Blog: Articles from October 2010

I’ve fallen in love with Subterranean Press, a specialty science fiction publisher. They release gorgeous limited editions of books by fantastic authors. Recently I bought an awesome special hardcover edition of Grave Peril, the fourth Dresden Files book. And a few weeks ago, I was weak-willed enough to spend money on four additional books from them!

Courtesy of BookMooch, All Tomorrow’s Parties, by William Gibson, and The Stolen One, by Suzanne Crowley, arrived in the mail last week. I am slowly collecting Gibson’s novels and hope to read them in some kind of order, so I probably won’t get around to All Tomorrow’s Parties any time soon. The Stolen One is Elizabethan-era fiction, marketed for young adults; I entered a giveaway for it on Goodreads and didn’t win, but it looked interesting enough to put on my BookMooch wishlist.

One of my discussion groups on Goodreads is reading N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms this November. It looks like exactly the kind of fantasy I love, but I‘ve been trying to reduce the number of books I buy until I get through my backlog. (As this post indicates, I’m failing miserably at this!) But I had to go to Chapters last week to buy a birthday book for a friend, so I used that as an excuse to acquire this book—and only this book—for myself. As soon as I entered the store, I put my hands up to either side of my head like blinders and ran for the fantasy section.

So, what about these special books from Subterranean Press? Well, we’ve got:

• The Lifecycle of Software Objects, a novella by Ted Chiang. I read a review of this on io9. Since Subterranean Press books have a way of selling out quite quickly, I decided to snatch a copy while I was placing an order.
• The Sky that Wraps, an anthology by Jay Lake. Funny story: I actually haven’t read anything by Jay Lake, ever, yet I now own four of his books—this one, and his Clockwork Earth trilogy. He first caught my eye when I saw the release announcement for Green, which I haven’t actually bought yet (and hopefully won’t until I read these four books).
• Journeys, an anthology by Ian R. MacLeod. Like Lake, I haven’t actually read anything by MacLeod. The book just looked so nice and tempting, and I’ve heard so many good things about him.
• Toast, an anthology by Charles Stross. I’ve had Stross on my radar for quite some time now, and I had the opportunity not just to read Singularity Sky but study it in an English class last year. Stross has some great insight into possible avenues of the development of artificial intelligence, and I’m eager to read more of his short stories.

This is a very belated birthday-related blog post. I started writing about my birthday the day after the fact, but I got sidetracked and never quite managed to finish the post. I need to start blogging again, because I have plenty to say. So we’ll begin with my birthday.

I don’t celebrate my birthday with a lot of fanfare. However, I also don’t sweep it under a rug like the curmudgeon in me is wont to do. I enjoy getting gifts, but that’s true regardless of whether it’s my birthday! Still, I got some pretty cool gifts from my family members. My dad got some books, as well as a whopping stack of Chapters gift cards, which are like candy you can use to buy books. My brother got me a mug with a stylized police badge that says “Spelling Police,” as well as some tea. In particular, he got me a type of South American tea called Yerba Maté; I can’t pronounce that name, so I just call it “panther tea,” because the box has a panther on it. Incidentally, this is also why my brother selected that tea. In his own words: “Panthers are manly.”

I’m 21 now, and it’s just weird. I don’t feel 21, although if you asked me what age I do feel, I don’t think I could attach such a number. It’s just weird how quickly time passes. I feel like it was just yesterday that I graduated high school. No, three years have passed. I‘m well on my way to completing university degrees and becoming a certified teacher. This is somewhat scary. Soon I could be back in high school, but on the other side. And I’ve barely two decades under my belt.

Sometimes I feel old. By “old,” I don’t mean decrepit, or aged, or anything pejorative. I just mean that I’ve been around longer than I thought I have, and in my short time here, the world has changed quite a bit. I miss television shows from my youth, such as Wishbone or Ghostwriter, which are foreign to younger people today. I wonder if I belong to the last generation that will understand what “shake it like a Polaroid picture” means, except outside of a history class. Five years ago, monitors were bulky. Now we’ve all flatscreens and phones with Bluetooth (well, most of us—my phone still doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I don’t have to worry about it conspiring with my WiiMote).

So really, it’s just a matter of time before I’m the old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. See you then!m