About 6am I was up doing the cbi thing when suddenly the fire alarm sounded. That lasted for half an hour and Anne said it was most likely a repeat of yesterday morning. We never heard the alarm go off then but according to Anne who met one of the caretakers outside Sunday said they were banging on doors to get people out etc but it was a false alarm. Anne had mentioned about this earlier. And the fire trucks wailed through the frost snow morning as well responding to the alarm again. The alarm was shut off by 6:30am but I was already wired up and awake. Basically I didn’t sleep very well after that. I had to get up like every 2 hours to pee and Anne had to get up to use the can as well. Cats jumping on the bed to say hello. About 9:30am I decided to get some reading done. That might quiet me down a bit. I finished the 2nd story in “The new Space Opera.” and I enjoyed it a lot better the the 1st. It was still hard to follow but the writing made sense even though it was a little over my head. I’m sure Ian McDonald doesn’t write his novels the way he tells a short story.
That’s the thing with science fiction short stories a lot of the authors lately sound like college professors and less like story tellers. I haven’t read many novels this year. Four of them to be exact. Since getting back into reading more SF novels on a regular basses. In the past I’d be lucky if I got to read one book/year. The best SF novel I’ve read so far this year out of the 4 was Jennifer Wingert’s “Grasp the Stars.” The writing was solid, the dialogue was believable. The other one was Joe Haldeman’s “Camouflage.” I liked Robert Charles Wilson’s “Spin” but there was a lot of filler in it and the story went all over the place. That and the dialogue wasn't very believable. As for Julie E. Czerneda’s “1,000 words for a stranger.” Also a good book but I couldn’t get into this psychic mind stuff. The other two novels in the trilogy are pretty well much the same. It’s my goal to read one book/month and buy one book/week so I’m well on my way. I don’t have a lot of time to read novels as I’m trying to write my own but the ones I've read so far I liked. There were some authors I couldn't get into like Charles Stross's Cyberpunk. I've also learned to do my research when picking out authors I haven't read before. For the most part you can't go wrong with SF anthologies. I think I've bought more SF anthologies this year then stand alone SF novels. Sirry for the typos. I'm running a bit late today.
Anyway, that’s all for now
e. Jim
