Shit I Read 001 - got (most) of my library back!!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.

/me sighs happily

There is a certain kind of... calm inherent in being surrounded by your very own library again after almost three years of deprivation. Although, at least one box of books is missing* - but for the moment, I am trying not to think too much about that and instead wallow in the beauty of being able to read whatever I want to read whenever I want to read it.

This, naturally, interferes with my PhD productivity; but since I managed to caught my first flu in quite a while with the advent of THE FLU PANDEMIC over here, I've been mostly lying in bed**, soaking in my own sweat and trying to get better as soon as possible. This is prime time for reading!

So, in the last 14 days I devoured the following:

Michael Moorcock - Earl Aubec and other Stories
Michael Moorcock - Silverheart
Michael Moorcock - The Dreamthief's Daughter
Michael Moorcock et al. - Elric: Tales of the White Wolf
Michael Moorcock - Nomads on the Time Stream 
Thomas Bernhard - Auslöschung
Thomas Bernhard - Die Ursache. Eine Andeutung
Thomas Bernhard - Der Keller
Thomas Bernhard - Der Atem. Eine Entscheidung
Gustav Schwab - Sagen des klassischen Altertums 
Michael Moorcock - The Eternal Champion 
Franz Kafka - Der Prozeß 
Berni Maier - Black Mandel
Akif Pirincci - Felidae
Akif Pirincci - Cave Canem
Michael Moorcock - The Roads Between the Worlds
Michael Moorcock - The Book Corum
Michael Moorcock - 2/3 of the second part of the Corum saga because THE COLLECTED CORUM STORIES BOOK IS MISSING *growls*


Not as much as I could do, due to having to get boxes with books from elsewhere to my flat, but still.

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* I have a very good memory when it comes to my books, PARTICULARLY when it comes to my academic stuff and my Michael Moorcock books, and there's stuff missing from both categories. Will have to find out where they have disappeared to.

** Or rather, the bed-like contraption I made.

SHIT I READ 000 - ravenous panic reading list, or: how to avoid PhD topics professionally!

Writing the last entry I realised that I read a shitload of books last month in order to not do anything useful and not get into a panic. And because it is quite an impressive list I am totally listing it here. For if I can't offer my immense knowledge and awesomeness in regards to PhD topics, I can at least offer "shit I read".

Hence I present:

SHIT I READ:

Caitlín R. Kiernan - Murder of Angels

Caitlín R. Kiernan - Silk

Caitlín R. Kiernan - The Ape's Wife and Other Stories

Umberto Eco - The Prague Cemetery

Nancy A. Collins - Dead Man's Hand

Paul Guran (ed.) - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2011

Dennis Detwiller - Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy. A Cthulhu Mythos Novel of WWII

Lord Dunsany - Fifty-One Tales

Umberto Eco - Baudolino

Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett (eds.) - Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

Richard Matheson - I Am Legend

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror  22

Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror  23

Caitlín R. Kiernan - Alabaster

Caitlín R. Kiernan - The Red Tree

Nancy A. Collins - Right Hand Magic

Octavia E. Butler - Fledgling

Poppy Z. Brite - Lost Souls

Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

John Skipp and Craig Spector - Animals

John Skipp and Craig Spector - Dead Lines

John Skipp and Craig Spector - The Scream

John Skipp and Craig Spector - The Light at the End

...which makes 24 books for October. Not too shabby. I am honestly surprised that I read that many, even though I wanted to read more. I feel slightly bad for not having even looked at a single academic book or article, but fuck it, trying to remain sane has a higher priority than accumulating knowledge right now. Plus, this has been the first time I've been reading fiction in years. As I am a creature of extremes, I do tend to binge. This was definitely a binge-reading month. And it worked - as my goal was to not think of my PhD shit, I succeeded brilliantly.

I need to read more. MORE. I was thinking about reading Tad Williams' Otherland books again (because I love Dread), but that won't work because I only have them as pdfs, and the e-book reader I got from Kumpelino only shows pdfs with font size 8. Which is headache-inducing. I can't read any more by Caitlín R. Kiernan because her repetitive wording makes me go insane (KUDZU VINES! FUCKING KUDZU VINES!), I don't want to read more Poppy Z. Brite, because KUDZU VINES and man-on-man sex, and blah. Headache. And I'm sick of the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror books, as I already know most of the stories included. Damn my ravenous reading habits.

Now, what to read next...? I was thinking about binging on Umberto Eco, possibly re-reading Foucault's Pendulum, because I thoroughly enjoy feeling clever. But again, only available as a pdf, because I DO NOT HAVE MY LIBRARY IN THIS THRICE DAMNED COUNTRY. Suggestions are welcome*. Fuck all of this shit. I would go through my Moorcock collection again if I had my Moorcock collection with me. But I do have The Warhound and the World's Pain in the 1992 Millennium edition, so maybe I'll read that. I do have Eco's From the Tree to the Labyrinth in actual book form as well, which I haven't read yet (as opposed to the aforementioned Moorcock), but that involves thinking and taking notes and more thinking, and I don't want to think right now. I want easy shit to read that doesn't involve any fucking brain activity whatsoever.  And nothing that involves sitting in front of the laptop, I'm getting eye-aches and headaches from that (probably psychosomatic, but that doesn't stop the pain). I did find an amazing book edited by Ian Hodder (He Of the Power and Might of Catalhöyük) that I really would love to read, but it's a) a pdf, b) nonfiction, and both a) and b) will make my head hurt like fuck.

Blegh.

*feels like shit*

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*FN 1: I am looking at you, 1410c!