Woohoo! More nifty birthday stuff!

Yesterday afternoon, the mailman brought a surprise bday gift from windswept, containing Spin, a book about which I've heard many, many good things. Yay! Thanks so much! This is the first year in recent memory that I can say I'll have read over 50% of the Hugo nominees before the awards are announced.*

I also got the major box o' gifts from the in-laws, including four damned good DVDs: The Frighteners, American Gothic: The Complete Series, Lost: Season 1, and A History of Violence.

But if they did good on the DVD front, the in-laws did really good on the book front, with three books that I'd gladly have killed to own (but am rather happier getting to read them outside of prison). The new Christopher Moore book, A DIrty Job, was one I almost bought last week; there are few authors who can get me to anticipate a book as much as Moore can, and I've raved about him many times here. George Alec Effinger: Live! From Planet Earth collects a number of stories by the late, great writer. If you haven't read Effinger, you've missed one of the most talented writers the genre has seen. The final book was Robert Lowell: The Collected Poems. I've talked about my love of Lowell's poems before, and can't add much to what I said then, but this book lives up to my expectations and then some. It's four pounds and 1200 pages of some of the best poetry of the last century, beautifully packaged. I've only read some of the poems themselves, but I'm also looking forward to Bidart's notes on the works.

Finally, I should mention my own gift. :-) On Saturday, I treated myself to The Grand Tour, the sequel to Sorcery and Cecelia. I'm over halfway done with it, and loving it more than the first one. Unlike many sequels, it doesn't try to simply repeat what made the first book special, but puts a nice twist on things (including a shift away from the epistletory nature of the first novel, although one that still allows for the double narration). The fact that both authors have matured as writers over the years certainly helps, as well. A lot of the Amazon reviews gripe that it's not as good as the first, by which many of them seem to mean that it's less a romance, more an adventure. I'm fine with that, frankly, as the faux-Austen dual ironic romances of the first novel eventually became a weakness, not a strength.

So yeah, overall, a damned fine haul.

*Well, I've always been able to say it. But now I'll be able to say it truthfully.

*snort*

It's the blog equivalent of "Title of the Song."

The little things that make me happy

As of about half an hour ago, Brian Bannister hit a double (and later scored on a triple by Jose Reyes).

This means that, as of this writing, the four Mets starting pitchers (Zambrano hasn't gotten a start yet) are batting 6-11 on the season. That's roughly four times what Barry Bonds is batting.

That's baseball, folks. Nine position players, and they all can contribute on either side of the field.

(And no, I don't expect the rotation to finish the season batting above .500, or even .220. I do expect them to do their damnedest to get on base and not give away easy outs.)