Recent readings: I finally got around to reading Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW trilogy, start to finish, which I’d had on my shelf for a few years already (pretty good). I’ve also been reading some Bradbury just over the last few weeks, specifically Something Wicked This Way Comes and his A Sound of Thunder collection, and I’ve come to appreciate how beautiful his use of language is, something I didn’t really pick up on when I read him as a teenager.

I’ve also been looking at some Asian-themed fiction of late, though no recent releases. It’s been years since I’ve read Shōgun and I’d been thinking I should finally read Tai-Pan this year (also by James Clavell), but of course it’s a bit of a door-stopper. So instead I started with the much shorter The Ronin (quite good), have just started dipping into the equally short Bridge of Birds, and have been thinking I might do Musashi after that before Tai Pan. Of course I’ll be jumping around a bit, not knocking these off one after the other without a break.

(And now that I think of it, there is one recent item on my radar in this “genre”: Murakami’s new novel just came out. I haven’t picked it up yet. I forgot about it until the last-minute and so wasn’t able to place a review and, thus, didn’t request an ARC.)

Obviously I’ve read several Heinlein books recently, for my coverage at Green Man Review and I do have one more to take care of soonish, though that’s a weekend read at most.

And there’s an eclectic mix of other stuff I’ve started or planned on starting over the last couple of months, including Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series (looking for that third volume in the second-hand stores still) and a few non-fiction titles. I’ve got a nice little pile on my night table, but the difficulty is when something new pops up in the mailbox and jumps the queue, as it were. Raincoast, which distributes for Tor (and many others), is one of the worst offenders for sending me big boxes of wonderful ARCs, meant to tempt me from whatever I’m doing and into a good book and, often, the ensuing, unplanned review. Of course there are worse problems to have than a surplus of delicious boks.

But, yes, I have been reading at a pretty good clip of late, and I’m pleased about that. For nearly the first half of this year, I just couldn’t find the time. But I’m in a bit of a groove lately. I suppose I’ve cut back on the television a fair bit, since, brief vacation aside, my work hours haven’t dropped a whole lot (even with the aforementioned turning down of work). Not all of my writing work is downright exciting. Occasionally it can border on (or enter right into) tedium.

Literature is the great escape, even for, or perhaps especially for a working writer.