Faithful readers may remember me celebrating ordering a number of audiobooks through the university library system last week. Well, I’m now finding the flaw. I requested eight books and none of my requests have been filled yet. Do the requests get canceled due to lack of interest? Dunno. I bet I’ll get them eventually but I’d best put in my requests early, especially considering how quickly I go through books.
I did manage to find Winesburg, Ohio available through a weird temporary download system via the Madison Public Library. (There’s a whole kvetch related to this—the files are WMAs and thus do not work with iPods, which I’m sure is yet another Microsoft market strategy that does nothing but annoy consumers—but I won’t get into it.) Happily, I found Farewell to Arms and Red Badge of Courage at the public library as well as Pat Barkers WWI trilogy of Regeneration, The Eye In The Door, and The Ghost Road. I read the first book a number of years ago and really enjoyed it so I thought I’d give the others a shot as well.
In a bout of narcissistic self-googling, I stumbled across Jeff VanderMeer’s announcement of the Weird Tales redesign and some nice words said about my story “Working Out Our Salvation.”
And now I’m wondering about that big ‘A Zombie’s Love’ given top billing on the cover. Is…is that referring to my story? My initial reaction was, “Nah, there must be another zombie story in the magazine.” But now I wonder. I guess I won’t find out until I get my contributor’s copies. But if that is referring to my story…holy shit.
Played indoor today and just let me say Oh My God. I didn’t even have that great of a day but the teams were so evenly balanced and everybody on both sides really knew how to play. It was absolutely, positively nuts. So many good passes strung together, and the pace! Footie, when it’s played right, is ethereal.
Anybody else catch the listening party for Wilco’s new album Sky Blue Sky? I hate to say it, but it didn’t do much for me. My expectations couldn’t be any higher coming off of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, which I’ve had on heavy rotation for years (they’re great writing albums.) In fairness, it took awhile for the last two to grow on me as well and maybe that’ll happen with Sky Blue Sky, too. And I’m sure if you looked, you could find a torrent of the album out there somewhere.
Current Mood: Gassed | 
Currently Listening To – Beck – “The Information”
2 Comments
Red Badge of Courage = Blech!
I read that book for my senior term paper in high school and hated it with a passion. Because I’ve had the tendency recently to re-read books I disliked in high school and am finding I really enjoy most of them now that I am older (Lord of the Flies and Ethan Frome to name two examples), I gave this one another shot not too long ago. I think it was this past summmer. Safe to say my memory of the book was accurate.
Stephen Crane was a far superior poet. Probably one of the best American ever produced, but I find his fiction overrated.
I remember reading part of it in high school as well and found it to be impenetrable. That’s why I wanted to give it another go, because I also found Frankenstein boring at that time and now it’s one of my all-time favs. I’m also trying to bone up on pre-WWI war literature and RBoC is one of the obvious biggies.