Books!

Huzzah!
I went to buy my January Buspass at the University the other day, and I thought I would check the bookstore to see what kinds of books I'd have to pick up later for my winter semester courses. I checked for Comparative Literature Science Fiction, and I had so many books in that class, I picked them all up at once and lugged them home. It's easier that way - I broke one of the zippers on my knapsack last semester trying to carry all my books at once.

I have so many good science fiction books to read now! I read primarily fantasy, but I wanted to start into Science Fiction, and what better way to do that then to sign up in Comp Lit Sci-Fi, where they'll doubtless have me read the best? For the first time, I've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I enjoyed them both very much - they were quick reads but entertaining. I like Douglas Adams' writing style.

Right now, I'm reading Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian sci-fi writer!). So far, the concept is freakin' brilliant. An experiment gone awry makes every person on the planet (or most of them, anyway) black out for two minutes, only to experience a vision of their future 21 years from now. One guy sees himself as an old man happily married to a woman who is decidedly not his current fiancee, and another doesn't have a vision, and then gets a phonecall from a stranger whose vision included reading about his murder in a future newspaper. Cool!

I've got so many other books to read though - Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson (I just bought the first book in his Baroque Cycle with my Christmas money), The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, Canticle for Liebowitz, Pattern Recognition, Solaris (with a big picture of George Clooney kissing a pretty lady on the cover), and so many others! This semester, I have no boring, needless history, math, or logic courses - only English, Japanese, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing. So pretty much, my entire homework this semester is going to consist of reading and writing, which is like being assigned to eat cookies for marks. Good stuff.

And on the last weekend of the holidays, I watched Coupe de Ville, which I got at the library. As you can probably guess, it has Patrick Dempsey in it. I would rather have watched or Some Girls or Happy Together, but I couldn't score a ride to the Good Old Movie Rental Place That's Inconveniently Far Away, and the Bad Old Movie Rental Place That's Close By lost its copies of Mobsters and With Honors, or sold them, or something. The mouthbreathing clerk wasn't too clear on that point.

In Coupe de Ville, Patrick Dempsey is the baby bad-boy brother Bobby (say that three times fast!) to nerdy Buddy and Air-Force man Marvin. They're all called together to deliver a power-blue, mint condition car (the one of the title) from Detroit to Florida for their dying father. Supposedly, bonding ensues. Dempsey's quite good in it - for a reform school student who sneezes "suck me off!" to his professor (did he invent the "insult sneeze"?) but cries when someone messes with his coin collection. Enjoyable, but he didn't get enough screentime.

Oh, and for some bad news - I got another rejection letter from Challenging Destiny. No note this time, he didn't read the entire story ("Most of the story" was checked off), and the reason for the rejection was still "didn't quite 'do it' for me". Good news - this usually means I'm not a terrible writer. Bad news - this usually means there's not a lot I can do to improve.