Desert Island Experiment - Page 2

Here's the list, as best I can recall, in approximately the order in which I read them:

• Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien. A very strange book about a lecherous academic. Unsurprisingly, it collides with a Vietnam novel halfway through.
• 253 by Geoff Ryman. A collection of 253 character sketches, each containing 253 words, of the 253 passengers on a London subway that crashes. It makes more sense as a Web novel, and would've been a surreal reading experience even if I hadn't been reading it in the middle of a 12-hour flight to Tokyo.
• Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson. I had just discovered Bryson at that point, and this is one of his better books. In this one, he travels around England, seeing the sights, before moving back to America.

• The Best of H. P. Lovecraft by H. P. Lovecraft. I had never read Lovecraft before, and figured I ought to in order to understand:
• Resume With Monsters by William Browning Spencer. Dilbert meets Lovecraft. Both funnier and creepier than the original stories.
• Blackburn by Bradley Denton. Best. Serial. Killer. Novel. Ever.
• Eat the Rich by P. J. O'Rourke. Had I realized that I had read most of these pieces as columns in Rolling Stone, I would've brought something else instead.
• Future Indefinite by Dave Duncan. The conclusion to the Great Game series, and the best novel he's written. Much better than his usual popcorn fantasy.
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Deserves its good reputation. Eco consistently manages to make me feel semi-literate.
• Ribofunk by Paul DiFillipo. A collection of biology-based hard SF, published in a special $3.99 edition. Worth about what I paid for it.
• Desolation Road by Ian McDonald. Kate recommended it as "a magic realist Martian Chronicles," which isn't far off, even if it is redundant.
• The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. Evolutionary psychology's most eloquent advocate holds forth on linguistics.
• Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen. Good popcorn reading from South Florida's best crime novelist.
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri. Nigerian magic realism, that kind of spins out of control at the end.
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Article Author: Chad Orzel

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