22 October 2003
Been busy cleaning up old content into a custom XML format, for transformation into rich HTML, Atom, and whatever else I choose. Doing some nice things with the IMDb and AMG, as well as acronyms and entity definitions. The idea is that the code will be robust, extensible, and maintainable. This won’t be how it ends up, of course, because a flexible syntax and neat parsing code are near-incompatible, and the former’s winning out over the latter at present. Naturally none of this has been imported yet, because I’m only on entry 20 of 120-odd, and haven’t actually got any code to make it readable even to XML parsers.
So books. As you may know, I am addicted to libraries, with reasoning that goes like so:
That, my friend, is rational thought. And with the refurbished Fopp in town and the October month of film, there is a serious need for me to save money.
Warwickshire libraries are in the digital age, so it’s possible to query the library catalogue. With just a library ticket number and a matching surname, you can check on requests and items borrowed, as well as renew and request books. Not only is this convenient, but requesting books is cheaper than doing so in person (only 50p compared to the usual 90p).
It won’t work with books that aren’t in the Warwickshire catalogue, though, for obvious reasons. For those books you still have to use the old-fashionead, person-to-person, pen-and-paper interface. And some authors don’t get many books in the catalogue.
John Fante, for one. Literally. Technically there are two books of his in the catalogue, but one, Brotherhood of the Grape, isn’t actually present at any of the libraries or any of the reserves. The other — The Road to Los Angeles — I bumped into on one of the paperback carousels one day while heading for a computer to check that they still had it. It’s an excellent humorous fictional first-person account of part of the life of Arturo Bandini, who the foreword claims was Fante’s alter ego. He reads philosophy and other high-minded books, he works at a cannery after being sacked from his job at the store for stealing, and he murders crabs. The man is a buffoon, but a humorous one.
The Road to Los Angeles, while self-contained, is not the end of the story. Fante’s novels, as listed in the cover, are divided into two categories: the Arturo Bandini Saga, and the rest. One from each category is currently on a request slip in some other county library, being stalked through the long grass by bespectacled librarians in sensible hunting shoes.
The next author who is unavailable to me is the strangely-named C. J. Cherryh. Again, the writing coalesces into series. I’m after the Foreigner series: Foreigner, Invader, Inheritor, and Precursor — the latter of which is the start of a second trilogy, and so less relevant. I’m also after three books from the rather sprawling Union/Alliance series. 40,000 in Gehenna, a novel with a rather strange concept; Voyager in Night, so-called inhuman science fiction; and Cyteen, supposedly her best work.
I’m showing my true colours here, aren’t I? No matter how I try to pretend otherwise, I’m a sci-fi man at heart. It’s all the escapism of fantasy, but with logic. And, er, science. Not to mention that studies prove robots and lasers kick dragons and wizards into the next millenium nine times out of ten.
If you still didn’t believe me, my third ‘lost author’ is Jack McDevitt. His work was on the Nebula ballot for five straight years, which is impressive to say the least. He was recommended to me by the allmighty (except when it’s not) gnooks. I’ve been having trouble finidng introductions to his work, so I guess I’ll have to wait until Deepsix arrives to decide where to go next, if anywhere.