Thatās messed up, man.
The second enormous volume of Isaac Asimovās biography, āIn Joy Still Felt.ā The two books give an interesting view of a really smart guy growing up with Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn NY in the 1920ās and 30ās, at first intending to be a research chemist, but then turning to full-time to writing.
Havenāt read that one, but I Asimov was a good read.
Bachman enrolled at Tulane University in the fall of 1975, but his time there was rocky and brief, ruptured by a horrific incident in January at the Sigma Chi house, just off campus. Although Bachman was not a member of the frat, he told Friedman heād been hanging around the house with a friend from Elkins Park, a boy a year older named Ken Gutzeit. Suddenly, a man had appeared with a knife and slashed Gutzeitās throat. āThe word Jamison used was beheaded,ā Friedman told me. According to news reports, Gutzeit was killed by a 25-year-old student librarian named Randell Vidrine. The two were said to have been feuding since the previous fall, after Vidrine called campus police on Gutzeit for eating a cheese sandwich among the stacks. (āI know it sounds incredible, but from what we understand they never argued about anything else,ā a police spokesperson told a reporter at the time. āIt was always about the sandwich.ā) Gutzeit stumbled onto the frat-house steps and bled to death, surrounded by Bachman and some two dozen other witnesses. (A grand jury declined to indict Vidrine.)
The Sigma Chi house was right across the street from my dorm. At least when I went to Tulane, they were the most generic frat boys on the planet.
Since the movie is the talk in Whatcha Watchinā, I felt I must sayā¦
I think I must be the only adult I know who read a Wrinkle In Time back in my youth, thought it was a fine book.
AND THEN NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT AGAIN.
I have rough ideas as to the story, but it did not make an impression on me enough to know whether the movie was being true to the source or not. Iām tempted to reread it to see if I can pick up why it didnāt make an impression on me, but not sure if it would.
I read Wrinkle several times, A Wind In the Door a few times, and Swiftly Tilting Planet a couple of times. (I tried to read Many Waters once, in adulthood, and it was terribad and I gave up quite early on.)
I just finished reading Iain M. Banksā Use of Weapons. It had its moments, but itās a good thing I have read other Cultur novels, because it was horribly depressing and disturbing and not what I needed to read right now. I know Iāve read Consider Phlebas and (my favorite) The Hydrogen Sonata; I could have sworn I read another one some time back, but looking at the list on Wikipedia, none of the rest seem familiaar.
I need to find some light, uplifting escapism I think.
I recommend The MythAdventures of Aahz and Skeeve, by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye. They may not be enduring works of classical literature, but theyāre certainly not dark or depressing either.
Now THOSE are books from childhood I enjoyed AND remember.
Thatās Perv-ECT!
Edit - Ohā¦I never realized they started up again after '93. If only I had time\ambition for leisure reading
thatās the one with chair right?
Yep. 
I read a few of the Aspirin books, a ways back. Didnāt realize there were more though!
I wound up grabbing the top book on my pile, Live Wires: A History of Electronic Music. Not escapist, but not a downer either at least 
Itās definitely a partial history since it starts with tape recording, barely acknowledging previous recording media and not mentioning 19th and early 20th century foundations. āElectronic musicā as we know it (as opposed to synthesizer design) mostly started with music concrete and Bebe Barron, with the Theremin as a sort of side curiosity. If you ignore turntablism, anyway. 
Really the history isnāt linear, and maybe credit will be given when the subject comes up.
I read A Wrinkle In Time and the other two books when I was in grade school (or maybe when I was in Jr. High ā but Iād swear it was earlier), and I agree that thereās no way I could tell you if the movies (movie?) are true to the books, or not.
But I distinctly remember the concept of the tesseract, and how it kind of blew my young mind, to the extent that I constructed a real-world, three-dimensional tesseract shadow out of toothpicks and Elmerās glue, just to prove to my brain that I could.
Iād probably also credit that series with my first introduction to the concept of time travel. Again, I canāt recall the plot details of any of the books, but I think there was something about those stories that primed me for the comings of later works by other authors. The stories of Gene Wolf, for example, resonated for me in a way that I donāt think they would have had I not been exposed to LāEngle.
Thereās a strange new post on GRRMās not-a-blog.
I can see four options here:
- Heās drunk-posting
- His LiveJournal account has been hacked
- Heās trolling his fansā¦
- Or thatās some sort of coded message to say that TWOW is finished, but heās not allowed to announce it yet.
Iām cautiously optimistic that itās #4, just because he has to know that every post is going to be scrutinized for TWOW updates, but Iām not getting my hopes up too high.
Iād love it if he was hinting at TWOWā¦ but the postās tagged ātelevision.ā Maybe heās teasing the potential prequel/spinoff series HBO was considering?
Iāve got a pile of books Iāve been putting off and ended up in a situation to read some of them.
I read Consider Phlebas (Iain Banks) first. Despite the back cover telling me plainly that everyone dies, I somehow didnāt get get what they meant by that and was surprised when no one made it out of the novel alive. I was a little frustrated by that but it held my attention and Iāll definitely read more Culture novels in the future.
The next one I started on was The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell). I havenāt finished it yet. Itās a difficult book (not Dhalgren difficult, just difficult on subject matter).
Which was lucky for me because it meant I didnāt have to start Ulysses (Joyce) which I accidentally brought instead of The Odyssey. 
George, right nowā¦ WE LOVE YOU GEORGE, YOU LOVABLE NUT!
Me right nowā¦
@Nightflyer, isnāt there also a WildCard series in the works, and I thought Iād heard about one of his other works being picked up (Nightflyers, maybe?). And heās executive producing a series based on the works of Nnedi Okorafor, too.
Not so much what Iām reading, but some sad news for me anywayā¦due to some clumsiness, my Kindle became ever so slightly damaged last week. Planned to keep using it until the battery died as Iām a fan of buttons and these days, Amazon isnāt.
Still, picked up a Paperwhite and spent the evening sideloading about 1,100 books on there then organising them into collections. Theyāve made a fair few improvements on the UI front and the screen looks great.
Itās very good. Thereās also a sequel called Children of God thatās also well worth reading.