RoBoTNiK

X-posted to Old is the New New.

Tags: All reading for fun at Fessenden, our quirky electronic childhoods, the great American elevator inspector novel, I find I don't know Dick.

It's year in review time, Loyal Dozens, that magical time of year when we review the year that went by since the last time it was time to review the year between the times when it's time to review it. I'll dispense with such fripperies as the year in movies, music, or current events, but I read a lot of books and every year I like to take some time to record a few that stayed with me, both for their own merits and for vaguely autobiographical purposes. (I try to associate the subjects of books with the places and times where I read them. Even though you can find a copy anywhere, for instance, it's cool to me that I bought Colson Whitehead's old weird NYC novel The Intuitionist, along with Ann Douglas' Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, at the awesome Strand bookstore in Greenwich Village. Or that I read Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon while actually en route from Paris to the moon.) This is made easier this year by the LibraryThing account I started last December. Most people use LibraryThing to catalog the books they own, but I use the library so prodigiously that my the set of books I possess bears only a passing resemblance to the set of books that have passed under my eyeballs. Instead, I used LibraryThing to catalog books as I read them, regardless of their provenance. You can, if you care, see all the books I read in 2006 here. But here are some highlights, starting with fiction first.

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It's Labo(u)r Day! (For a few more minutes.) And tomorrow is the first day of my new job!

Some of you with keen eyes have already figured this out, but L now has her own LiveJournal, under the user name papersource. She chose this user name, of course, in honor of Paper Source, the supplier of high end stationery and other fancy paper goods that certain artistically-inclined females find more addictive than Nazi crank. I couldn't convince her to go with any of my noms de cute for her, like cuticle or cuddlefish. But papersource is more than appropriate. L has been known to hit the joint with some of her rowdy coworkers after a couple of after-school martinis and just turn the sucker out of glassine envelopes and decoupage. Anyway, she is of course as witty and delightful online as off, and I encourage you to visit her LJ, Friend her, and shower her with the love and comments she deserves. I do hope this new hobby will survive the onslaught of back to school, but if it doesn't, c'est la vie. No impugning of L's stick-to-it-ive-ness intended, just that it's the day before school starts, and I've seen it before: September hits these poor teachers like Paul Anka's mighty hammer. We shall see.

But! L is not the only one the cool weather has imbued with super human energy and an illusory sense that all things are possible. Here I commemorate the last day of summer and perhaps too many cups of coffee with one of those ever popular "Games I'd Like To Run" posts.

( Thirteen is a magic number. )