SNAPSHOT OF A POET (#9): “WHAT ARE YOU READING?”

[Poets are invited to participate in this series of snapshots of poets’ reading habits. For information, go HERE.] 

Michael Helsem on Reading 

What are you reading now? As well, what is in your To-Read-Soon stack? Please share comments about your readings:

I always am reading about 4 books at once; I keep 2 at work & read 1/2 hr each during lunch & 2 more at home next to the bed where I may or may not pick one up at night.

Not seldom I'll be reading a book I thought I should read but another more interesting comes along & interrupts it.

For instance at home I was reading Desert by LeClezio (slow going) & City of Bohane by Barry (which I had just started) when I found Throne of the Crescent Moon by Ahmed at a nearby store in our chain (I'd been looking for)  & I was given Available Dark by Hand (off my wish list) from my wife for our anniversary. (I expect to whoosh through this one & then resume Crescent Moon.)

Underneath those is Bill Knott's Collected Poems (the 2012 edition) & a loose volume of a bad Elizabethan translation of Orlando Furioso in an early 19c edition.

Michael Helsem with 1805 ed. of Hoole's ORLANDO FURIOSO vol. V.

At work I am reading a tribute to Jack Vance, Songs of the Dying Earth (or at least the stories in it by certain authors--including Elizabeth Hand, whom I consider one of the best contemporary authors--& I just finished one in it by Lucius Shepard, who recently died) & also The God Effect by Clegg (which I only mean to read the update about the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox). on my stash shelf there's also a book on making Youtube videos & a travel guide to Austin, probably three others I don't remember at the moment. oh: The Loom of God by Pickover (I decided to look at instead of donate, as it hadn't sold at a dollar) is another one.

I am thinking of going back to  pull Garfinkle's Celestial Matters just to see what a Ptolemaic scifi novel is like.

I am wanting to read the new Ligotti which isn't out till next month; likewise the re-issue of Eddison's translation of Egil's Saga. I doubt I will be able to afford them new.