We've all been pretty quiet lately, and in my case it's partly a lack of reading anything much. The latest books were:
A Christmas present from my grandson, Ready Player One, which takes place in a dystopian future, when resources are scarce, most people are poor, and as much of life as possible, including school, is spent in a virtual reality. It's aimed at readers who were fans of the early computer games and pop culture of the 1980s, barely in my field of competence, but it's a good job of what it is, and I enjoyed it.
A Dover Thrift Book of haiku, a thin collection of poems by a larger number of poets than most collections. What makes it specially good is that the editor, Faubion Bowers, makes little comments about the authors, whose pupil they were, where their work fitted in, and about some of the poems, which ones were regarded as specially important, explanations of meanings we wouldn't get. Example: a poem contrasting persimmons with a certain temple--persimmon are a symbol of newness, and the temple is the oldest known standing wooden building. Unfortunately, these comments are in the form of footnotes in microscopic print.
A Tony Hillerman mystery, Dance Hall of the Dead, which somehow felll through the cracks when I was reading his stuff.
