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Over the Christmas holidays, I read a lot of crap. Some of it was truly enjoyable crap ( Dark Tower, I'm lookin' at you), and some of it I remember being a lot better back in the day (i.e., Anne McCaffery's Dragonrider trilogy). That last I have an excuse for - I was looking for books that I liked as a kid, that Chance could read. I'd forgotten how much of the adolescent you-raped-me-so-I'll-reluctantly-fall-in-love-with-you was in Dragonrider, so ixnay on that for a while (more on that later).

Dragonrider left a bad taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons, first that it's juvenile literature and just isn't written that well, and second, I'm old enough now to know it and I'm unable to lose myself in the story because of it. Curse you, Laurie Porter, for raising my consciousness! So I set out to redeem myself, and read some Good Stuff. Here's the list:

• Main Street, Sinclair Lewis. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it.
• Impossible Things, Connie Willis. I've always loved short SF stories, and all of these are great.
• A Wonder Book, Nathaniel Hawthorne. This one held up.
• Bulletproof Web Design, Dan Cederholm. Very nice, simple stuff. I've already used the chapter on fluid layouts to update the site for Healthcare Staffing.
• The Once and Future King, T. H. White. Still good, but honestly too depressing to finish. I quit right before Lance and Jenny are caught by Mordred.
• DOM Scripting, Jeremy Keith. Still working thorough this one, as I'm using it as put-me-to-sleep bedtime reading. A little more basic that I hoped, but I can't wait to play with some of the code, and it's the basic Javascript tutorial/reference that I've been looking for.
• Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson. This is probably my third time through this book in the last 12 months - so sue me. It's still a rip-roaring read, and very fast - I read about half of it while waiting for Chance's recent doctor visit, and come on, you can't expect me to put it down there, right? This still has one of the better endings in a Stephenson book.
• A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge. Like Snow Crash, I picked this one up on the way out the door just to have something to read. So that means I have to finish it. This is only my second time through this one, anyway, and I'm looking forward to it.

Ginger was reading House of Sand and Fog, and really loved it until she got to the end. She says I shouldn't bother reading it, and I'm inclined to go along with it. My life these days, I don't need more downers¹. So next up on the list is probably The Last Girls by Lee Smith - in case you didn't figure it out, both of these are for Ginger's book club.

¹ That's probably why I didn't like the Dark Tower books this time around. I was sick a lot over Christmas break, and read a ton. I hadn't re-read the last 3 DT books since they came out in 2004, so I started with Wizard and Glass (skimming just to pick up the plot lines that come back), and then absolutely ripping through Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower. And OMG, what a freaking downer those books are! After that I had to re-read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book (for about the eighth time) - DB has a sense of hope and redemption that just isn't there in DT.

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