Work on the novel proceeds apace, albeit not as quickly as I'd like. (This is a sentence I should probably have stashed away in a text file on my desktop for rapid cut/paste purposes, given how often I seem to use it, even in correspondence with myself.) I've been busy editing a book for a former professor, but more than that I'm having a hard time keeping focused on the early 16th century: I'm continually reminded, via the books I read, that all the cross-cultural action in the Indian Ocean and environs really starts heating up in the latter half of that century. Still, I'm not going to abandon Anacleto and Agnese Stornello. We've gone through a lot, and as difficult as it's been to tell their story, I'm going to see it through.
Speaking of reading, my friend Linda recently convened the first meeting of a sci-fi book club, which was a lot of fun, and we're going to be reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion next. I picked up a copy at Kaboom Books, Houston's best used book store, and will start it as soon as I finish C.R. Boxer's Fidalgos in the Far East 1550-1770*, which I'd wanted to read forever and is overflowing with great stories about the Portuguese empire's outposts east of India, i.e., Macau, Timor, and, while it lasted, Nagasaki. Boxer is a really good writer, and it's a damned shame that his work is mostly out of print and therefore runs to the costly end of the spectrum; in the Portuguese-language sphere, the similarly prolific Padre Manuel Teixeira suffers the same fate. During the same visit to Kaboom I also found a couple early '70s Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks, which I think represent the first of his books I've held in my own hands. Color me excited. Also on the reading list is The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions, from which comes the title of the excellent weird/horror/supernatural fiction blog The Stars at Noonday and of which I've begun the first story, "The Beckoning Fair One". Since last night I've been waiting for bedtime so I can find out how it ends.
Perhaps the day will come when I have a ton of money and will reprint some of the many books that have existed and fallen into undeserved obscurity. Demand won't be high, but who cares? There has to be at least one or two other dudes out there willing to pay to read decent editions of little-known tomes. I know that for a fact, since I'm one of them.
I'd originally intended to talk about music as well as books, but I've got enough music-related thoughts piled up to justify another couple posts, one of which will be the return of the "Scott's Stash" series. Something'll be up within a couple days, so stay tuned.
再見, caro leitor!
-D.A.S.
*N.B. Between the time I started writing this post and when it actually hit the World Wide Web, I finished Boxer's book. Predictably, it was great.
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