Reading: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
Music: The Pogue's
TV/Movie: M*A*S*H
Link o' the Day: Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy, General Useful Information, and Other Opinionated Comments by Vonda N. McIntyre

Well, Harry Potter is out and legions of fans have descended upon the bookstores like picky pirahnas. Sure enough, Pretty Maggie has her copy and is reading it now to the exception of jest about anything else. I know some folks who read the thing in six hours.

I've never read the books, although I expect that's going to change now with Pretty Maggie threatening to dig out her copies to foist onto me. I suppose I should see what all the hubbub is about. For what it's worth, I have a lot of admiration (and envy) for what Ms. Rowling has accomplished with her series of books. It's especially impressive that when she started out, she was on the dole and writing the books at the laundromat. Now she's richer than the Queen of England. At the risk of being accused of a little ethnocentrist--Rowling's experience is almost an American success story.

Anyway, good for her.

As for me, I'm not reading Harry Potter yet. I picked up some Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks recently. Most I've read already, but not in years and years. Currently I'm in the middle of Mother Night which I've not read since high school. So far it's pretty much as I remembered it. I think the only difference is that now I'm better informed on history so it becomes a bit more significant.

I enjoy his writing style. It has a certain sparseness that can convey meanings beyond a single phrase--if that makes sense. Like for instance a refrain he uses in several books... "so it goes." He's almost the antithesis in style of Maugham. While Maugham isn't the wordiest writer in the world, he's far from sparse, and he makes sure that you understand his meaning before moving on.

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Pretty Maggie and Nemo and I have all been as sick as dogs this weekend. (Well, in Nemo's case, maybe sick as a dormouse.) The humans have been coughing nearly nonstop, but the other symptoms seem to have finally disappeared. We suspect that some food we ate Friday night contributed to ill-filling which pretty much laid me low all of yesterday, so I didn't get the huge amounts of work I had planned done to my satisfaction. Tonight I'm catching up for some lost time.

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Today's link is one for the SF/F writers, it's Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy, General Useful Information, and Other Opinionated Comments by Vonda N. McIntyre. She begins with McIntyre's First Law: "Under the right circumstances, anything I tell you could be wrong."

It's probably stuff that most folk already know or have considered, but it's certainly worth the read, and most definitely worth a read for beginning writers.

Cheers!