What to Read, What to Read

Hmmmm. You know what I think?

There’s only God and science fiction.

Okay.

Assuming that, what does LE read next?

As part of my Lenten efforts, I’m going to try to finish The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich. That’s the book Gibson allegedly used for source material with his movie. Last year I got about a third through it; it’s a rather lengthy work at about three hundred pages, and I started it late in the season. So I plan on beginning that around March 1, reading about ten or twenty pages a night before bed.

So that leaves science fiction.

I’m still reading the George R. R. Martin fantasy epic; I’m about halfway through that behemoth of nearly 1200 pages. I only read two chapters a day, and they’re so good they go so fast. But I need something extra, ’cause, hey, I’m a hopper.

Do I go with a novel? Let me look on the shelf behind me. How about –

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman
The Time Dweller by Michael Moorcock
King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Alan Quartermain by H. Rider Haggard
Eon by Greg Bear
Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
The World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl
The Stone God Awakens by Philip Jose Farmer
Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein
A Case of Conscience by James Blish
Derai by E. C. Tubb
Wolfhead by Charles Harness
October the First is Too Late by Fred Hoyle
The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Killerbowl by Gary K. Wolf
The Children of Hurin by J. R. R. Tolkien

Or do I go with a short story collection?

Shatterday by Harlan Ellison
Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R. A. Lafferty
The 57th Franz Kafka by Rudy Rucker
Atoms and Evil by Robert Bloch
Casey Agonistes by Richard McKenna
The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury
Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison


Since Martin’s epic is so involved plot- and character-wise and so heavy thematically, I’m looking for something light and, maybe, light-hearted. A fast sprinter of a book, doing at most a hundred-yard dash. So perhaps that eliminates the Tolkien, Ms. Rand, the Haggard books, most of Ellison’s short stories.

Sigh. What to choose?