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Well, we’re about two weeks out from the massive THUD of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I will of course buy on day one and read as quickly as I can. I actually haven’t re-read any of the previous volumes yet, but I suppose I will sometime once the series is complete. So, since I’m not totally “up” on my Potter-verse mythology, I’m not equipped to speculate a lot on what’s going to happen. However, I will note that I’m keenly interested in seeing how two specific characters — well, groupings of characters, anyway — ultimately fit intoDown the rabbit hole….

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Another quiz thing, this one about books, filched from Paul: Recommend 3 books you believe everyone needs to read and say why people should read them. The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Simply put, his finest novel yet, and a stunning and heartbreaking romance. (But as I’ve noted before, you have to read it twice. The second time out, when you know what’s coming, what was interesting before becomes shattering.) A Gentle Madness, by Nicholas Basbanes, if only to give yourself an excuse to keep acquiring books (because there’s no way you’re as bad as the truly oddDown the rabbit hole….

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Some book-ish stuff: :: I keep forgetting to link these reviews I wrote for GMR: The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock and Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling by Mitch Myers, WorldCon Guest of Honor Speeches edited by Mike Resnick and Joe Siclari, and (a recording, not a book) a double album by John Wesley Harding. :: Good book on baseball, if you like baseball (or good books about subjects you don’t particularly care about): Is This a Great Game or What?, by ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian. If George Will’s Men at Work made you want to open a window and turnDown the rabbit hole….

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Recently read items here at Casa Jaquandor: :: How could I not read The Making of Star Wars? Written in honor of the original film’s thirtieth anniversary, J.W. Rinzler’s book more than lives up to its subtitle: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film. The book pretty much starts at about the earliest possible point, when young filmmaker George Lucas starts kicking around the notion of making a science fiction movie. There’s just an astonishing amount of information here, and the book is actually a fairly dense read — so much so, in fact, that I suspect that had theDown the rabbit hole….

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Yesterday was my local library’s quarterly used book sale, an event that always fills my heart with joy and my arms with pain (from lugging out a huge number of books). The pickings this time weren’t as good from the SF standpoint as the sale in March, but that sale was an outlier of sorts as far as SF goes; I’ve been going to this library’s sales for more than three years now and have never seen as much old SF as I did on that day. But I was still able to get the second, third, and fourth booksDown the rabbit hole….

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Some notes on recent bookish activity at Casa Jaquandor, since I’ve had lots of reading time lately (about the only good thing about lengthy hospital stays): :: Every week at the library I carefully inspect the “New Nonfiction” shelf, and often times I’ll check out a selection or two from there pretty much on a whim. One such case was Automat: The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece, by Lorraine Diehl and Marianne Hardart. I saw the word “recipes” and that’s all it took, since I’m always a sucker for new cookbooks, and after about five secondsDown the rabbit hole….

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There’s been some turmoil over the last few days involving the Science Fiction Book Club, of which I’ve been a member for over a year now (and of which I’d been a member sporadically three or four previous times during the 1990s). Basically, the SFBC’s parent company, BookSpan, has been purchased by the corporate behemoth Bertelsmann, which owns BMG/Columbia House. Bertelsmann is therefore set to combine the book clubs it’s just bought with its other direct marketing entities, while also closing some of the smaller book clubs. Most notable here is their book club for conservatives, I suppose; I’d neverDown the rabbit hole….

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Brief notes on several books I’ve read of late, two graphic novels and two memoirs: :: Love in a Torn Land (which sports a fairly ungainly subtitle, Joanna of Kuridstan: The True Story of a Freedom Fighter’s Escape from Iraqi Vengeance) is a highly effective memoir of a woman who had the misfortune of growing up Kurdish in Iraq during the end of the 20th century, coming of age during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial rule of that country. In the book, author Jean Sasson writes the tale of Joanna al-Askari’s life as she related it in telephone interviews and a fewDown the rabbit hole….

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Time, I guess, for a little SF book blogging! :: Here’s one of the great all-time opening paragraphs: This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying…but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice…but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extre,es, a fascinating century of freaks…but nobody loved it. When I note that SF has had to scrape and fight for every tiny morsel of respect it’s ever been grudgingly offered by the Keepers of the Literary Canon, and I contrast thatDown the rabbit hole….

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I recently read Bill Bryson‘s latest book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, in which Bryson recounts his experiences as a kid in 1950s America (Des Moines, IA, specifically). This was one of the more delightful reads I’ve enjoyed in a long time, full of the kind of loving naivete that marked, say, the funnier episodes of The Wonder Years or the less-serious parts of Stand By Me. People [in the 50s] looked forward to the future, too, in ways they never would again. Soon, according to every magazine, we were going to have underwater cities off everyDown the rabbit hole….