Every spring it seems I get so busy and so stressed that I don’t have either the time or the juice to read, let alone write anything. The upside to that is, now that things are calming down a little bit, I can rediscover the joys of both. I got into a truly moronic space opera, it’s a series of three horrible novels (please, God, make him stop) that were great fun to read. Terrible dialogue, ‘erotic’ scenes that make you suspect the author’s only experience was waxing one off to pictures he found in a mail-order catalog, and a plot lifted out of just about any James Bond movie. Apart from making me feel better about myself, they were a good reentry to reading, no heavy lifting and they made me laugh, even if maybe that wasn’t the author’s intent.

Next up, a couple of Patrick Rothfuss novels, books one and two of a series. I am still reserving judgement, I like Rothfuss but I am hoping that there’s sort of a central point to his story, that it doesn’t turn out to be another never ending saga with no real destination and nothing to say. Game of Thrones springs to mind, I know a lot of people love it but to me it degenerated into an eternal head-chopping exercise, and after a while, who gives a shit, really.

And finally, I am halfway through ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems,’ by Carlo Rovelli, sort of a companion volume to his excellent ‘7 Brief Lessons in Physics.’ Rovelli manages to write lucidly about the impenetrable, and I begin to see how little I really know about the physical universe. It’s the sort of book where you have to stop, every few pages, just to let your head catch up. I particularly liked his explanation of spacetime (complete with drawings!), and his treatment of the recent fascination with Higg’s Boson was unintentionally funny. One of the benefits of a work that makes you think is that it helps you appreciate the virtues of a good, mindless adventure story.

And maybe now I can get some writing done.

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