Back in Grad School ...

Back in grad school (which I started 42 years ago come August), three of us formed a small group we called the Lunatic Fringe and Literary Society. Each month, we would read a different science fiction book and discuss it over lunch, which had to be at a eatery none of us had ever visited. Given the time that has passed, it should not surprise me that so many of the places I remember visiting are no longer in business. In the case of a few, the building in which they were located is not longer there.

We should probably have read a wider variety of books. To this day, I feel overdosed on science fiction as a genre. Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God are the exceptions; I thought they were excellent and am glad I read them. Anything else? Nope. I tried on a recent trip to re-read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin after reading an essay that praised it. It was a big no-go. I could not not get into reading it, no matter how hard I tried.

There is a plus side to this affliction in that it makes the list of books I want to read shorter by one genre, the proverbial silver lining to any cloud.