The WAL

And even longer overdue.

I’m not sure why I’ve neglected this for the past month and more. Certainly not due to a lack of things to write about – I never have to look far to find something entertaining one or more of my children has done or something interesting or something to be irritated about. More the lack of inclination to write. That seems to have passed. In the last couple of days I’ve gone back to a couple of stories, completing a final draft on one, finished an unfinished sonnet, and made some notes on a story I’ve been thinking of writing for my kids for a while. So the keyboard is getting more exercise than the mouse and my fingers don’t even cramp.

But the mouse still gets its workout, particularly now that I’ve got my high speed back – I was without for two weeks while I first figured out that there was nothing I could do about the (eventually) obviously fried modem and then, after satisfying my ISP that the modem was fried, wait for them to ship a new one.

The most tragic thing about the gap wasn’t about the lack of e-mail or blog or connectedness in general – I have emergency dial up when/if I need it and there’s access at work if I’m desperate – but the fact that I ran out of podcasts for my MP3 player and long commutes. I’m an information junkie, apparently, listening to CBC radio a lot as well as NPR from south of the border and a mix of overseas public broadcasters on CBC Radio Overnight when I’m working nights, but my hours are variable. Podcasts are convenient to get what I want.

I have, however, started branching out. Sometimes when I’m surfing, I follow links from site to site because they look like they might be interesting. An easy way to waste time but sometimes leads to some interesting things.

My favourite discovery recently is Escape Pod, a weekly SF podcast featuring an audio SF story. Variable in length and subject but always interesting/entertaining/thought provoking or some combination of the three. Definitely deserving of a place in the WAL. I highly recommend checking it out if you’ve ever had an interest in Science Fiction (or occasionally Fantasy). I have for longer than I can remember which isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s ever met me. While I’m remarkably well adjusted in most obvious ways, I’m certainly in touch with my inner geek. And that, with apologies to Martha Stewart, sort of, is a good thing. It lets me watch silly cartoons, enjoy the new Transformers movie with my kids, quote bad dialogue from obscure SF movies, collect a ridiculous number of genre fiction books and magazines and, most recently, listen to SF in the car whenever I feel like it, care of Escape Pod.

Enjoy.

The other night, while finishing the last of my Christmas shopping (I hope), I picked up a book. Not at all unusual in and of itself. Anyone can tell you that I’m a voracious reader and have been for more or less my entire life since I learned to read. In the past twelve months I’ve read several dozens of books on history, cosmology, body language, politics, poker, physics, education, number theory, and even a couple of biographies – I have eclectic tastes (my wife would say bizarre). But my fiction readings have been few and far between. Not like me.

I used to go through several books of fiction every week, mainly SF and Fantasy – my tastes have always tended toward escapism and there’s lots of it hanging around the house, but it’s been several months since I’ve picked one up (Thud! By Terry Pratchett – a Discworld novel and a truly excellent read – the man is a brilliant satirist as well as hilarious). While shopping, I slipped an early present for me into the basket didn’t bother to wrap it. The book is We Few by David Weber and John Ringo, fourth (and supposedly last, but we’ll see) in a series that I enjoyed and remember more than enough of to slide back into without rereading the first three.

There was a time when David Weber and John Ringo ranked high among my favourite SF authors. I’m disappointed in both of them for different reasons (Weber because he just doesn’t seem to know when to stop and Ringo because he invested large amounts of paper, and therefore my time and interest, in a character that he ultimately killed “off screen” for no apparent reason). However, I enjoyed the first three books in the series, relatively mindless shoot-em-up military SF with a political back story though they were. The politics are more relevant to the fourth book, but action is promised. It should be an easy read and might slide me back toward fiction a bit. We’ll see.

I also grabbed another book to be surreptitiously slipped into my Christmas stocking. Destroyer by C.J. Cherryh whom I’m most certainly not disappointed in but still haven’t read much of in some time, and it’s past time to fix that.