SFist Reads
SFist has been sick the last few days, and the books we reserved online saved us from boredom and madness. Now that we're out and about again, maybe we'll stop by one of our local independent bookstores to get some books to keep.
The always brief Isaac is reading The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith.
SFist Rita just finished Disney War, by James Stewart It's really like they took all your bad bosses, put them all in a company, and let them all destroy each other! It's hilarious! They should make it into a sitcom!
Disney Way cover from SFPL site
SFist Jon is once again attempting War and Peace. He even bought it, thinking that if he was going to spend the money on it, he might as well read it. So far, it's not going so badly (he's on page 40!). He thinks it's because whoever is doing the translation decided to shorten the names. Instead of people constantly being referred to as, say, Boris Nikolai Romanov Federov Pavelvich, the edition would just refer to them as Boris Pavelvich. Believe it or not, this makes a huge difference in that whenever he first tried to read the book, his eyes would completely glaze over whenver somebody's name is written. Considering the first couple of scenes take place at parties where every main character is introduced, it felt like 1/3 of the written page was people's names. Yawn.
He has noticed too that in this go around, it seems to be doing a good job of curing his insomnia.
SFIst Jeremy, inspired by Jackson's interview with Pim, as well as new SFist contributors Derrick and Sam, is reading Best Food Writing of 2004, edited by Holly Hughes. While he has nothing particularly clever to day about it, it is very enjoyable and proves that good writing is good writing, regardless of genre.