Update

Have had only sporadic internet access during this New York trip (my apartment is still sublet through January, so I'm not really at home in any practical sense), which casts an inhibiting pall on the blog. It is not just that one has no chance to write, it is that one does not garner peculiar bits that are worth posting!

But I have accumulated a backlog of light reading, much of it consumed in airports and planes, that should at least be logged. Working with a very slow Starbucks internet connection just now, and will skip links, I think, otherwise the irk factor will run high...

First round: Sara Paretsky's Bleeding Kansas; Laurie King's The Art of Detection; Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale; Greg von Eekhout's Norse Code (a great concept and title, with execution not quite as coherent and effective as I had hoped - it's readable, but it's no Sandman Slim); Barry Eisler's The Last Assassin.

Second round: two advance copies that have been waiting for me in New York and that I seized upon as soon as I could get uptown to pick up mail: Lee Child's new novel (will write a separate post about this one, but of course I loved it), as well as Robin McKinley's Pegasus (picture at that previous link courtesy of Becca), which has both the delights and the shortcomings of much of her other fiction, with a particularly inconclusive ending that will make all fans annoyingly clamor for a sequel!

Went to a lovely wedding over the weekend - Friday night's party was at powerHouse Arena (Brent and I were in agreement that it is an excellent idea to hold a party in a bookstore, it means reading is allowed at least in snippets!), the ceremony on Saturday was at the Socrates Sculpture Park with dogs frolicking wonderfully in the background and an absolutely beautiful reception and dinner afterwards on the gorgeous fourth floor of the Metropolitan Building. The views in that bit of Long Island City are almost vertigo-inducing, they so effectively put you at the base of a panorama of bridges and skyscrapers....

Another highlight of last week, something Brent couldn't believe I hadn't seen before, since it is so much his notion of the ideal theatrical entertainment: the extremely charming Avenue Q!

Got another play tonight, a talk tomorrow at Fordham and another wedding in Maine this weekend, various other stuff packed into the next couple weeks - posting may continue sporadic - but the one other thing I wanted to highlight is that Helen DeWitt is in New York and will hold "elevenses at 3" on Saturday at the McNally Robinson bookstore on Prince St. - stop by and say hello to her if you are interested and find yourself in the neighborhood.