Book Addiction!

Oh no. I've done it again!

Even though I have a huge pile of books on my "to be read" shelf, I've gone out and bought more books!

I went to the bookstore yesterday just to browse.

I saw Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" and said to myself, "I should read this because 'The Iron Whim' has a whole chapter on 'Naked Lunch.' I didn't really understand that chapter and so I should read 'Naked Lunch.' And, while I'm at it, I should get Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' because that's about communication and not about vampires, as I learned from 'The Iron Whim.'"

But then, next to "Naked Lunch" was "In Cold Blood." And I said to myself, "I've always meant to read 'In Cold Blood.' I should pick it up. Or maybe I should get the book of short stories that contains 'Breakfast at Tiffany's.' That would be good."

Then I saw the Small Press section and I really went nuts.

"OMIGOD! I wanted to request a lot of these books for The Show, but never got around to it! Which should I get? Which?"

After spending a lot of time looking at the Small Press books and noting that I already had a lot of them, but hadn't read them yet, I bought two books:

"Lust for Life: Tales of Sex & Love" edited by Claude Lalumiere and Elise Moser (Vehicule Press). I bought it because (a) it's
Claude Lalumiere who edited it, so it's probably good and (b) because everyone needs some tales of sex and love that aren't Harlequin Romances. I expect it will be weird and disturbing.

"Bowlbrawl" by Nathaniel G. Moore (Conundrum Press). In this day and age where guys like James Frey try to pass off their unbelievable works of fiction as non-fiction, you need a book about full-contact, hypermasculine bowling (in Canada!) to remind you that reality is, in fact, stranger than fiction. I expect that this is going to be really good.

Meanwhile, on my in-progress shelf, I've got: "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell," "Adieu Betty Crocker" (original French version) and "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe." That's just books I started reading and fully intend to finish. The list of books I haven't gotten to yet is too long to list. I've actually started giving some away to friends and family because I'm running out of shelf space and I can't bear to part with books I've read, even if they're crappy.