So I spoke too soon. My parents are coming this weekend, even though the long distance means they'll be spending more time in my dad's truck than in Chicago.

Still, ho ho ho. I've never felt so materialistic.

For those of you who've stopped checking, I observe that Alan has posted again. Temporarily deprived of an RSS reader and starved of content, I've been checking his website every few days, manually, like some sort of caveman -- and I was shocked to find a new entry. I'm also annoyed that he mentioned his declining English skills; the improvisational spelling was funnier when I could pretend he wasn't aware of it.

And since I asked Alan to make a list, here's what he and Graham each dislike about China. Compare, judge, enjoy.

The rest of this post falls into the category "I've been reading a lot lately." Consider this the bracketed text for longer sermons.

I finished a collection of magazine articles from 2002 yesterday, one of those "The Best" books, and right now I'm working on a collection of sci-fi stories with the charming title The Best of the Best. It's one of the better anthologies I've read, certainly in the quality of its selections (I finally respect William Gibson's cyperpunk), but also because the editor doesn't insist on giving away the end of each story in its preface.

Call me crazy, but the plot of a given story does interest me just as much (or more!) as the craft with which it was written. Analyze the story in an afterword instead of trying to get everyone to fall in with your interpretation right off the bat.

I've finished a lot of good books in my spare time. A historical sci-fi anthology, out of date and poorly edited in this case -- but it included Roger Zelazny's incredibly moving "For a Breath I Tarry," which you can also find online for some reason. I'm tempted to offer my own version, with a subtler ending: I approve of all but eight words.

And there was The Many-Colored Land, an enjoyable book despite the unreliable characterization and embarrassing typos, e.g. "a barrel of bear." Ben recommended it earlier this summer, and I picked it up cheap. It's part of a "Saga" though, and I'm reluctant to sign on for three or four more books.

I finished Insomnia, and now I'm tempted to read the Dark Tower series, to which this could be considered a prequel. I read The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, who everyone knows as the guy on The Simpsons with the bag on his head. That book has some great potential Illuminati groups in it (I think I'll make W.A.S.T.E., the underground Post Office), and it's shockingly easy to read, almost too shallow.

I've also had to give up on several books. Joseph Heller's God Knows is just awful, and I formally apologize to Ann of Stillwater for ever recommending something so turgid and irritating.

The Once and Future King, which I'd been curious about since seeing it in X-Men 2, is one of those children's books that's so self-consciously cute I can't stomach it. Worse than re-reading The Hobbit a few years ago.

I'm still working on Emergence, a nonfiction book Graham lent me, but the author is what they used to call a hedgehog, and so far I don't find his idea that interesting or earth-shattering.

Though I'm tempted to, I'll probably refrain from checking out any more sci-fi once I finish this anthology. I've probably read 2,000 pages of the stuff in the past week, an achievement that doesn't strike me as life-affirming. This is grad school, after all, and I should be concentrating on finding my concentration -- which is very unlikely to be science fiction. But what, if anything, do I want to spend the rest of my professional life reading?