Mostly because I need something to read that has nothing to do with anything I'm studying, I've been reading up on the 60s space program lately.

Yes, yes, Neil Armstrong first man on the moon blahdeblah yay space nerds. Everybody knows the story, been there done that.

What fascinates me, and I'm speaking semi-professionally here, is that a team of engineers, rocketry guys, and test pilots went from nothing to watching Armstrong wander around a lunar plain in less than 10 years. It couldn't happen today. Windows Vista took longer to develop than all of the Mercury and Gemini flights combined, and the results were a whole lot less impressive.

Honestly, I've learned as much about technical project management out of the space program history as anything I've read in the computer science field.

Anyway, for the interested, a couple of the better books on the subject:

Andrew Chaikin's A Man On The Moon was the semi-definitive history of the Apollo program, told mainly but not exclusively from the astronauts' point of view. Most of the HBO mini-series "From The Earth to The Moon" was cribbed from this book. It's not just insightful, it's entertaining as hell. Its downside is that it only touches briefly on anything that happened before Apollo 1.

Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox's Apollo: Race to the Moon has its flaws, but it's a highly readable account of the earthbound engineers who made the space program work, including most of the personalities involved. This is the one that all the current and aspiring program managers ought to read. It's out of print, but the local library might have a copy. EDIT: Scratch that, it's back in print under a different title. The book is now simply called Apollo.

There are enough astronaut biographies and auto-biographies to break a bookshelf in half by sheer weight. The best, by general acclamation, is Michael Collins' Carrying the Fire: graceful, poetic, fascinating, and not ghostwritten. (Collins was the command module pilot on Apollo 11, the guy who got to circle around the moon while the other two had all the fun.)

Food for thought. Also, for the grad students among us, a good way to read something besides articles titled "The Study of Ideologies and the Philosophy of Language."

Steven Barnes is an interesting guy. He's known as a novelist and screenwriter, mainly but not exclusively in SF. He's also a teacher, a martial artist with black belts in several disciplines, a student of yoga, and one of the most physically fit individuals I've ever seen. (He's also one of the few African-American men active and writing in SF.)

Barnes lived in the Pacific Northwest for awhile and often shows up at the local cons, especially Norwescon. At a panel a couple years ago, he told this story:

( The perils of caring about your art )

I was cleaning out my bookshelves awhile back and realized that, unusually for me, I'd accumulated a bunch of books that I hadn't actually gotten around to reading. Consider this part of my continuing campaign to read something that doesn't involve my schoolwork.

Poul Anderson, War of the Gods. Anderson's retelling of a Danish warrior-myth from the Viking era. Written late in Anderson's life as an obvious labor of love, it matches its source material: cold, brutally violent, with moments of raw heroism and magic.

Daniel James Brown, Under a Flaming Sky. The story of a fast-moving wildfire that wiped out an entire logging town in northern Minnesota in 1894. Unevenly told, but the image of a train plowing through a firestorm, every single car on fire, with a badly burned and half-asphyxiated engineer desperately trying to make it to a lake that might keep the survivors alive, is going to stick with me for awhile.

Dana Sobel, The Planets. Already more than slightly out of date-- the book still refers to Pluto as a planet, for example--but a marvelous reminder of why I loved astronomy as a kid: there are very few fields of science that evoke such a sense of wonder. Not quite as original and fascinating a work as Longitude but I still enjoyed the heck out of it.

Laurence Bergreen, Over the Edge of the World. A retelling of Magellan's travels around the world. I'd have liked it more but for a binding error that left a crucial 60 pages or so out of the book entirely.

I've read more than my fair share of good books lately. In no particular order:

Tempting Faith, by David Kuo. A fascinating memoir written by a well-connected, deeply conservative Christian who was the number two guy in George W. Bush's faith-based-initiatives office for a few years. Kuo ended up deeply disillusioned, not so much by the president, but by the cynical use of Christian faith by the president's advisors, and about what happens when Christian faith and politics collide. Kuo admits the irony of his position: a conservative Christian man who became passionately involved with political activism after his girlfriend had an abortion that he bitterly regretted, whose first marriage ended because he was spending too much time in politics. It's an eye-opening book on two levels: what draws people to a conservative Christian faith, and how that faith can be used by cynical men in power. Highly recommended.

Behind Bars: Surviving Prison, by Jeffrey Ross and Stephen Richards. Research for a novel idea I've been noodling on for awhile. It's a no-bullshit guide to prison life, written by two university professors, one of whom was incarcerated for several years on drug charges. The book is on loan from the library and smells, literally, of stale cigarettes and desperation.

Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, by Charles Cross. A graceful biography that traces Hendrix's life from his early days in Seattle, through New York and London and all the tours around the world, to his early death in London and the subsequent estate fight among his remaining family. Cross' depth of research and smooth writing style elevate this one a long way above the standard Behind-The-Music style bio piece.

The Forge of God, by Greg Bear. The (fictional) end of the world and how we're all going to die. It was written in the 1980s and feels a touch dated now in places, but it's a haunting tale.

I usually have a couple books going at once. Right now I'm reading three: Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars, and Caitlin Kiernan's Daughter of Hounds.

Meanwhile, it's time I headed into school and did some useful reading.

"Here," she said, "read this," and handed me Neil Gaiman's Sandman #1-20.

It was my first or second week of undergraduate college. With the exception of an occasional Batman comic, I hadn't read any comics regularly since I'd given up my "Iron Man" and "Uncanny X-Men" addiction at the age of about 13.

Sandman was a revelation.

Neil Gaiman was already a name in the comics world by then, though he hadn't reached **BESTSELLING AUTHOR NEIL GAIMAN** status yet. He'd written "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but it hadn't won the World Fantasy Award yet, and "Ramadan," the best of the Sandman stories, was still a few years away. All of his novels and short story collections were still in the future.

Re-reading the old Sandman comics now, you can see Gaiman's voice and talent just starting to emerge. (The first few scripts were pedestrian at best.) The art improved over time too. Sam Kieth is a good artist, but you couldn't tell from his early Sandman work, and even Mike Dringenberg's work didn't look as beautiful to my eye as the later issues by Charles Vess or Michael Zulli or many of the other later artists.

Or so I thought.

My copy of Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 showed up over the weekend. It has those first twenty issues again, leatherbound, on beautiful archival quality paper.

And they've been recolored.

The difference is astonishing.

Same artists, same artwork, but now it leaps off the page. Sam Kieth's artwork, which I'd always judged as loose and poorly drawn, turns into subtle Gothic horror, early Walt Kelly as drawn by Hieronymous Bosch. Mike Dringenberg's art becomes real and three dimensional, and occasionally shattering. "24 Hours" was always a creepy horror story but the artwork now leaves you feeling the blood on your skin.

I will never underestimate a good colorist again.

Yeah, Absolute Sandman is an expensive book. If you liked the Sandman comics, buy it anyway. It's worth every penny.

"A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog."

Sometimes, the old books are still the best.

Paint this picture in your mind: it's early in the morning. You're dozing. You vaguely hear the sound of your greyhound running around your house, playing.

Then you startle awake as you see a dog with sixty pounds of pure muscle charge into the room, do a flying leap, and attempt to land with her paws in your groin.

My day is off to a terrific start.

---

On a whim, and looking for new books to read, I started looking up the works of various writers with LiveJournals.

I remember Caitlin R. Kiernan (greygirlbeast) fondly from her days writing comic books, and her first novel, Silk. I picked up Murder of Angels and To Charles Fort, With Love at the library. She writes sad, edgy stories about characters on society's fringes, burnout cases, the fragile and the lost. Her prose slides towards 19th century melodrama from time to time, but she's a beautiful writer.

I tried picking up Elizabeth Bear's (matociquala) book The Chains That You Refuse, not realizing it was a collection of short stories. I was a bit tired of short fiction after reading To Charles Fort..., so I returned Bear's book to the library and ordered her first novel, Hammered. Should be in Any Day Now, they tell me.

By far the best surprise was Poppy Z. Brite (docbrite)'s Liquor and Prime novels. I'd last read Brite when she was still writing dark erotica and horror. Now she's writing foodie novels, a series about a pair of New Orleans chefs trying to survive New Orleans' restaurant scene while opening a restaurant of their own called "Liquor." It's wildly entertaining. I tore through both books, and was smiling and hungry the whole time. Both books were written before Katrina hit, giving them a faint aura of happy innocence and better times.

Onward. Much to do today. But first, I need a caffeine shot.

After months of having 90% of my book collection packed in boxes, suddenly it's all neatly shelved. I've been tearing into it in a fury. I reread Bujold's Chalion series, a couple of Shakespeare plays, several of Laurie King's "Mary Russell" series, and a couple of William Goldman books on screenwriting. Most recently:

( Books )

DUMBLEDORE: We have to leave the baby with his only remaining blood relative - his aunt - in order for him to be safe.
MCGONNAGAL: But Albus - I've been watching them, and these people are total asshats!
DUMBLEDORE: Yes, but it's really the best thing for the boy - subjection to asshaberdashery builds character. You'll see.

So cleolinda, the author of the Movies in Fifteen Minutes (m15m) parodies, wrote a book. Unfortunately, she apparently decided to sell the worldwide rights to Orion Books in the UK. Orion doesn't have an American or Canadian distributor, so everyone on this continent is, at least temporarily, screwed.

Fortunately, teh Interweb is your friend, and it's available from your finer UK online bookstores, including amazon.co.uk.

Yeah, you'll pay more in shipping than the actual book price. It's still worth it.

JACK: Quick, climb on this plank, Rose! It's big enough for both of us!
FIVE HUNDRED TINY WHITE MICE: Get off our plank, bitches!
JACK: . . .
ROSE: . . .
JACK: Or you can get on this chunk of debris. Totally your call.

In high school, I had two horrifically bad teachers, lots of mediocre ones, and four or five truly outstanding teachers.

Then there was Dr. Kathie Walsh. Best teacher I ever had at any level. No contest.

She was an English teacher, a true lover of poetry and stories. I had her for English in tenth grade, then as a junior I took a special seminar class with her. She had us reading widely, writing well, and gave us our voices. I'll always be grateful.

At the end of my sophomore year, just before we left for summer, she handed out an "annotated bibliography" of some books she thought we might find interesting. I found it recently while tossing out old stuff. I've reproduced it, unedited. I still think it's a powerful reading list even if I'm not quite all the way through it yet.

( An Annotated Bibliography, by Kathie Walsh, Ph.D. )

How many books do I own?

No idea. Well over one thousand, possibly close to two thousand. I'd have more if I could figure out how to wedge the bookshelves into my house. I need one of those libraries that apologies profusely to physics and geometry but ignores them completely in favor of additional internal volume. Somebody look up the phone number of the designer for the TARDIS.

What was the last book I bought?

China Miéville's Perdido Street Station. The apparent result of a pub brawl between Neil Gaiman, Charles Dickens, Greg Bear, and Che Guervera. It's proving to be more entertaining than I anticipated.

Last book I read?

Leonard Koppett's The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball. (What, you were expecting something literary?) A great book about the theory and practice of baseball in all its aspects: playing, managing, watching the games, and making money.

Before that, Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood and Scaramouche. Swashbuckling, kind-hearted heroes who fight for their honor while winning the heart of the evil lord's daughter aren't appreciated enough these days. You liked "Pirates of the Caribbean"? You need to read Captain Blood. You like theater, swordfighting, and the French revolution? Scaramouche is your book.

Next book I plan to buy?

Lois McMaster Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt, the next in her Chalion series. Still one of the most entertaining SF authors in the world and has the Hugos to prove it.

Five books that mean a lot to me?

I dearly love and constantly reread my collections of Shakespeare's plays, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon. With those clichés out of the way:

1. The Great Balloon Race, by Gommaar Timmermans. One of my favorite books when I was very small. It's still at the Tempe Public Library in Arizona, but I'm not sure if anyone has checked it out since I left.

2. You Can't Win, Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz. I was a social outcast as a kid, a bookworm with no athletic ability and an utter lack of social skills. I aspired to be Linus, but Charlie Brown at least made me understand that I wasn't alone. I have a small collection of Peanuts books released in the 50s and 60s, of which this is one of my favorites.

3. Fables and Reflections by Neil Gaiman and various artists. I'd given up comics at age 13 until someone handed me a copy of Sandman #1 during my first year of college. Fables and Reflections is my favorite of the Sandman collections, like a series of tales from a modern Arabian Nights, and includes the best issue of the series, "Ramadan."

4. Tao Teh Ching, by Lao Tsu. I don't belong to any organized church, and I despair of the current climate of sanctimonious holier-than-thou Christianity in the US, but there are two religious works that have always spoken to me. One is the book of Psalms, and the other is the Tao Te Ching.

5. Fionavar Tapestry, by Guy Gavriel Kay. He's written other books, and better ones, but he never tapped into archetype more deeply. From Odin on his tree of ash to Christ on his cross, the eternal tragedy of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere to the AmerIndian tales of the sky peoples, from the mentor who must step aside to the aged king who nearly loses all due to his pride and vanity, just about every canonical story of the west finds a home here somewhere. It's a magnificent book.

My life is, shall we say, a bit interesting right now. Someday soon I'll be able to write about it.

In the meanwhile, over the last week, I've made it to one baseball game (Seattle won), one basketball game (Seattle lost), one impromptu sushi-and-drinks dinner, and about half of a show by the Tiptons. The Tiptons are five women, four saxophonists and one percussionist, who play a brand of music called, for lack of a better term, "eclectic jazz." Neat stuff. I wish we'd been able to stay longer. Their opener was good too, a local salsa/swing band with some good chops.

While travelling to Kansas City for my father-in-law's funeral, I read the new edition of Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. Later I reread one of my favorite biographies, Sheldon Novack's Honorable Justice, a biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and continued muddling my way through The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. In idle moments I've been paging through a bit of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

Distraction, and lots of it. Sometimes that's useful.

---

So this is a U.S. Navy-issue funeral:

On a glorious day, with the Kansas sun turning the headstones into uniform, shining beacons of white, the family gathers on a lush hillside with grave markers as far as the eye can see. You follow a man in a dark suit and a government issue car to a small, open-air pavillion about halfway up the hill. There the family arranges itself uncomfortably on four benches before a small altar holding your father-in-law's ashes.

An African American preacher steps up and stumbles over the details of the deceased's name and life before going into five minutes of a highly entertaining, rhythmic, passionate, "praise the Lord and pass the tabasco sauce, Amen" riff on death and salvation in the Lord. The Navy lieutenant present manages to keep a straight face whle the Navy lieutenant commander nearly cracks up.

A bugler plays 'Taps.' Both Navy personnel carefully fold an American flag. The commander, still laughing, hands the flag to your mother-in-law, recites a set speech about the thanks of a grateful nation.

Everyone gets up, returns to their cars, and drives to a far corner of the cemetary, where a tiny but deep one-foot-by-one-foot hole has been dug. The box of ashes is dropped in the hole. Everyone throws a handful of dirt in. Two polite civilians quickly replace the dirt and carefully arrange a divot over top. Two minutes later, there's no visual sign that the hole had ever been there.

Fifteen minutes from start to finish. Quick, efficient, orderly disposal. Everyone smiles, thanks the preacher and the man in the dark suit, and wanders off.

And that's it. Seventy-some years of life capped in fifteen minutes and a 1x1 square of grass, surrounded by family members united in their genial distrust of each other. Stamp the folder 'COMPLETED' and file. Management thanks you for your patronage.

You're all on notice: When I get run over by an oncoming 43 bus on Montlake Boulevard, I want a loud, drink-filled wake, with stories and laughter and plenty of music. And, by preference, I want the building burned down immediately afterward. I always wanted a Viking funeral.

There are rare pleasures to be found in this life, and one of them is watching the Red Sox win a World Series for the first time in three generations. Woohoo!

Saw in an article awhile back that Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan have been attending Sox games all year and writing a book about their progress through the season. That ought to be an entertaining tale.

---

Speaking of entertaining tales, I finally finished watching the 'Firefly' DVDs.

Fantastic series. Fox Television is run by idiots. The producers are polite on the commentaries - mostly - but listening to their tales of bad scheduling, out-of-order episode airing, lack of promotion, and Fox's frequent creative meddling makes you wonder not why Fox airs so much Joe Millionaire-style schlock, but how the Simpsons ever lasted so long.

( spoilers behind here )

To borrow a phrase, it was a dark and stormy night. The wind has been howling out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and up into the San Juan Channel. It's a very high tide today, and the water is lapping over the rocks and miscellaneous debris in front of my parents' home. The south-facing windows of my mother and step-dad's house are covered in water; there are branches blown down all over the decks. It's grey, and wet, and cold, and you can barely see Lopez Island across the channel, less than a mile away.

Inside, it's been warm, and cheerful, and drama-free. The turkey was plump and juicy, the stuffing just right, and if the cranberries didn't quite jell, well, nobody minded.

I've read two books, am about to start on a third, have worked in desultory fashion on my novel, and am currently watching the waves roll up the channel. My wife is still working her way through her Ian Rankin novel. I had a long and fun debate with my mother about Tudor history. Last night, after supper, we laughed most of the way through "Bend It Like Beckham," which I hadn't seen.

Thanksgiving was good.

Some days, the more sleep you get, the less rested you feel.

Random musing about Tom Clancy novels is hidden behind a LJ cut. Spoilers for his novels up through Red Rabbit:

( Why Tom Clancy should have been a technical writer )

I owe a public apology to everyone who has stayed in our house recently. Yes, it was too damn cold. That's because I'd forgotten that early in the fall we'd set the thermostat to turn itself down to 63 degrees in the evening, so the furnace wouldn't kick on while we slept. Oops. I've since fixed the problem. We're nice and warm these days.

Bed. Horizontal surface. Wonderful thought.

And now a couple reports from the religious fringe:

You didn't know it, but the UFOs are here to preach a false gospel.

Meanwhile, if you're expecting the rapture at any moment, be sure to set up your PDA appropriately.

It's worth the reminder: the Left Behind series is one of the most popular in America.

If you haven't already done so, you should read Jon Krakauer's book about Mormon fundamentalists. Specifically, the book is about the brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who committed a premeditated double murder, supposedly at God's command. It's called Under The Banner of Heaven.