Books and authors

I suspect that everyone has a different list of books and authors that should be read, either for education or to be a cultured member of society. Since I learned to read, my chief interest has been in science fiction and fantasy, often to the exclusion of subjects I was supposed to learn.

Here, in no particular order is a partial list of the books and/or authors whose effect on me has been remembered and why:

Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein - both of these authors were among the first and most memorable of my teenaged years. They "hooked" me on science fiction. By the way, most science fiction fans refer to it as "SF", not "sci-fi".

William Shakespeare - He was required reading and showed me the power of words.

David Drake - took classic military history, turned it into SF or fantasy and gave it personality. Besides, I like military science fiction.

Barbara Rogan - has an incredible feel for character and situation. Her range is large, from unabashed romance to tense mystery thrillers. Each book has the power of a whirlpool to suck the reader inextricably into the story.

Charles de Lint - has grabbed my imagination by both eyes and tossed into worlds.

Mercedes Lackey - got my attention first with her books about dragons that had been genetically made to help people solve a problem on a forgotten colony world. Her other stories, romances and fantasies are beautifully told and engaging.

Patricia McKillip - can add humor into the mix when it doesn't seem possible. She goes from dreamy to taut easily.

Leon Tolstoy - When I was forced to read "Anna Karenina", I thought it dull. But as I got a little older, his work came back to my attention, primarily through the medium of a copy of "War and Peace" delivered by the Red Cross when I was in Vietnam. Suddenly, he became the person who could give humanity to a huge, alien country.

Neil Gaiman - his fantasy just blew me away. His writing is awesome and brilliantly researched.

Diana Gabaldon - has the ability to drag me into the 18th century without a minute's hesitation.

Glen Cook - was the first published author with whom I ever spoke. He was kind and encouraging to a novice. His stories, both fantastic mysteries and military science fiction have a grittiness that seems real to this veteran.

Lois McMaster Bujold - first came to my attention through her military SF. But her fantasies are engrossing.

Will Shetterly - wrote one of the best novels of magic realism I ever read. It was so intriguing that I had trouble putting it down.

Diana Wynne Jones - has the ability to take an everyday situation and make it magical or vice versa.

Rick Riordan - has written novels in which the old gods are still here and doing many of the same things they did in classical times, including fighting the return of the Titans. He is an excellent story teller with just the right amount of humor and irreverence.

Sharon Shinn - writes fantasy that pulls me into the story and usually has a pleasing ending.

P. G. Wodehouse - is perhaps the most gentle and amusing of all writers of the English language. His stories of a slightly bygone era always make me laugh.

Thorne Smith - wrote too few novels. His fantasies about everyday life during prohibition always contain a touch of magic that just might happen. Certainly after reading "Nightlife of the Gods," I never approached a woodland path without a slight hope of something extraordinary.

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It's getting late. I'll try to add some more later.

My favorite things

Are animals, cats, dogs, horses, in fact anything that has fur and moves.
This is a short post so the typing noise won't wake my wife. But I am adding pictures pictures of my favorite cats.
Most of the animals I like are predators (though horses, donkeys and camels certainly are not). I like the way their heads work and how some of them are "hard wired" for social groups and others survive best alone. There is a good feeling of trust that develops when I work and play with creatures who can hurt me if I get out of line. My courtesy improves.
Another thing, tigers are so full of energy. Sometimes it seems as if I can get an "energy recharge" just by touching them and hugging them.

Five things

My friend Sarah has been tagged again. I still haven't figured out how to tag people or to show their websites here. But I thought the latest tag was interesting. It went in fives, five things you like to eat, five things you don't like about yourself, five places you have lived, five books you have read recently.

So, five things I like to eat:
1. melon
2. fried eggs
3. anything with garlic
4. sweets (forbidden, alas to diabetics like me)
5. well prepared steak

five things I don't like about me:
1. lazy
2. getting older, weaker in both muscle and head
3. self centered
4. dirty old man (well, I'm not sure I don't like it, but it makes young people nervous)
5. writing has stopped and can't start it again

five places I have lived:
1. Newark, New Jersey
2. St. Louis, Missouri
3. Kontum, Vietnam
4. Paris, France
5. Little Rock, Arkansas

five places I really like:
1. London, England
2. Vienna, Austria
3. St. Malo, France
4. Chicago, Illinois
5. Most of the American west

five books I have read:
1. "The Cadillac Desert"
2. "The Great Influenza"
3. "Riviera to the Rhine"
4. "One Good Knight"
5. "The Annotated Hobbit"

Once again, into the breach...

It's been quite a while since I visited myself here.
At the beginning of May, I was found to have a perforated bowel. The surgeon began cutting about two hours after I was diagnosed. Since then, I've either been in hospital or too tired to write. As the recovery progresses, my energy comes back and I find more energy... and more things to say.
Belly surgery such as I had takes more out of a person than just the energy to do things. It cuts into dignity and privacy. I have a temporary colostomy. For the next three months or so, I'll be pooping out a new hole in my stomach. That involves more than a quick wipe with toilet paper. I have to empty the bag, clean it up and deodorize it before I can finish. It also requires a new position at the "throne of the porcelain God." Instead of sitting, I kneel, appropriate for a worshipper.
Changing the bag is done a couple of times a week. It involves removing the old bag and seals with a special adhesive remover, cleaning the area of my belly thoroughly and, sometimes, shaving it so the next removal will go more painlessly. In the mean time, I pass gas through every orifice connected to the gastrointestinal tract. One time, I felt like I was urinating a soda that someone had shaken up. Odd, but not unpleasant.
I thought that spending most of my time in bed would offer the relaxation to think and ponder. Not so. I've been sleeping and concentrating on just what I have to learn to do in order to stay clean and healthy.
My memory must be going bad. I do not recall this much trouble after I was wounded 40 years ago.
The garden is doing well this spring and yesterday, the first day I was allowed out, I took a bunch of pictures of the flowers that were blooming. While I was doing that, my wife and daughter were planting dozens more. I hope that I'll be able to walk to the place they were planted before they quit blooming.
Some of my friends have sent cards or flowers. Some have not. Of course, I did not publish a press release to announce that surgeons were rearranging my waste disposal system, so some have not gotten the word. 'Twill be interesting to see who, if anyone says something when I am finally permitted to travel.

Denvention (the world science fiction convention) is scheduled for this August. I'm particularly anxious to attend this year since many of my European friends only come near that one time.
If you have never attended an SF con, this would be a great one to begin. While it will be quite large, there will be many of the writers and artists that are widely admired coming there. There are terrific bid parties at "Worldcons". Various cities promote themselves as sites for future conventions. SF fans are a friendly lot. It's easy to get involved in the various panels that range from design and use of ancient weapons to current plans for the exploration of our universe.

How does your garden grow, Part III

Okay, here's the hardy orchid.

One of these days I'll even figure out how to put multiple photos in the same post with captions. But for now, this will have to suffice.

How does your garden grow, Part II

Oh darn!

I clean forgot that I wanted to post a couple of pictures showing the flowers. The Indian blanket flower is at the top left. The hardy orchid will be shown in Part III.

How does your garden grow

It's our Earthday celebration in Little Rock. I know that the actual day was Tuesday, but since most people worked or were in school, we moved ours to the weekend. After I returned from the events held in the garden of the President Clinton Library, I was pumped up to discover that one of our wildflowers had decided to open. That was the Indian blanket flower.

When I looked around some more, I found hardy orchids as well.

Our garden has plenty of flowers, pansies, Russian sage, corral bells, hyssop, knockout roses and others. But these are special to me since they are native to this area. We transplanted the orchids from a friend's garden for just that reason.

We've been studying what Arkansas was like before Europeans came. It was part of the great prairie which extended from Mexico into Canada and from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains to somewhere in Ohio. It wasn't all plains with tall blue stem grass. There were different zones from a sort of caliche to wetlands. A naturalist told me that when studied one acre of land that had been left unplowed, he found over 500 species of plants. We have only a few areas of prairie left here in Arkansas. Farther west, the states have left more land since the natural prairie is good for grazing cattle.

We went to Colorado early this month and saw huge tracts of prairie that had been burnt off. This is necessary to keep it prairie and go germinate certain plants that need a fire to burn off protective husks. The fires had been pretty well contained, but it was amazing (to me) seeing four or five miles of burned prairie on my right, then another several miles on the left, then right... well, you get the idea.