Library Saturday!

Ever see the Twilight Zone episode about the guy who reads all the time at his bank job and is always in trouble for it? He hides in the vault to read, then discovers that a nuclear holocaust has occurred while he was on his book break. He decided to make the best of it by catching up on his reading. I won't reveal the rest of it, but it's one of my favorite episodes. Anyway, that's what the image is from.

I read constantly. One of the positive things about having all this downtime is that I have a lot more time to devote to reading. I am constantly approaching my limit of library books. Here are some of the things that I am reading.

James Tiptree Jr. Biography of noted science fiction author who wrote under a male psudonym for most of her career, only outing herself after she started winning awards. I wasn't familiar with Tiptree's work, but this book has really made me interested. It is a lot more complicated than a mere pseudonym, it's a case study in gender roles, stereotyping, and "voice' in literature. Just checked out one of her novels, and am looking forward to reading it.

TALES FROM Q SCHOOL by John Feinstein I love John Feinstein. He is probably one of the greatest sports writers in that he can draw you into reading about sports in which you would normally have no interest. I don't even care all that much about sports other than following college football, but I have read just about every Feinstein book I can get hold of, and I believe only one of those has been about college football [and even then it was on the Army/Navy rivalry, which involves two schools that are generally on the fringes of the collegiate gridiron.] And this is about golf, which I can't stand, but I have to admit golf makes for great drama and great writing. This is about Q school, a grueling series of tournaments that determine who gets a shot at being on the PGA tour. Most who attempt it don't succeed, and many times the margin between success and failure comes down to a single shot. You get young people trying to live their dreams, and old broken-down pros trying desperately to keep their dreams alive. And the bad part is, in most cases even if they do make it it's likely they will have to try to do it all over again next year. I will probably devour this book over the next couple of days.

I also read a couple of books by Stephen King's two sons, Joe Hill and Owen King. Joe Hill is following more explicitly in his father's footsteps, writing fantasy/horror fiction. I just finished his latest, HORNS. It is about a man who wakes up with horns on his head and the ability to get people to tell him their worst secrets, as well as the ability to convince people to act on those secrets. Owen King's WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER is more "literary" type fiction, the type you would see in college journals. It's the kind of thing all of us were trying to write back in my English major days. Both have their strengths and weaknesses...Joe Hill's novels so far [HORNS is his second] seem to lack a sense of scope, and although there are usually really great sequences sometimes things don't work as a whole. Owen King's stories can sometimes fall in the common trap of "academic" fiction, stories that are well written but sometimes take too long to go anywhere, some of his stories give me the "Is that it?" reaction.
Still interested in seeing what they do in the future, although it seems like Joe Hill is the one who is getting the most attention [probably because his work is more marketable.] Neither of them have a style that is similar to their father, and that is probably a good thing.

Speaking of college, I have an ongoing project where I like to read the books of my former professors from the University of Arkansas writing program. So far the one I've liked the most is from a prof whose class I liked the least. I actually wound up dropping his class at one point, but I really enjoyed Skip Hays' THE DIXIE ASSOCIATION about an ex-con who is paroled and plays on a minor-league baseball team who compete in a Southern league. Great characters, with a great voice. I also loved that much of the setting was in the eastern Oklahoma area where I grew up. Just checked out his most recent one DYING LIGHT a collection of short stories which look to be pretty gritty, I'm looking forward to checking it out. Honestly, he was not a bad professor, I was just kind of burnt out on English by the time I took his class and was kind of going through an existential crisis of sorts. I bet I would have liked the class if I'd taken it today.