Rereading

I'm so tired of politics. I've been writing madly again -- not only here, but another deadline for GMR, catching up at Rambles, and so yesterday I took a break -- reading. How ironic is that?

Sometimes -- actually, usually, when I'm sort of burned out on reviewing, I like to curl up with an old friend (book, that is) and just read a story I love without having to worry about whether it's good or what I'm going to say about it. I run out of things to say after a while, believe it or not.

I managed to complete Glen Cook's Black Company series. I now have them all to date. (Timing is everything -- I happened to walk into one of my favorite used bookstores just after they had shelved a complete set.) Cook's one of those writers I can read any time, on any pretext. I don't think I've read a book of his (and I've read most of them) that I haven't enjoyed thoroughly. My proof copy of The Tyranny of the Night is pretty worn at this point. Great book.

Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint is another. I just reread that one, again. (And another that's getting kind of tattered.) I used to think that Alec was my favorite character in literature, but Richard is starting to have a distinct appeal. They're both infused with a kind of vulnerability that I find irresistible.

Don't get me wrong -- I do enjoy reading new books and discovering new authors. I've come across some really great things this past year, people like Jonathan Lethem (not new this year, but his latest chapbook was a prize), Elizabeth Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson (new for me), and new series by old favorites, like Tanya Huff's new one.

Yes, I read a lot of fantasy. I also read a lot of folklore and mythology. You have to remember that "mainstream" literature, the realistic novel dealing with real people in real-life situations, is a fairly recent offshoot of that big general category known as literature, and most of it has been, to one degree or another, the literature of the fantastic. (If you don't believe me, go back and read something like the Odyssey or even something as late as Chretien de Troyes. Or The Tempest.)

I actually think it's kind of funny that a book like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (or any of his earlier works, for that matter) takes the literary establishment by storm when it's sort of old hat to any reader of science fiction. Formally adventurous, yes, but not conceptually.

Now I'm going to go back and catch up some more on Charles de Lint, also another old favorite that I've lost track of. Discovering the Newford stories, which are choice and very rewarding. (Check them out -- any of them -- Dreams Underfoot, The Ivory and the Horn, Memory and Dream, Widdershins, any of them.) It's a way of easing myself back into the traces -- I have to write about him (actually, the piece is almost done, but it needs a rewrite -- now that I think about it, I started off in the wrong place; easy to fix, though, if I can remember the brilliant revisions I had in mind as I was falling asleep last night).

Since it's a cold gloomy day in Chicago, that sounds like a good idea to me. I think I'll make some soup, too.