The first books of the new year

I'm still not feeling 100% yet. I was doing better and hoped a week away from the Phoenix brown cloud would fix my lungs up, but one night in a slightly smokey club (hooray for Latvian punk rock*) and Christmas day spent in the company of 5 large dogs and 4 moderate-to-heavy smokers turned my lung contents into cement and I'm still feeling it.

Anyway, my oxygen saturation levels are low and there hasn't been a lot of activity that required me getting off the couch. Or that required fiber for some reason. I have projects leftover from Christmas, old stuff to finish and lots of new ideas but all I'm doing is reading.

1. JPod - Douglas Coupland. Much better than some of his others I've read and it made me laugh, but MicroSerfs was better. And it has nothing to do with iPods, which confused me.

2. Dragon's Kin - Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey. Anne is passing the Pern torch to her son. It's kind of flickering.

3. Dragonsblood - Todd McCaffrey. Make that really flickering. I love Pern but Todd's version is lacking.

+++To answer Lady Linoleum: I started in the middle of the series with Dragonsong, Dragonsinger and Dragondrums and I though they were a good introduction. But here's a list of all the Pern books (there's a lot) and you can decide if you want to go by publication date or chronologically or alphabetically or whathaveyou.+++

4. Cell - Stephen King. I think this was supposed to be The Stand for the next generation (the one's who can't survive without their Blackberry) but it wasn't as good as The Stand. It actually felt short, which is unheard of for King.

5. Microserfs - Douglas Coupland. I had to re-read it after JPod. I think I'm finally out of Coupland books. It's scary how outdated it seems and it's only 11 years old. But still good.

Now, it's back to the couch for me to think deep, cleansing thoughts about my alveoli.


* Really, Latvian punk rock at the Black Cat in DC. I didn't see Dave Grohl (he's a co-owner) but Macitajs on Acid was wearing silver unitards,face paint and wings. And they put the song translations up with an overhead projector. And the open band Sweatheart was also cool. All very indie and underground and my-life-10-years-ago-ish. Fun fun.