- Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr. Listened to this one as an audio book, and it lived up to its title: It was both wicked and lovely. A short, engaging YA novel about one teenage girl’s struggle to find her identity — while also struggling with her unusual ability to see a world populated by fairies, with a love story thrown in for good measure.
- Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, Scott Westerfield. I’d heard a lot about Westerfield’s far future YA series, so I decided to give them a shot. I was not disappointed. Tally Youngblood proved to be a very engaging main character, and well worth spending three books with. I can also see why the first book became a bestseller, because it has one of the best opening chapters I’ve seen in a while.
- Baby, Would I Lie?, Donald E. Westlake. Short, punchy and fun. An aging country western star is on trial for murder. Throw in a spunky female journalist, and a nice twist ending, and you’ve got yourself a good read. I’d never read any Westlake, and always wanted to try him; now I have to go find more of his books.
- What Do You Care What Other People Think?, Richard Feynman. A short nonfiction memoir by the Nobel Prize laureate. I’d read and enjoyed Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mister Feynman?, and I liked this one too, especially the chapters that focused on his part in the committee investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
Postcards from the Garage: There’s a Genius in My Office
I’m not bragging here, but not every writer has the benefit of a genius in his office — like I do, with good old Albert Einstein. Especially a genius wearing a hat from The Cat in the Hat.
Actually, Albert was a gift from my parents, who bought him for me when I started a bookstore. And when I sold the store, he was the only thing I took with me. We’ve developed a good friendship. He doesn’t say much, but that’s okay. He’s a genius, so he doesn’t have to.
A Lot of Words Under the Bridge
The picture is of the galleys, or page proofs, for a story I have appearing in an upcoming issue of Analog. The galleys are the author’s last chance to catch any mistakes before his work appears in print. I’ll say more about the story when it appears, but reading it over, I was struck by how far I’ve come as a writer. I don’t often read my past work — I’m always focusing on the story or novel in progress — so sometimes I forget how far my craft has come over the years. It was a good reminder. I’m usually pretty hard on myself, always trying to get better, so it’s good to see that those two or three million words of practice are getting me somewhere. It’s easy to lose sight of that sometimes.
The Grateful Atheist
I have my beliefs, and I don’t want to rain on any one’s parade, so I generally don’t try to pick fights with the religious crowd. Mostly, I envy them. That belief in an after-life is like a nice warm blanket you can pull over yourself when the cold realization of your own mortality overcomes you. That feeling suddenly overcame me today when I was out on a walk. I got to thinking about our home remodel, and how this is the house we plan to raise our family in for at least the next fifteen years (until Calvin graduates from high school), and I realized that if all goes as we expect, I’ll go from 35 to 50 in this house. Essentially, passing from being a young man through middle age. My children will grow up. Many others will die; still others will be born. For what? And why? There is no why. There just is. Why is the moon the moon?
You can either invent a fiction to believe in, or you can try to put it out of your mind as best you can. Otherwise you’ll be overcome with grief — not sadness, but grief. You’ll grieve for your own eventual death and for the eventual death of everyone around you. It’s not a way to live. And topping it off is the cruel possibility that your life could be winked out unexpectedly at any moment.
The one good thing is that it does make you appreciate everyone around you. You feel more sympathy. You realize that everyone is on the same road, even if they are on different journeys. We are alone, and yet we are together. It is the great irony of humankind.
So I sit and watch my children playing before me. Children are born and live with the cherished myth of an everlasting life. Then one day they, too, feel the death-pangs of grief for the first time, and that will be beginning of the end of their childhoods. It is sad and poignant and you wish you could spare them from it, but you can’t. No one can. You shelter them for a little while, maybe, and that’s part of parenting, but in the end they have to become just as fully human as you.
So what do I do? I go on living. I go on parenting and being a good husband. I love. I try not to do harm. I write, because it’s something I’m somewhat good at, and because I want to become my best self. Occasionally, I write about things like this, because I don’t want to shy away from the shadows or the light. It’s all I can do.
And in the end, you decide to appreciate the gifts the universe has given you. You didn’t have to be born, after all. Ever think about that?