STUFF I AM READING:

Ok, I grabbed a bunch of paperbacks and galleys before I hit the road this time around. Nothing like having stuff to leave in place of the Gideon's detritus.

So, in order of finishing:

INVERTED WORLD Christopher Priest - Christopher Priest is best known for writing "The Prestige," which was made into the Oscar-winning film of the same name a couple years back. This book came out in 1972, and is one of the rare examples of what John Clute rightly calls "British Hard SF." Science-fiction was (and remains) a largely American conceit, especially in its "hard" form, a subgenre that focuses on engineering, technical detail and sometimes mathematics. Think Asimov, Bova, Poul Anderson.

The story is pretty simple: One city remains after a devastating disaster on an unknown planet. The aftermath of the disaster has caused the planet's gravitational field to collapse, so the city must keep moving to stay ahead of the distortions, on rails that must be constantly tended to and rebuilt. But, the planet is not what it seems, and neither is the city.

Now, HSF can be an entertaining genre, and there's something Aspbergianly gratifying about a book that words quite hard at making its reader feel ever-so-smart while grounding the plot in "real-world" physics.

That said, the downfall of many of these books is that they are wonky and predictable, and basically tend to graft a traditionally heroic narrative arc onto a clever mathematical construct. My idea of a good SF read falls more along the lines of Stanislaw Lem's "Futurological Congress," which is neither hard nor really SF, but is infinitely more unsettling.

So, until I'd read Priest's book, I thought that the genre was a bit of a dead-end. Instead, I found a book that had an enviable structure, an intriguing premise and a completely believable _ and totally unexpected _ ending. Fans of "A Canticle for Leibowitz" _ a book which I think is wildly overrated, BTW _ will be impressed by this subtle, and subtly caustic book.

A note on the publisher: The New York Review of Books is a publication that should need no introduction. It's simply the finest magazine of criticism and review published on these shores. Not even the mighty TLS _ which is more esoteric, to be sure _ comes close to the breadth of opinion, rigour and critical thought to be found within this appealing tabloid.

Less known are the NYRB's three book lines, from which this book is drawn. The main line, simply known as NYRB publishes books that were either a) once popular but now unjustly forgotten or b) works in translation of historical interest. The Review also has a children's line and a funny/peculiar travel guide series known as the "Little Bookroom" that is almost smotheringly bourgeoise.

OTHER STUFF, READ, that I'll get to later. All were good save for (*) which I thought was florid and overwritten and (**) which was clearly "late-period." The Faust book was a great potboiler.

ESCAPE FROM AMSTERDAM - Barrie Sherwood
WILLE AND JOE V. II - Bill Mauldin
GLASS BEES- Ernst Junger
ROGUE MALE - Geoffrey Household
RED LIGHTS - Simenon
AMERICAN EVE - Paula Uruburu *
AUSTERITY BRITAIN David Kynaston
GOMORRAH - Roberto Saviano
MAPS AND LEGENDS -Michael Chabon
LEMONS DON'T LIE - Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)
MONEY SHOT-- Christa Faust
DEAD STREET_Mickey Spillane **