There are some books that seep under your skin. I have a few books I read over and over again. After a while, when you’ve read a book enough that it is part of your waking memory at all times, it can slip into your being, without you fully noticing.

Dhalgren has done that to me. I mean, it did it years ago but there you have it. I just finished another re-read of it and find myself, my internal constant monologue, colored by the book again. For a few days I’ll notice the sky more, think about the small every day seconds a bit clearer and wonder why we live our lives the way we do a bit more often.

My mental speech pattern shifts for a few days, fully.

There aren’t many books that do it to me, anymore. Just the three: Dhalgren, Illuminatus! and Lonesome Dove. I don’t know why those three, either, but they do. I can read, and re-read, them endlessly and each time I do I have a few days where I am myself+bookhead. I enjoy it, but it also kinda messes with me.

I dunno. Rambly.

Oh, and I was gonna start posting new free fiction today but due to having my keyboard die this Saturday and not getting a replacement until Sunday and then having to do all my Saturday work on Sunday and getting dates confused – I left the file at home. Makes it hard to post. So sorry about that. I will start it tomorrow or Weds.

If you like Talking Heads I did a bit on the footnote on Friday that was … well … Talking Heads, but with footnote staff. It’s the start of a new thing called Pipe Dreams.

Books I have on the way:

* Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
* Stan Nicholl’s Orcs
* Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft: Among the Jews
* Matthew Stover’s Caine Black Knife (Oct 14th, mind you so on the way is loose)

I still have to read Malfi’s Passenger as well.

I am awash in great looking books!

More later.