I won’t even try to describe how busy I have been between school and… well… school. I think, though, that maybe I have a handle on the workload now and can get back to updating once a week or so. Along with that comes a return to reading books for me and not for one school or another. And that’s how I am going to ease my way back into a regular posting pattern again. Talking about books. Specifically, what books are next on my reading list and why.

Before I get into all that, though, I need to emphasize that whatever order I come up with for the next 4 or 5 books is tentative, at best. I know, I say that each and every time I post something about what’s on my bedside stack. But this time it’s a little different. I haven’t heard anything official yet, but Amazon is finally listing George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons with a release date and a pre-order option. And yes, I pre-ordered it. And, also yes, I know that it will likely come out after their posted release date of September 30^th. But that’s ok. I have waited this long, another few months won’t kill me. Besides, it gives me time to re-read the first four books. I’ll probably start them in July, or maybe as early as June if I get really anxious, so it won’t cut into my next 6 or so reads. But eventually the publishing world will need to go on without me as I re-immerse myself in Westeros and have a walk with Jon and Bran and all the rest. Martin’s series easily ranks among my favorite reads of the last ten to fifteen years, and part of me is almost sad that this release will mark the end of the series [ed. ok... there are two more books left after ADOD. Thanks Ms. Gilmore for pointing this out to me. 4 more years of breathless anticipation!]

For now, though, I am content with catching up on the books I received as gifts over the holidays. First up is Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss, and it has me in absolute laugh out loud stitches every time I pick it up. I had never read Eats, Shoots, & Leaves, and, sure enough, as soon as I started talking about Talk to the Hand, someone went out and bought me its predecessor, which will now close out the books I have on my gifted list.

After Truss, I have Orwell’s Animal Farm to brush up on before I teach it to my freshmen.

And then comes Stross. Charles Stross. I don’t even want to think about how long various books by Stross have been on my reading list. Finally though, a friend down in the Lone Star State had enough of my reading trash like Martin, Card, Hawthorne, and LeGuin, and gave me The Jennifer Morgue without knowing that I had never managed to get The Atrocity Archives, the book to which it is a sequel, off my increasingly crowded To Buy list. So, of course, me being me, I immediately ordered The Atrocity Archives and moved them as close to the front of my To Read list as I dared. And there they sit. Just two short books away. I think my palms are sweating.

Next on the list is a gift from a buddy of mine making his way out in that crazy land of Hollywood. I gave up on that town years ago, but he is well on his way to taking it by storm, so when this arrived in a padded envelope from him, I was more than a little excited. Anytime someone with dyslexia recommends a book to me, I take them seriously. And when they are a writer and filmmaker, doubly so. Peter Baskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is all about the Hollywood of legend… the mecca of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll that both entranced and mortified the rest of the nation back in the late sixties and early seventies. Or at least that’s what the jacket says. My friend, knee deep in the same industry that I left and that this book seems to both worship and vilify, says it is quite simply the most fascinating book on the film industry he has ever read. And that’s enough for me.

Bookending the list is the other Truss book I mentioned, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Yes, I am reading them out of order. No, I am not going to stop now and fix it. I got them out of order, they aren’t a series, so I will read them out of order. If it bugs you, then by all means, start talking amongst yourselves and get a little more coordinated as to when you get me gifts!