Books Acquired:

Books Offloaded:
Lucky Loser, Russ Buettner & Suzanne Craig
The Last Good Kiss, James Crumley
Alien, Alan Dean Foster
Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck

Progress Made:
You Glow in the Dark, Liliana Colanza
VALIS, Philip K. Dick
Siouxsie & the Banshees: The Authorised Biography, Mark Paytress
The Black Count, Tom Reiss

Books Finished:
Alien, Alan Dean Foster
The Bewildering Effect of Cabbages, Michael Rymaszewski

Can it really be true that I didn’t add anything to the library in February, making it a net negative? At the behest of my darling wife, I’ve added a section above to reflect books that went away during the month. Sadly my favorite free box, at the Coffee Break in Sunny Brae, is no more, replaced by a vintage gas pump; so these went to the airport, where they will hopefully help some weary traveler find respite from boredom.

It wasn’t a great reading month, and some of what I did read was vintage issues of the sci-fi pulp Galaxy, which don’t count here. I did manage to finish Michael’s felicitously short book, which I enjoyed but was perplexed by. If he’s reading this, maybe he could explain the ending to me.

Alien was a perfect airplane-and-airport read, engrossing but not overly taxing. It must have been written based on an early version of the script, as it departed from the plot of the film numerous times, which actually made it more fun.

VALIS goes down best in small doses, but I am about 3/4 of the way through it. In this month’s pages Phil quoted this passage from the Book of Daniel:

In the last days of those kingdoms,
When their sin is at its height,
A king shall appear, harsh and grim, a master of stratagem.
His power shall be great, he shall work havoc untold;
He shall work havoc among great nations and upon a holy people.
His mind shall be ever active,
And he shall succeed in his crafty designs;
He shall conjure up great plans.
And, when they least expect it, work havoc on many.
He shall challenge even the Prince of princes
And be broken, but not by human hands.

In his time, PKD thought it was about Nixon. But it certainly seems relevant today. It might be a stretch to call That Fucking Guy a “master of stratagem,” but he does have some weird gift for making the most of the least.

It’s reassuring to think that he will “be broken,” but what does “not by human hands” mean? Are the aliens going to save us? If so, what are they waiting for?

Part of me still can’t accept that he got elected again. It’s like waking up one morning to find that a functional majority of the country has decided that its favorite thing to eat is human shit. At first you think it’s a hoax. Then you start seeing the TV ads, you pass the rapidly expanding poop aisle in the supermarket, you walk by the restaurants where crowds of people are happily chowing down on giant turds. But it still doesn’t comport with your idea of how the world is supposed to work.

After a while you just shrug your shoulders and say, De gustibus non est disputandum. But then other foods start disappearing from the shelves, crowded out by various formats and flavors of feces, and you start to get nervous….

Well, that’s enough of that analogy. Time to think some happier thoughts. March is here, the days are getting longer, spring is right around the corner; some good reading weather can’t be far away.