'Tis summer, and time for a middle aged woman's fancies to turn to thoughts of bad books.
Not only bad books, of course. I picked up several excellent books at Kalamazoo last week, two of which I've been asked to review, plus three free copies of journals from Oxford University Press. I'll also be contributing to two books that, based on previous examples, will be very good installments in their respective series.
I also picked up what promises to be a truly marvelous Book So Bad It's Good, right up (or down, or sideways) there with jewels such as the collected works of Dan Brown, airport books about mysterious conspiracies, and the very best quality anti-Masonic propaganda from the 1840's. It's absolutely perfect, and yes, I most definitely will be writing a diary about it.
As for diaries...
This weekend is the de facto kickoff of summer here in the land of the free and home of the brave. Barbecues, lemonade, movies with a huge number of explosions and very little plot, cole slaw and potato salad, sandals instead of shoes, soft serve stands and skinny dipping on a deep dark night...there are but a few of the simple joys of summertime, at least in the vicinity of the Last Homely Shack East of the Manhan. It's a lovely time of the year, with farmstands and pick-your-own produce and thunderstorms that leave the air fresh and clean and crackling with ozone, and as much as I hate a sticky summer heat, I must confess that I do like this precious time quite a bit.
This may be why I've mapped out a particularly ambitious schedule for this summer, as you'll see once you venture past the 0.5 class Orange Kaiju for all the gory, scary, glorious details.
So! Below are the diaries you can look forward to between now and September. You'll note that several concern History Books So Bad Anna Comnena Ordered the Varangian Guard to Kill the Authors, Time Travel Be Damned, but others are nods to popular demand and looks at popular culture. There will even be a short piece of fiction on the 4th of July, just for you, my faithful and patient readers.
As usual, these are subject to change without notice based on my health, kaiju larvae boiling out of my bathtub faucet, my work schedule, the Double Felinoid smothering me in my sleep, the whims of the Muse, Ultron getting pissy because he didn't get a My Little Pony for his birthday, etc., etc., etc. However, this is the plan, which is mine, which I have, and which I will do my absolute best to stick to rather than chucking it all and decamping for the wilds of Savoy, Massachusetts, or a similarly untamed chunk of trackless wilderness:
5/30 – The Blue-Blood Academic and the Lasso of Love
6/6 – Sic Transit Trivia Mundi
6/13 – Genghis Khan: Not a Murder Victim
6/20 - Rules, Schmules!
6/27 - Constantine's Non-Donation
7/4 - Somewhere in America (The Meetup Remix)
7/11 - Flying the World in a Manly and 100% Non-Homoerotic Fashion
7/18 - Anti-Catholicism for Fun and Profit
7/25 - I Was A Non-Existent Teenaged Author/Media Celebrity
8/2 - A Fitting Memorial to Mr. Gernsback
8/9 - Merovingian Jesus' Totally Hot and Theologically Incorrect Girlfriend
8/16 - The Sorrows of Young Chatterton
8/23 - Moonlight, Magnolias, and Bible-Believing Slaves
8/30 - A Million Little Pieces of Exploitation
Doesn't this sound worth rolling out of the hammock for? All it needs is a nice hot dog from a Sabrett's cart, maybe a Tin Roof Sundae, and we're all set....
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Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule: