Sick Daze

I stayed home sick today!

I don't know what much to say about this except that, Man, being sick kind of sucks, but, You know what's nice? Staying home sick.

I have to tell you. I haven't done this in years. My usual method of dealing with illness involves attempting to cure every ailment with beer and cigarettes. This has worked exactly once. The last two times I tried it I think I gave myself pneumonia. So this time I got myself a bunch of Bolthouse drinks and prepared a stack of comfort-food-books including:

• The Bane of the Black Sword by Michael Moorcock
• Litany of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe
• Dreamtigers by Jorge Luis Borges
• A Big Collection of James Joyce

***

I'd like to dwell on these books a minute. The Moorcock is one of his Elric books. Elric is an angsty anti-hero who goes around a Conan the Barbarian-style world with an evil sword doing malicious things and brooding.

Michael Moorcock: Sometimes his work is of the highest quality -- Behold the Man, for example. Elric not so much. And yet. And yet. Reading it I'm delighted and filled with the desire -- as when I read classic pulp stuff by Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard -- to write that kind of stuff, all pulpy and campy and cliched and over-the-top and amazing.

I mean, listen to some of this:

In a city called Bakshaan, which was rich enough to make all other cities of the north East seem poor, in a tall-towered tavern one night, Elric, Lord of the smoking ruins of Melnibone, smiled like a shark and dryly jested with four powerful merchant princes whom, in a day or so, he intended to pauperize.

So our story begins. And we continue, learning about Elric's awesome sword Stormbringer:

A symbiosis existed between man and sword. The man without the sword could become a cripple, lacking sight and energy--the sword without the man could not drink the blood and the souls it needed for its existence. They rode together, and none could tell which was master.

!!!! How can you not love it!!?? especially when THIS happens:

In a smoking pit, somewhere beyond the limitations of space and time, a creature stirred. all around it, shadows moved. They were the shadows of the souls of men and these shadows which moved through the bright darkness were the masters of the creature. It allowed them to master it--so long as they paid its price. In the speech of men, this creature had a name. It was called Quaolnargn...

Ka-fucking-blang!!!!! This is so cool I nearly shit my pants. But that's the end of our free preview. If you want to know more you'll have to buy the book yourself you lazy son of a bitch.

Let's talk about my other Sick Day Books.

The Borges: I bought this yesterday. I can't find it. Did I leave it in the office?

The Joyce: The other day M. was reading Dubliners, and I picked it up (having hated A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I read it as a younger man) and enjoyed the first story I read. So this collected works was a buck at While Away. Score!

Gene Wolfe: Ohhhh but his greatness will be the subject of a later post!

Anyway my darlings, I'm sick so I shouldn't be committing so much energy to blogging. I should be resting! Good NIGHT!