Thanks, Allyson!

I'm trying to get more details about the webcast -- they're planning it at the last minute, as usual. Word is Tracie Thoms and Katie Finneran will probably be there. I'm not sure about the others; I know they've been invited, but they're kind of scattered all over the place.

Have lots o' fun!

I found We The Living fascinating because of the context it supplied for everything else Rand wrote. I read all her fiction in one summer (along with Huxley and Orwell). I've had the bookmarks sitting 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through The Virtue of Selfishness and The Romantic Manifesto since then. I certainly don't buy into her philosophy, but I do find some of the viewpoints interesting. I've tried to forget the sexual domination issues.

Hey! Wonderfalls! Maybe I'll have DVDs sometime next week.

You guys have been greatly entertaining me with your Heinlein hate. Probably because I never bothered to read him. And I got very bored with Asimov within a few chapters, so I never particularly read him. Siddhartha was better than I expected it to be, given how many people praised it as life-changing, and who those people were, but it still didn't move me to any great heights. Ayn Rand I remember liking, when I read Anthem, but I was bored to tears within pages of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, so I never finished those. I suppose I found the concept behind Anthem really interesting, when I read it at 13, but it never inspired me to change my life or even my thinking, I just found it interesting. I find Ursula Leguin's stuff both weird and boring. I don't get T.S. Eliot, but he certainly has a way with language. Joseph Conrad does nothing for me. Heller's Catch 22 gave me a headache. Ernest Hemingway and Herman Melville fill me with hate whenever I read a couple of pages of anything either one has written. I didn't care for The Metamorphosis at all. I didn't like Crime and Punishment at all. Edith Wharton is kind of on the boring side. 1984 was kind of over the top, as was Brave New World. John Steinbeck's writing can be incredibly boring, and boring and long winded when the book is The Grapes of Wrath. Pynchon's stuff is weird. And I really have very little use for Neuromancer. Etc.

Obviously, I don't hate all literature. But I find that very often if something is recommended, I don't care for it, and I don't think it's a matter of my simply being contrary. I think a lot of books that are read at a certain time, or written in response to a certain idea, or even in response to a certain time in history, effect many people in a big way. That does not mean, however, that everyone is going to have that same response. And that is why I can happily justify not having the slightest interest in reading The Catcher in the Rye or anything Heinlein's ever written, and why I really don't recommend anything to anyone. Or if I do, I preface it with a reason of why I liked it, and a warning about what to expect.

Hmm. I wrote that like I was arguing some point, and I wasn't. It was supposed to be just an FYI, thought I'd share.

You didn't like Catch-22, Crime and Punishment, 1984, or Brave New World ? And just thought when I couldn't disagree with you more.

I loved Catch-22 . That and Up the Down Staircase were 2 of my favorites. They just fit so well into my cynicism-stemming-from-idealism way of viewing the world.

No, I didn't like Catch 22. Crime and Punishment was torturous. 1984 was interesting, but not really my cup of tea. Brave New World was also interesting, but good lord, could he use the word pneumatic a few more times? It just did not grab me, at all. I found it really easy to distance myself from those last two, even as I was reading them. And sometimes I'd have to go back and reread a few pages, because my mind had wandered.

I've always really really enjoyed Ray Bradbury, though, as old science fiction writers go. Even though I haven't read much of his stuff, mostly just short stories. He's always interesting, and very well written. And that's all I require.

I think most of Ray Bradbury's best stuff is his short stories. Of which he has written billions. (I only exaggerate a little.)

I think a lot of books that are read at a certain time, or written in response to a certain idea, or even in response to a certain time in history, effect many people in a big way. That does not mean, however, that everyone is going to have that same response.

Oh, this is certainly true. A great number of novels become irrelevant with the passage of time, and people stop reading them except to re-discover the historical moment of which they are a part. Other novels manage to stay relevant, through reference by their literary descendants, or through the cycles of history/culture. I wonder, e.g., how soldiers in Iraq right now feel about Catch-22.

One of the reasons why I found Asimov's Foundation books so laughably bad, aside from the crappy prose, was that he talked openly and approvingly about concepts of empire that I find repugnant. Sometimes, the pure strength of the writing can overcome that cultural drift -- this is true, for me, of Alfred Bester's Stars my Destination -- but most of the time, not.

I loved Catch-22 . That and Up the Down Staircase were 2 of my favorites. They just fit so well into my cynicism-stemming-from-idealism way of viewing the world.

I have tried, several times, to read Catch-22. I just can't get into it. Maybe if I take it on a trip where I have nothing else to read.

I'm trying to get more details about the webcast -- they're planning it at the last minute, as usual. Word is Tracie Thoms and Katie Finneran will probably be there. I'm not sure about the others; I know they've been invited, but they're kind of scattered all over the place.

Has Tyron Leitso vanished off the face of the globe? I haven't heard a murmur about what he's doing since early last year.