I borrowed Lisa Yaszek's Galactic Suburbia from a library this week. I'm enjoying it. I've been writing female narrative characters more often lately, and I'm not sure why. After hearing an interview with the author on SciFiDimensions, and it sounded interesting. The ideas that women wrote about tie in nicely with modern science fiction's "slipstream" or "literary" push, that is, more towards "character-driven" instead of "gadget-driven" stories.
I'm not sure I'm capturing real people with the women I'm writing about, but I have three women who read my stuff and I trust them implicitly, I'm just not sure I can do everything they suggest with the stories.
Reading the book has inspired me to write. Reading a preview of jaylake's Green inspired a dark fantasy story that I'm tempted to write. It's great. I'm inspired to write, and I have two hours of free time to do something.
So I'm off. Wish me luck.
And in the meantime, check out Galactic Suburbia. It's a good read, sometimes dry, but it is an academic work, and it has given me a reading list with names like Judith Merrill and Shirley Jackson to explore.

PS. I work in a library, and love having access to books. I hate not being able to add my own marginalia to these books, so I consider a library book a test drive. Galactic Suburbia is now on my wish list for books. I think this book is worth owning and it deserves to be part of my permanent collection.

Tags: reading, sf, writing

The Mt. Hood Community College library is gearing up for National Library Week next week. All the events are in the Bob Scott Room, which is in the corner of the library. Here's a list of events:

Mon., April 14, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.  

History of the Mt. Hood Community College Library: bring your lunch and listen to presenter Patti Allen describe our library’s evolution.

Tue., April 15, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.  

Poetry Open Mic: come read your own original poetry or share your favorite poem, or just eat your lunch and listen to the poems.

Wed., April 16, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Read a Banned Book Today!: bring your lunch and listen to presenter Beth Wood discuss banned books, censorship, and your right to read.

Thurs., April 17, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Science Fiction Discussion Panel: chaired by Josh English, local authors discuss current issues in science fiction writing.

Fri., April 18, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Science Fiction Reading: bring your lunch and listen to local writers read from their science fiction and fantasy works.

Any Portland Metro spec fic folks who want to participate, feel free to drop me a line  here in comments or through an LJ message. If you just want to show up and heckle, we'd love to have you.

Tags: library, reading, writing

I am a biblioholic and a bibliophile, and things are getting out of hand. I've lost track of everything I am currently reading (when the library cuts you off at the 25th item, things are bad), so I've compiled my reading list. This is insane.
And, of course, none of this includes short stories.

Reading List

(as of July 3, 2004)

Fiction	Writing	Non-fiction
Trial of Flowers* (Jay Lake)	The Ode Less Travelled* (Stephen Fry)	ChiWalking* (Danny Dreyer)
Broken Angels* (Richard Morgan)	On Writing* (Stephen King)	Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography* (William Butcher)
Paradise Passed (Jerry Oltion)	The Passionate, Accurate, Story* (Carol Bly)	Celtic Myths and Legends* (Peter Berresford Ellis)
Casino Royale (Ian Flemming) (anthology containing From Russia, with love; Live and let die; Diamonds are forever; Dr No;  and Goldfinger)	A Writer's Voice (A Alvarez)	The Philosophy of Neo Noir*
Spin (Robert Charles Wilson)		The Phoenix Affirmations (Eric Elnes)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)

Browsing Books

These books I leave around handy places to flip through:

• An Incomplete Education*
• Genius

Future Plans

These are the books I want to re-read fairly soon.  I've been rereading my Terry Pratchett novels, but decided to put him down for a while and return to Asimov's Foundation series.

• Foundation
• Foundationand Empire
• Second Foundation
• Foundation'sEdge
• Foundationand Earth
• Prelude to Foundation
• Forward the Foundation

Tags: books, reading

I finally met deedop last night, and hung out with douglain, supaluv, kblincoln, and mkhobson. A guy named Peter played guitar from under a sheet, and five of us read stuff. Thankfully, I had read Mary Robinette Kowal's Stage Presense article, and those techniques really helped. I also have theatre and radio experience, so it's not like I was really nervous. Just moderately nervous, but despite the mic, reading to a bunch of friends is remarkably easy.

Tags: performance, reading, writing