The Domesday Post

So I've started packing and it looks like I'll be able to take most of my clothes. The ones I'll have to leave behind are those I probably should've given to Goodwill when I moved a year ago. When one is moving one is supposed to bemoan all the random junk you've collected over the years, but since I threw most of that stuff away at the last move the only things left behind are non-essential.

There are always exceptions, though. It took me a while to make my meager book collection but until FedEx introduces extremely cheap bulk shipping anytime soon the whole of it will have to stay behind. I can, however, write an inventory of said items so as to be sure I don't lose any of them. I'd write it on an ordinary piece of paper but I'm afraid I'll end up losing it somewhere. Besides, this way I am utilizing a cutting-edge technology to solve an old problem, sort of like wiping your ass with a laptop.

Most of the following I bought when my university bookstore was having a "Hurt Penguins" sale. They are by no means my favourite books - just some stuff I was able to buy cheap. I've included descriptions of some of them so I can remember what they're about. The list is not in any particular order.

• Generica, Will Ferguson. A harried editor receives a self-help book (from the slush pile, no less) that actually works. Funny story about the destruction of contemporary American culture.


• The Thief of Always, Clive Barker.


• Weaveworld, Clive Barker. I remember this hardcover mostly because I was able to bargain down the lady at the sidewalk sale from five dollars to one. I think there's a magic carpet in this story or something.


• You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard. An anthology of short fiction. Some of them I liked, some of them I didn't, which is typical for any anthology. One of my favourites was an apocalyptic resurrection story told by a cow (written by James Agee).


• Freak: A Semi-Demi-Quasi-Pseudo Autobiography, John Leguizamo with David Bar Katz. This is pretty much a transcript of John Leguizamo's act. Funny if you haven't already seen it but kind of a waste if you have.


• Mistress Masha's Repose, T.H. White.


• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy.


• The Universe and Other Fictions, Paul West. Short stories by Paul West. They all suck.


• The Haunting, Shirley Jackson. Horror story in a haunted house. It's good, but I liked how the movie tightened up the story (the original black-and-white one, I mean, and not any of the crappy remakes).


• The Garden Party and Other Stories, Katherine Mansfield. Short story collection by the New Zealand writer. Too bad she died before writing a novel.


• The Once and Future King, T.H. White. I bought this because it included The Book of Merlyn, the fifth book that's usually left out in the collections. It turns out there's a good reason for this as the important bits of the story got transplanted into the first book, The Sword in the Stone.


• The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, D.H. Lawrence.


• The Penguin Book of Scottish Folktales, edited by Neil Philip. I thought this would be fun to read but it turns out I only like folktales when they contain some illustrations. Hopefully I'll finish reading it someday.


• Belarmino and Apolonio, Ramon Perez de Ayala, translated by Murray Baumgarten and Gabriel Berns. I can't quite recall what this was about, but it took place in pre-Civil War Spain.


• Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis. Note to self: read this book someday.


• Dracula, Bram Stoker.


• The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene.


• Come Along with Me, Shirley Jackson. I think I've read this but I have no recollection of what's in it. According to the back, it includes various short stories and lectures, as well as Jackson's unfinished novel.


• The Outsider, Albert Camus.


• The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, H.P. Lovecraft. Okay in moderation, but if you read it in one go all the weird stories start to blend together.


• The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North, Jack London. Like most of the rest of these books, I read this while waiting for my laundry to finish at this place close to where I used to live. As I flip through its pages I can almost smell the mix of soap, bleach, and dryer sheets. Ugh.


• Otherland, Tad Williams. I can't say I liked this book but I can't say I hated it, either. It's just there. I think someone gave this to me as it doesn't seem like something I'd buy.


• Expanded Universe, Robert A. Heinlein. Assorted stories and right-wing rants from Heinlein. This book turned me off from reading any more of his works. I still like Starship Troopers, though.


• Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King.


• Leaven of Malice, Robertson Davies. "A practical joke sets off a chain reaction of malicious but amusing catastrophes." Part of the Salterton Trilogy, set in the town of that name. Salterton was actually based on Kingston, ON, where I used to live. Of course, the book was written fifty years ago so there have been some changes since.


• American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Gaiman picks up the gods-created-by-men idea he introduced briefly in The Sandman. The book is supposed to be a bit of an examination of contemporary American culture (with an emphasis on beliefs and values) but since Gaiman is a British expat it ends up a bit off. Still, an enjoyable read.


• The Right to Arm Bears, Gordon Dickson.


• Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer.


• A Whistler in the Nightworld: Short Fiction from the Latin Americas, edited by Thomas Colchie. This is supposed to be an introduction to contemporary Latin American writers outside of the "magic realist" camp. However, if this is the quality of the stories then I'm not surprised they're not more well known. The only one I liked was Javier Valdes's People Like Us for its Stephen King-like story. A disappointment.


• Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut. The unfinished novel by Vonnegut plus some related writings. It's no Slaughterhouse Five, but then again, what is?


• Farewell my Concubine, Lillian Lee. I think Leslie Cheung was really good in the movie. The book's good too.


• The Tesseract, Alex Garland. According to the blurb from the Washington Post, it "has the traits of a thriller, but it's also a love story, a character study, a portrait of life among Manila's street kids, even an experiment in narration." I like how Garland used the "Black Dog" myth; my only real complaint is that he has a weird way of writing Tagalog words. Really, how hard is it to look in a Tagalog-English dictionary? NB: Garland also wrote The Beach as well as the screenplay to 28 Days Later.


• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams.


• Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card.


• Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card. Sequel to Ender's Game. I thought the first book was better. I didn't bother to read the rest of the series.


• I have a copy of About a Boy but I don't know where it is. Oh well, I guess it's lost.

This is getting too long so I'll have to leave the comic books and non-fiction for tomorrow.