New Books

One of the most challenging skillsets to master is to eat a nectarine, either crisp or mooshy, while blogging . . . I can do that and read - no prob - but keyboarding . . .

UPS just delivered my latest treasure, Robert Battlestone's Odysseus Unbound. This gentleman posits that Odysseus' Ithaka is today's Cephalonia, not the island currently so identified. He offers over five hundred pages, including maps, satellite photos, images, and appendices to make his point. Oh, Joy! Multimedic argument. I love it. I have my highlighters and pencils handy. Plus half a dozen translations of the Odyssey, of course, just for cross-checking. This gives me shivers.

The other book I'm working on/playing with right now is Deepak Chopra's Peace is the Way. We're hosting a seven-week book study in our living room, in amongst the piano, keyboards, and plethora of stringed instruments, and I've decided to augment the dozen or so guiding questions presented in the facilitator training manual for the event. "Little did they know, heh heh, " snorkled I in my best Snidley Whiplash imitation. I'm on my third page of referents - so far only twenty-two questions, and I'm only on page (4) of the actual text. It's something of a dense read, with a lot of author-assumed knowledge and vocabulary in it. I don't know yet whether I'll put in my EnglishIsNotForSissies website or start another one.

Speaking of that website, I'm about halfway through A.M.Smith's The Good Husband of Zebra Drive.

The nectarine is history, along with its guard detail of a dozen sesame-peanuts. Oh, the privation.

Last night I ordered Kage Baker's Sky Coyote, book two in her The Company series. Time travel, enlightened(?) science, ultimate responsibilities, humanity in immortality. Delicious sets of interlocking questions to consider. Then on a whim, I googled, the lady, and paged through her website. Very tasty, indeed. You really should read her The Garden of Iden. She'll set the hook way deep in your jaw. You'll have to get it on Amazon or eBay.

Pax.