Why I feed the demon (No Pictures)

Balthasar's Journey:
If you want a description of loneliness and uncertainty, and if you want that same description anthropomorphised, meet Balthasar.  A dealer in rarities and curios, he is living on the cusp of the year of the devil:  1665.  He is skeptical, he is in love, he is weak, and he is ultimately unknown.  Nice.  This novel is all about his journey to find the tome which reveals the last, secret name of god.  He is accompanied by his nephews and a widow (whose husband isn't dead). Balthasar is all of us, fears and posturing and failed love.  Excellent.

The White Tiger:
A novel about the rise of a nobody from The Darkness of India, to a successful somebody in Mumbai.  Vengeance, murder, innocence, retribution, and ill-begotten plans highlight this novel.  The first person narrator is both understandable and unreachable.  He embodies the plight of those who can't rise up, yet he does.  There are politics, there is fear, and there are failed relationships; in sum, this is a surprisingly good book.

The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal:
I didn't like the ending, and I didn't like the beginning.  But I loved the flushed characters, the fear they displayed, the love they were scared of, and the building.  The author, Sean Dixon, managed his female protagonist and allow her to be human, unlike "She's Come Undone" by Wally Sucksville.  Wally's female was an obvious patchwork of female obsessions viewed through the male mind and psychological journals.  Dixon's work, while flawed, allows for the fact that females are also thinking members of the human race. 
This book was also kind of funny, and until the finale, I bought into it.  Oh well.

Cowboy Angels:
This book is exactly what it says it is.  A fun romp through the slivers of a universe we don't understand.  By "fun" I mean tragic yet funny.  It's well written, has really interesting ideas, and offers an asnwer to the "I killed my own grandfather" paradox of time travel.  Enjoyable on the whole.

Human Is?:
Philip K. Dick is an underrated and overlooked prophet. BladeRunner?  Based on his short story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"  Minority Report  Titular short story.  "A Scanner Darkly?" Ditto.  These movies take away the desperation of PKD's vision.  There are not many short stories in this collection which give hope, and there are certainly none that offer consolation.  But the stories make you think, they make you suffer, and they make you want to change.  Hallmarks of good sci-fi.  Great sci-fi.

How Beautiful it is, and How Easily Broken:
If you think you are learned or lettered, read this book.  Afterward, the only consolation you will have is "I'm probably more fun at parties."  Essays on everything from video games to broadway shows through the lens of latinate/grecian studies.  We are not as creative as we think we are, we are not as original.  But the stories which mean something resonate.  He elucidates that resonation.  Sometimes he's a little too pithy, sometimes too pedantic, but on the whole, his writing is well reasoned and emotive.  Good book.

The Locked Room:
Murder, mayhem, and a Swedish society falling into the darkness of socialism.  There is nothing wrong here.  The side pieces are darkly funny (the best kind), the protagonist isn't the only character with depth, and the mystery is well played.  No withheld evidence, no final revelations, just good solid writing.  Too bad the authors are dead.

The other day, my friend Dennis said "Reading is meditation."  I looked at him like he had two heads, until he explained himself.  "Reading takes us away from ourselves and forces the reader to be someone else for a while."  Small symbols on thin pages.  They keep me from the cold.  They have saved me since I understood them.  They keep on saving me.  Sometimes because I read them, and sometimes because I try to piece them together myself.

Meditation is simply a way of trying to understand someone else.  I often fail in that regard, but I have never stopped trying.  I will never stop trying.