Aiiii!! Futzing with formats!

It will take a little time for these blogging tools to become transparent to me! The name alone sounds like a cross between a swamp, quicksand, and something that requires a plunger. Trying to correct and then publish my first effort, I accidentally deleted all the text. So I just reconstructed it and tried to put in a link, that I thought would display a book cover graphic. Um, nope. I see typos. I'm going to leave it as it is.

Eventually I will figure it out. Like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow....which just so happens to be another day

I left off on my thrilling books of yesteryear with January 15-31, 1975 - at this rate I'll get caught up to exactly 30 years ago soon.

Best Cartoons of 1970 (I didn't write down from where--The New Yorker? I still like cartoons books)
A Peanuts Treasury, Charles Schultz
A Gallery of Erotic Art, Drs. Kronhausen (sounds like a husband-wife team?)
The Seven Percent Solution, Nicholas Meyer
New Yorker 25th Anniversary Album
Best Cartoons '69 (I believe that was the year not a continuation of the Kronhausen book above)
Tallulah by Brendan Gill
Lingaard, Colin Wilson
The 9th Annual World's Best SF
Best SF '72
Final Stage (SF Anthology)
Wide-Eyed in Babylon (this must be Harlan Ellison, but I'm too paranoid about losing the post to check!)
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Imogene (I believe this was a biography about Imogene Cunningham)

Lots o' books, but the cartoon books proabably took longer to haul to and from the library than to read!

January 15-31 2005
Again, this past January I was in the dominos-all-fall down end stage of writing a vampire book, so I didn't read too much of anyone else's stuff, but I did take a little time out for:

The Salmon of Doubt, Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last time, Douglas Adams

This made me a little sad all over again for the early loss of this genius--but I also laughed out loud, which was so welcome. Sometimes it's a pleasure simply to have been able to sample someone's wit.

Cat vs. Cat, Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat, Pam Johnson-Bennett, Feline Behaviorist

I would never have imagined back in 1974 that I would know and love so many cats over the years. This book offered some invaluable ideas about keeping the peace and keeping everyone happy (including me)! One thing I've learned from the cats is--things work much better when you accept what they are, rather than what you wish they would be.

This lesson should work for relations between the sexes...or would it?

I had a library card, and I knew how to use it....

From the mid-1970s
Lynne Murray

In January of 1975, I started writing down every book I read in an orange notebook. That was also about the time that I decided to devote my life to writing fiction. I thought it might be fun to look at what I was reading 30 years ago and what I'm reading now. Of course, I actually am writing every day. That definitely cuts into my reading time--back them I was still working on establishing the writing habit!

I'll start where the notebook started, but it shouldn't take long to catch up to March.
January 1-15, 1975:

All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed (Returned unfinished)
The Young Lust Reader, Griffith & Kinney
Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy L. Sayers
Dealing, Michael Douglas
The Loo Sanction, Trevanian
Anatomy of a Murder, Travers
Pogo Revisited, Walt Kelly
50 Best American Short Stories, Martha Foley (ed.)
Polly's Principles, Polly Bergen
A Different Woman, Jane Howard
The Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett
Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, Third Annual, 1974

Wow! I was discovering Sayers and Hammett, that was a good month.

January 1-15, 2005
I was writing the last stages of my tenth novel, but I took some time out to read:

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=29564&cgi=search/search/&searchtype=kw&searchfor=Eyre%20Affair%20Fforde

The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
Really fun, although I probably didn't get all the cultural allusions, I loved an alternate universe where fanatical Baconians go door-to-door trying to convince people that Francis Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare, and surrealists riot against Raphaelites.

Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
Anything by Terry Pratchett

I suspect I would have been happy back in '74 to know that I would have written this many books, and writing down what I read back then was an important step for me.