Yea, yea - this is about reading. Do I care if you are interested? Yes. But writing about my reading habits - well, one, it keeps me off those proverbial streets - but I also get to process, so here is to a huge helping of process. (Does process have a color...? What a concept, process. I think of Velveeta. Velveeta and Process, aren't they synonyms? Process. Ahh yes, warm vats of Process. Steaming tanks of Process being churned in my head, stirred by the paddles of literature and heated over the fires of learning, blah, blah, blah.)

Finished Lamott's, Bird by Bird. Excellent source for inspiration and she provides a number of exercises a "wanna-be" writer could try. Some of her stuff is almost a "write by number" (like a paint by color) book but funnier. If you want to dive into writing fiction and don't know where to begin - she is definitely one you need to read.

Picked up Michael Crichton's, State of Fear. I've read a number of other Crichton titles and like his wrestling with modern issues in a fictive/dramatic style (e.g. in Prey he dealt with the ethics of artificial intelligence). My understanding is that in State of Fear he is raising issues of ecology. I'll soon see.

Also, I am half-way to completion of a fascinating book (non-fiction, autobiography) by a former judge from New York named Wachtler (some slated him as the next NY State Governor). You might have heard of him - about 10 yrs ago he made the news when the FBI arrested him. Anyway, he was obsessed with a women with whom he'd had an affair PLUS he was a manic-depressive. So he did some very weird things, ended up in jail, and wrote about the experince when he got out. A judge in jail. Very interesting. The book is called, After the Madness.