Books Acquired (mostly for Michal’s birthday)

• China Mieville Perdido Street Station (kindle)
• Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine Sep/Oct 2015 (kindle subscription)
• Robert B Cialdini Influence (kindle)
• Thomas Hager The Demon Under the Microscope (kindle)
• Iaian M. Banks Use of Weapons (kindle)
• Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (kindle)
• Christine Kenneally The Invisible History of the Human Race (kindle)
• Alan Lightman The Accidental Universe (kindle)
• Michael Hiltzick Dealers of Lightning (kindle)
• China Mieville Three Moments of an Explosion (kindle)
• Brandon Sanderson (kindle)
• Tom Wolfe The Right Stuff (kindle)
• Paul de Kruif Microbe Hunters (kindle)
• Brandon Sanderson Firefight(kindle)
• Rachel Sussman The Oldest Living Things in the World (print)
• Shirley Jackson We have Always Lived in the Castle (kindle library overdrive)
• Philip Roth Sabbath’s Theater (kindle)
• Frank DeFord The Old Ball Game: how John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and The New York Giants created modern baseball (kindle)
• KW Jeter Infernal Devices
• James P Blaylock Hommunculus (kindle)
• Daniel Pinkwater The Hoboken Chicken Emergency (kindle)
• Ursula Vernon Castle Hangnail (kindle)
• Time Powers The Anubis Gates (kindle)
• Powers Who Kille Retro Girl (paper)
• Brian Vaughn & Fiona Staples Saga volumes 3, 4, and 5 (paper)

Books Read

• Jeff Vandermeer City of Saints and Madmen (kindle)
• Daniel Pinkwater The Hoboken Chicken Emergency (kindle)
• Brian Vaughn & Fiona Staples Saga volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4 (paper)
• Frank De Ford The Old Ball Game (kindle)
• Andy Weir The Martian (kindle)

The Saga comic books are enjoyable, even if not too terribly deep. However, I did find one outstanding line of dailogue:

There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the illustrated children’s book, and the board game.

I could not agree more.

Frank DeFord’s book gives a look at what he considers the founding of modern baseball with the New York Giants in the first decade or two of the twentieth century. I have mixed feelings about the book because it had many enjoyable incidents and I feel like I learned a good amount; at the same time, DeFord tends to ramble and swithc without warning from journalistic to the vernacular. Here was my favorite line from the book:

[h.L.] Menchen held no more regard for McGraw’s occupation [baseball]. “I hate all sports,” he once wrote, “as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”

I really enjoyed reading Pinkwater’s book. It was one of Michal’s favorites in second grade and he did a class project about it and I was curious to read it ever since then. Like all of Pinkwater’s books, this one is filled with an absurd sense of humor as, I think, the following passage illustrates:

“But how do you get squared off goldfish?” he asked.

“Of course! My secret! I do this: I put the little baby goldfish in a medium sized tank. All around the tank I put beautiful oil paintings of the bottom of a lake. The little baby goldfish is very stupid. He doesn’t know they are only photographs. Also, when he bumps into the glass walls of his tank, he can’t understand that it is glass — so he forgets about it. Fish do not like to think about things they can’t understand. So! Thinking the tank is as big as a lake, the goldfish begins to grow. He gets so big that his sides are touching the walls of the tank. Soon he grows to fill the corners. To make the top of the fish flat, I turn him over every so often. Presto! A square fish. The only thing I have to watch out for , is that the fish will displace all the water in his tank and suffocate. When the fish is nice and square, I put him in a nice big tank, with other nice fishes, and his is very happy.”

“but why do you want them to be square?” Arthur asked.

“Why? Why? Because they are easy to stack when the are that shape, you silly boy!” Professor Mazzochi shouted.

And so on…