12-29-03

Besides the inability of the locals to drive in inclement weather (see jellyfish! dinosaurs! for a rant of biblical proportions) it's been a nice day.

I took my gift card to Powell's Books this afternoon. Much madness and joy, getting six books. There was even some money left on the gift card.

I replaced my long-gone copies of The Lord of the Rings with a single volume, hardcover version. It has an annoying, from-the-movie, dustcover but that can be removed. Underneath is a simple black fabric cover. *phew* A couple of screenplays, Pi by Darren Aronofsky and Crash by David Cronenberg. I also got the J.G. Ballard novel of the same name. I'm interested in seeing how Cronenberg did the adaptation, and what's different and the same between the two.

I got a collection of William Burroughs' writings called Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader. I've all ready read a lot of his works, but not everything. This book promises to place his writings within a biographical context, and I know that Burroughs' life very much influenced his art.

By this time I was giddy and treated myself to a book that I've been dancing around for months. It's Tokyo Suckerpunch by Isaac Adamson. On the back, author Bill Fitzhugh describes it thus: "If you crossbred The Big Sleep with Memoirs of a Geisha and then took its offspring and crossed it with Chinatown you'd end up with Tokyo Suckerpunch -- a tongue-in-bloody-cheek quasi-punk-noir tale of death and deception . . . " Well. You can imagine my troping towards its siren song. I never could quite justify the expense (had to get that 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style) so the gift card provided a perfect excuse to splurge. *grin*

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