Finished Foundation And Earth, which completes the Foundation Septelogy (or decalogy if you include the three non-Asimov volumes, but I haven't read them yet). Took a short break from Asimov to read Sock by Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller). It's his first book apart from a couple of volumes of irreverent "how to do magic tricks" books. It's a good book if you're into that whole stream-of-conscienceness-atheistic-murder-mystery-told-from-the-perspective-of-an-omniscient-sock-monkey genre. It's definitely not a great book by any stretch --for one thing, the writing style improves as the book goes on, and it digresses constantly into discussions of things like how difficult it is to make something truly stream-of-consciousness because how a person actually thinks and how a character thinks in the written word is quite different, and how the only true master of this genre was bad movie pioneer Ed Wood.
Yes, Penn was writing about how tough it is to write a book DURING THE BOOK. Thankfully, it's only about a 3-hour read so the book's over before you get a chance to get really annoyed by the style. If you just read it as a light diversion you'll probably enjoy it.
After reading it, I did decide that if I ever get around to writing that book that's in me, I'm gonna write it out of order. I'll first outline the entire plot and the contents of every chapter, then I'll write chapter five, followed by chapter eighteen, followed by chapter two, etc. That way it won't be obvious that I'm a writing newbie and I'm finally hitting my stride around chapter four. . .because the fourth chapter I wrote is actually chapter twelve.
I am so astoundingly smart :)
