Just something from George Takei to share with our readers.

Finished Private Lies by Amy Eastlake. Private eye Heather Webb meets up with CIA agent Jack Eastland doing some sleuthing on US soil, a no no for the CIA. They end up on the run while the terrorists try to eliminate them and destroy the US economy through computers. It is an enjoyable read with some steamy romance thrown in for good measure. And Heather's parents have been on the lam from the law since before she was born.

I'm also working my way through the Freeh report on the Penn State scandal. This shocking story is scarier and more tragic than any fiction. It wears on me so I'm taking it in smaller portions.

Various Warhammer 40,000 codexes.

Recently finished an advanced reader copy of Comics and the Cold War, a collection of essays about how comics reflected societal concerns of the time period. Not a bad concept, but it's trying to cover too much ground in too little space and some of the authors are trying too hard to make things fit into their thesis.

Next up is H.G. Wells's The Time Machine.

I just finished Devil in the White City, the nonfictional story about the building of 1893 Chicago's Worlds Fair and the serial killer who took advantage of it. It is pretty slow for the first half of the book, but the book picks up from halfway to the end.

I've been very busy of late (as those talking with me about threads already know), so I've been reading mostly flash fiction. It's been very good fash fiction...

Viewers Like You By Mary E. Lowd tells the tale of a time when people earn money by watching TV. They earn more the higher their ratings are at things like their weddings. (The bride should accuse the groom of cheating, have a heated argument, and reconcile and go through with the wedding to get the best ratings.) Most people marry robots and our shero's sister has her eye on the delivery 'bot.

In Can't Get Enough by John Southcross, a man preserves his wife's memories and loads them into an android of her after she dies of cancer.

Proxima by Regan Wolfrom is the story of a time after we've conquered death. A man travels to a distant star alone, taking over a century, to deliver his ever changing love letter to the woman he loves.

I don't suppose anyone has ever heard of gamebooks? They're like choose-your-own-adventure(tm) but with some stats and dice rolling. I like to analyze the books by going through and making a map of every path, seeing how they filled out things and made all the choices work. Right now I'm doing that with Daggers of Darkness, which has some quite imaginative writing...and THE BEST COVER ART EVER.