My plan to accumulate a stash of books for train reading material is working. I bought a Frederick Pohl novel, Gateway, on Michael's recommendation when we were poking around a used bookstore on Saturday night. Today two books arrived from Patrick Nielsen Hayden (senior editor at Tor) as "packing material" for his CD which I ordered. So now I have Mike Ford's latest novel, The Last Hot Time, and Ken McLeod's The Cassini Division to add to my treasure trove. They're hardcovers, but they're slim enough that I can probably take them to work without destroying them, because I'll read them fast and they won't stay in my backpack long enough to get beat up (the usual fate of the big hardcovers).
I've ordered several books from amazon.com and have received all but one. It's the one I want the most, though, and it's making me crazy trying to track it through the UPS system. I can't understand why it's taken three days to travel from Kentucky to Illinois. I ordered a copy for a friend as a surprise, and since he reads this diary I can't go into spasms of delight over the particular wonderfulness of the book until after we both get our books. When mine finally gets here I'll probably devote a whole entry to it.
Yes! Suspense is in my repetoire! Sure, it's not the thrilling excitement of wondering when someone will have their baby, or the voyeuristic excitement of following someone's love life, or the guilty pleasure excitement of watching someone's life go predictably wrong. But hey, this book has officially tipped a lifetime's interest over into obsession. There are going to be big changes in my backyard. Notified readers already know what it is. Do you?
Aside from that, I'm studying for my Oceanography midterm on Thursday. See you Friday.
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