the Dragon
  Pretty much her collected short fiction, and quite impressive. Oops, I shouldn't comment about this, either. But I will say that I hadn't read any McKillip since I was a kid (and hated hated HATED the ending of The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy), and I now realize I was really missing something good.
• Nancy Holder and Nancy Kilpatrick, editors, Outsiders
  I couldn't possibly comment.
• Peter Raftos, The Stone Ship
  A novel published by an arm of the Australian National University; it's a meandering academic satire (among other things). I shouldn't comment.
• Keith & Kent Zimmerman, et al., Mythbusters
  A collection of write-ups of great episodes of the show that I never seem to manage to see (but keep thinking I should).
• Reggie Oliver, The Complete Symphonies of Adolph Hitler
  Should just be "no comment." But I can say that this is my absolute favorite title of the year, by far.
• Bruce Holland Rogers, The Keyhole Opera
  Absolutely no comment.
• Forrest Aguirre and Deborah Layne, editors, The Nine Muses
  Yes, we have no comments.
• Carol Emshwiller, I Live With You
  This repetition is really boring, I know, but, honestly, I can't say.
• Jasper Fforde, The Fourth Bear
  Finally! A book I can talk about. This is the sequel to The Big Over Easy, and is as crammed with jokes and puns as an early Pratchett novel. (And is just as funny, too.) My favorite gag is from the very end, so I can't mention it here. But anyone who likes Pratchett, Douglas Adams, or those other funny Brits (like Tom Holt, Robert Rank, etc.) should be reading Fforde. (Fforde also has an amazing set of websites, which can steal whole working days if you're not careful.)
• Tom Kidd Kiddography: The Life & Art of Tom Kidd
  He's both a nice guy and a really talented artist, so go buy his book. Lots of zeppelins!
• Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
  Nine short stories, all of which seem to be set in the same world as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Pretty good stuff, too.
• Robert A. Heinlein & Spider Robinson, Variable Star
  I probably shouldn't talk about this one, either, though it's clearly not for WFA
• George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
  A novella that I kept thinking would turn into an allegory of something, but I could never quite figure it out. I shouldn't comment, though.
• Brendan Connell, Dr. Black and the Guerrillia
  Another novella published as a book; another thing I shouldn't talk about.

A busy month, but lots and lots of stuff for WFA that I shouldn't talk about. But it will all be done in a month or so, and I can go back to reading whatever's on top of the pile (and complaining about it, which is the important thing).

Quote of the Week

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
-- Terry Pratchett

Quote of the Week

"The only reason I like girls, is that I want to fuck them, which is adolescent, cheap, irresponsible, not worth doing, a waste of time, not much fun anyway, a needless distraction from my real vocation, destructive of any real power of understanding women which as a novelist HOOHOO should be important to me...All I have to do now is to stop wanting to fuck girls and I shall have the thing licked."
- Kingsley Amis, in a 1953 letter to Philip Larkin
(quoted in the April 23, 2007 New Yorker)

My Dan Brown Novel

As seen at John Ricards' blog:

The Piece of Comte de Saint Germain by Dan Brown

"An exciting best-selling masterpiece of suspense!"The Guardian

Brian James, a lawyer, is found murdered in Toulouse and Dan Alberti, a novelist is asked to supply expert information to the Toulouse police. Soon Dan finds himself involved with a beautiful violinist called Sofia, meetings in Cairo with the highly-secretive group The Followers of the Temple Of The Vampire and a dramatic showdown with The Freemasons after a chase across across the Middle East. When western civilisation is at stake, The Freemasons won't let anything stand in their way. Can Dan stop them in time?

"An explosive tale of intrigue! *****"The Observer

Go here for your very own Dan Brown novel. (WARNING! Steal this plot and I'll sue you for all you're worth. It took me a long time to think up all this stuff and I'll not have it taken away from me.)

Is It Just Me...

Or has Blogger been exceptionally cranky these last few days?

I've tried to get into it a number of times this week, and gotten various error messages a lot of the time. I'm going to pretend that this has prevented me from posting several long, fascinating essays that would have changed life as we know it.

Our Never-Ending Vigil for David Itzkoff Continues

Benjamin Rosenbaum reports that Itzkoff is again reviewing SF, though the article has not yet turned up at the Times online. (Rosenbaum surmises, and I expect he's right, that the piece will appear in this weekend's Book Review.)

But, rest assured, when it does finally appear in some form we can read, that we will immediately make fun of it here. This is our pledge to you the reader. Can those other blogs say as much?

What Are The Great SF Novels of the 1990s?

I just posted a (very slightly different version of) this on rec.arts.sf.written, but it might spark some responses here, as well, so here it goes). Following RASFW standard, "SF" refers to "Speculative Fiction" and covers Science Fiction, Fantasy and most anything else with a speculative element.

Our previous installments, as seen in Google Groups:
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s

For those who came in late, I'm an Senior Editor at the Science Fiction Book Club, and we've been doing a multi-year series of some great books of SF/Fantasy. We started in 2003 (our 50th Anniversary year) with 8 books from the '50s, and have continued, eight books for each decade, in the years since then. 2007 will be the year for the '90s.

I'll be reading for this series (or just looking over books I read not all that long ago, this time) over the summer, so now is when I'm gathering suggestions.

As usual, I'm hoping this will spark some general discussion (as well as giving me some datapoints), so I don't want to constrain things too much, but here are some of the considerations I'll have to take into account with the final list:

• I only have eight books to cover the whole decade.
• I want to choose books that club members are at least somewhat likely to buy.
• Books already in the club in another edition (or, probably, books that were in print in the last year or two) won't end up on my final list.
• All eight will be single books (novels, collections or anthologies) -- the SFBC does a lot of omnibuses, but not in this series.
• I'm trying not to repeat authors if at all possible, to give a fuller picture of the field.
• I'm not specifically choosing books to exemplify movements and trends in the field, but it would be great if it works out that way -- but, conversely, I won't be doing more than a book or two in any given area.
• I have no objection to using something that's part of a series, but a book needs to make sense on its own outside the context of the series.
• I'm generally looking for books published between 1990 and 1999, but I've bent that rule several times in the past, so books from 1989, 2000 or thereabouts aren't necessarily disqualified (but they should have a really good reason to be on the list).

The earlier books in the series are:

Year One (2003): The 1950s
1 The Door Into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein
2 The Space Merchants, Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth
3 The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke
4 Three Hearts and Three Lions, Poul Anderson
5 City, Clifford D. Simak
6 Under Pressure, Frank Herbert
7 The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov
8 The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

Year Two (2004): The 1960s
9 To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
10 Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith
11 The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
12 The Dream Master, Roger Zelazny
13 Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
14 A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
15 The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
16 Rite of Passage, Alexei Panshin

Year Three (2005): The 1970s
17 Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
18 Gloriana, Michael Moorcock
19 The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
20 Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree, Jr.
21 Wild Seed, Octavia E. Butler
22 The Snow Queen, Joan D. Vinge
23 The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
24 Deathbird Stories. Harlan Ellison

Year Four (2006): The 1980s
25 Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
26 The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
27 Blood Music, Greg Bear
28 Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
29 Courtship Rite, Donald Kingsbury
30 Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
31 Schismatrix Plus, Bruce Sterling
32 Startide Rising, David Brin

So, what are the best books of the 1990s?

Reading Into the Past: Week of 6/4

I'm rolling high numbers these days: this week I got a 13, which sends me back to the books I read this week in 1993:

• W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That (6/3)
  Even though I wasn't an English schoolboy when I read it, it was still pretty entertaining. And the idea of "memorable history" (i.e., only the history you actually remember) was quite accurate and done well. You probably have to be a bit of an Anglophile to enjoy it, but that's about all.
• Michael Moorcock, Wizardry and Wild Romance (6/5)
  A collection of his essays about fantasy, including "Epic Pooh," his extended attack on Tolkien (which anyone interested in fantasy should read, even if you don't agree with him). The other sections haven't stuck with me, particularly, but Moorcock is never frightened of having an opinion, and that makes books like this bracing, entertaining, and useful for examining one's own settled prejudices.
• Graham Chapman, A Liar's Autobiography (6/8)
  It also had nearly a half-dozen co-authors for various sections and parts, as I recall. It's funny and breezy, but doesn't cover Chapman's life all that well -- but, then, the title doesn't lead you to expect that to begin with, anyway. (Chapman is one of the guys from Monty Python, but surely I don't have to tell that to anyone reading this blog, right?)

And that actually runs over the week in question. I didn't read all that much just then, since I was a bit busy: I'd gotten married on May 22, and The (New) Wife and I flew out to London early on the 23rd and spent a week there and a week in Edinburgh. We got back to Lodi, New Jersey (where we'd just gotten an apartment), as I recall, on Sunday, June 6th. So I'd finished Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics on the 20th, and then nothing until the Sellar/Yeatman book. (All three of the books above, incidentally, were ones I bought while in the UK.)

But, to make up for that short list, I'll try to dig out from my notebook for subsequent months as many of the books I bought in the UK as I can remember. (In those pre-Internet days, getting books from another country was difficult, if not impossible, so book-shopping was one of my major honeymoon activities.)

• Kim "Howard" Johnson, Life Before and After Monty Python (6/12)
  I'm not 100% sure I bought this in the UK, but I might have done. (Bonus UK grammar for added verisimilitude) The short version of this book is: all those guys did things that paid a lot better after the TV series, but, in most cases, weren't as artistically successful. (If I can use "artistically successful" to describe a series of silly-shop sketches.) Pleasant reading for people who care about this sort of thing, and I did.
• Frank Miller, Sin City (6/13)
  This was on sale at the Forbidden Planet in London, so I bought it. I gave up on the subsequent series, since they were all the same essential story, with Miller's neuroses more and more on display, but this one was good pulpy fun. If it had been a one-off, it would have been one of the comics highlights of the decade.
• Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides (6/14)
  Another book I got cheap at Forbidden Planet. Not my very favorite Tim Powers novel, but it has pirates in it, and it's better than 99% of the fantasy out there.
• Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People (6/15)
  Very minor, very early Pratchett -- so minor and so early that he was embarrassed enough to spruce it up a bit for republication. It's very slight and mild, but probably worth reading for those who have read everything else by Pratchett.
• P.G. Wodehouse, Much Obliged, Jeeves (6/16)
  This was the one Jeeves book that wasn't in print in the US, so I made a point of tracking it down when I was in the UK. Yes, they're that good. A man who is tired of Wodehouse is tired of life.
• Alina Reyes, The Butcher (6/17)
  A novella-in-paperback-book-form, with a tarty all-foil cover, translated from something (probably the French), and all kinds of "this is not just a smutty book, this is real transgressive literature" signs all over it. It was a decent smutty book.
• Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings (6/18)
  I don't remember at all what stories are in this one.
• Greg Egan, Quarantine (6/22)
  This is before Egan was published in the States, though the buzz was going on in skfify circles. So I had to get a copy of Quarantine when I was in the UK and read it for myself. And, yes, it really was that good, and that surprising, then. Oh, were we ever so young?
• Brian Aldiss, Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's (6/30)
  His bookselling and otherwise book-related memoir. I am a sucker for the non-fiction of fiction writers, and even more a sucker for well-written books about books. I probably should re-read this some time.
• Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (7/8)
  I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I understood it. And that was a long time ago, so I couldn't tell you now anything at all about it.

And I think that was it. The interesting thing is that I can't find the book I know I was reading on the plane (and finished sometime later) anywhere in the notebook -- that was The Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson, an absolutely amazing history book about a short period of time in the early 19th century when, the author explains, everything changed and the seeds of the modern world were sown.

Nitpickery Is Killing Science Fiction

No links; I bet you folks will know what I'm reacting to. And, if not, I want to make vast sweeping generalizations anyway, so being tied down to specifics will only hurt the cause.

There are now a number of communities and groups -- I belong to several of them myself -- which seem to exist for the sole purpose of tearing apart any new SF work. No matter what it is, there's sure to be something wrong with it.

If there's the slightest bit of detail that possibly contradicts any relatively accepted scientific model, the science-nerds will sneer and point.

If all of the characters are indistinguishable from contemporary white Americans, the diversity geeks will titter into their hands.

If some of the characters are clearly not contemporary white Americans, but the author is, those same diversity geeks will reach for their long knives. (And also start babbling in post-Lacanian doubletalk; I can't say which is worse.)

If any aspect of the political, economic, or social set-up of the world does not fit with the confirmed irrational prejudices of the reader (who can be anything from a frothing libertarian to a bomb-tossing Marxist), long screeds will be written and distributed.

If the plot has the slightest bit of ambiguity to it, or if the author shows any signs of having read mainstream fiction more modern than Dumas (pere), the mouth-breathing I'm-just-spending-my-beer-money contingent will hoot about how incomprehensible and "lit'rary" it is.

No matter what the work is, there's going to be something desperately, horribly wrong with it, and the group that thinks so will scream their anger to the skies. And so we all get the feeling that SF is in the doldrums, that there's nothing good being done, and that nothing good can be done. We even begin to feel a bit Spinradish, as if SF either died long ago or needs to be shot in the head immediately for our own good.

If you're one of the people doing this, you are helping to kill SF. Cut it the hell out. If you really think everything sucks, get out of my genre and go piss on mysteries or romances for a while.

I'm serious. Don't make me come back there....

One Mystery Semi-Solved

I had a weird comment recently -- it didn't look like spam, but it wasn't entirely coherent, either, and it had nothing to do with the post it was attached to.

It was on this post, and it read:

Bah this is Lee thompson and i wish to hell everyone would see this is JUST ROLEPLAY but no everyone wants to know about sex, well F*** all the dirty horible sad lived gits who want to judge me, I am proud of who I am and if you wanna complain to me do it in person to nuhanoonan@yahoo.co.uk as you all just pissing me off now

Apparently, this is spillover from a flamewar on a Gorean message board (yes, all of the Superior Gorean Males spend their time arguing with each other over the internet, just like all the other sad lonely men who can't get dates). I have no idea why "Lee thompson" posted his cri de cour here rather than there, but I have to assume confusion like that is just par for the course when you're a Gorean.

Shameless SFBC Promotion

For anyone who might not be reading the official SFBC blog:

We're hosting a chat with Naomi Novik (author of His Majesty's Dragon and two sequels to date, which we collected into a really cool-looking 3-in-1) on the SFBC blog from June 7th to June 21st, so, if you have any questions for her, wander over there and leave them as comments in this post.

We're doing this chat on the blog in part so that anyone can participate (you don't need to be a member of the club), and in part because we don't have anything better in our technological arsenal, since our website is creaky and ancient (its design is probably two years old at this point, though an update will be coming later in the year).

So, come on over, tell all your friends -- that kind of thing. If this works out well, we'll probably do more chats, which would be fun.

Happy Birthday to Me!

(Soundtrack by Cracker, of course.)

Since blogs, particularly this one, are the height of self-indulgence, I'll pad my post count with a brief shout-out to myself.

Hey! It's been one more year and I'm still not dead! Go, me! I am now 37, which is a singularly unimpressive age -- I'm not young any more, but not nearly old enough even for an early mid-life crisis. Still, it beats the alternative.

Reading Into the Past: Week of 5/28

I'm running very late this week, since I'm not even rolling the dice until Tuesday night. So, without further ado, here are the books I was reading this week in 1992:

• Gary Gygax, The Anubis Murders (5/21)
  This book is not very good. Fourteen years ago, I probably would have gone much, much further. But the pain has subsided, and I, thankfully, don't remember all of the details.
  
• Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America (5/22)
  I remember that it was an interesting book, that I could only agree with about half of it, and that Bork generally hated everything about modern society. Bork also writes great, precise sentences, and he's one of those writers who can be very entertaining about things he hates (as long as it's not something the reader particularly loves, of course).
  
• Daniel M. Pinkwater, Fish Whistle (5/22)
  A collection of essays that were originally NPR commentaries, mostly about Pinkwater's life and ruminations. Pinkwater was the greatest YA writer of the '70s and '80s, and I don't care who disagrees with me. I wish he wrote more; he's a national treasure.
  
• David G. Hartwell, Christmas Stars (5/25)
  An anthology of SF stories about Christmas. As I recall, it was noticeably better than I'd expected -- we even did it in the club.
  
• Lawrence Block, A Walk Among the Tombstones (5/25)
  One of the middle "Matt Scudder" novels, which was new at the time. This isn't my favorite era of the series -- they turned more into thrillers than mysteries for a while there, and I'm not a fan of thrillers -- but the Scudder books remain among the very best hard-boiled novels ever written.
  
• Tom Mason, editor, The Three Stooges: The Knuckleheads Return! (5/25)
  No memory at all. I have a suspicion that this was a collection of comics, which would make it very weird.
  
• William Lutz, Doublespeak (5/27)
  A non-fiction book about the various circumlocutions used by business and government to hide what they're actually doing. Lutz has made a bit of a career out of these, but I believe this one was the first and best. It's a good book to read if you want to write (or just think) clearly about the real world.
  

I do seem to read books randomly, bouncing from genre to genre blithely, when I have my druthers. (And that's made the last few months a bit weird for me, since I'm exclusively reading for WFA and SFBC.)