A difficult month for reading. First there was Worldcon. Travel—particularly book tours and conventions—cut into my reading time, since I can sleep on any airplane these days. The books I did read were mostly unsatisfying. Some of what I’ve been reading has been research for a new project, so I’m not finishing the books, but dipping in and out of them, reading the pertinent sections. And I’ve been reading an annoying book of essays. The author is a hell of a writer, which keeps me reading, but no one fact-checked the volume, so names are misspelled and information is off, leading me to mistrust the whole thing (For example: Joyce Carol Oates is called Joyce Carol Gates, not once but twice so far). … Read entire article »