March 7, Friday evening -- Reading Alastair Reynolds

In a quiet Sutter Street bar/restaurant, away from the rush of 5pm.

(This is actually on Kearny Street, a couple blocks from the restaurant. I took the photo this evening for my dad...he's working on a painting and wants to include the text of the signs in the background. Are you reading my blog, Dad?)

answer: yes

Reading Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds. He got a gift certificate from Stacey's books for his fortieth birthday and has been coming into San Francisco, riding the trolley car to the bookstore and browsing around for about half an hour for a book, using the gift certificate a bit at a time. His brother recommended this one. He recommends books to his brother, too. The last one--Trading in Danger, by Elizabeth Moon. (My brother also recommended an Elizabeth Moon Book to me, once, two years ago. I began reading with good intentions, sticky noting the pages with cute notes about how I related to the text to create a brother/sister dialog, but couldn't finish the book. It was 1024 pages long. He was thirteen. I was twenty-nine. Arthur--if you see this, the book is sitting on my desk.)

If he were to write a book it would be about a city-sized sleeper ship en route to another planet where the passengers go into a deep sleep to pass the time of the voyage but something happens--they begin waking up with amnesia and no one knows what's going on, or if the ship is even moving.

His favorite books of all time--Player of Games and Use of Weapons, both by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. The books are super imaginative, gripping, not idiotic. They don't pander like mainstream movies.

When he was a kid he liked, when he was really young Gentle Ben, by Walt Morey and Stuart Little, by E.B. White. He also remembers a great book about a left handed baseball player who got made fun of for his "south paw" who went on to be a bad ass pitcher. It was about, he said, accepting diversity and it made an impact.

When he was older he liked Heinlein, Asimov, and Samuel R. Delaney, whose book, Dhalgren, he read when he was twelve. It was not an appropriate book, he said, for his age level. But, he enjoyed it.