back in books

I've been in a bit of a reading slump; I haven't finished a book since I finished my book, the first draft, that is, way back in April (actually, that's not true; I finished Native Son). It's weird. I haven't been able to get into anything. Or when I have gotten into something, I haven't been able stay into it.

Well, I'm glad to say, the slump is over, thanks to the stupid sci-fi novel pictured above. It's about infinity, I think, and a bug played a prominant role. Just finished it last night, though I don't feel much richer for having done so, and now I'm back onto more interesting stuff, and a reading list is forming. Right now, I'm deep into James' Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain, which I've never read. I'm sensing an all-time favorite here. It's starting to make me feel the way I did when I read Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, the way it seems to be working up to a massive punch in a small package.

The writing is so beautiful:

The way of the cross had given him a belly full of wind and bent his mother's back; they had never worn fine clothes, but here, where the buildings contested God's power and where the men and women did not fear God, here he might eat and drink to his heart's content and clothes his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to the eye and pleasing to the touch. And then what of his soul, which would one day come to die and stand naked befoore the judgment bar? What would his conquest of the city profit him on that day? To hurl away, for a moment of ease, the glories of eternity!

Nice!