Aside from the endless one-chapter-at-a-time slog through _Matter and Memory_ (I think I'm having just *too* *much* *stress* for philosophy this summer, I keep finding magazines to read) I've dipped into a couple of excellent SF novels -- _Whole Wide World_ by Paul McAuley (near-future police procedural set in a post-rebellion, neo-puritan London) and Paul Cornell's _British Summertime_ (a cross-generic timetravel paradox thing with two interlocking sets of blasphemies (political/religious) which have managed to get it thoroughly unpublished in the US (buy the british edition on amazon.co.uk) that I hesitate to describe for fear of blowing the pleasure of reading it) -- and Patrick J. Geary's _The Myth of Nations_, which deconstructs european nationalist myths of origin by looking at the "ethnic" composition of the "barbarian" elites in the zone between Late Antiquity and Early Medieval (written for a general audience, not for historians ... the argument is one he wants regular folks to hear). I also really enjoyed _Over-Sensitivity_ and _Requiem_ whenever it was that I read them (somewhat before "summer") ... and I'll second the comments on The Believer as well. Oh, and last weekend the "Sex Issue" of Tin House gave me one of those moments you die for ... I was reading the house copy of it at a local cafe while my laundry was drying, & a somewhat tipsy middle-aged woman leaned over my shoulder & asked, "WHAT are you reading, sugar-plum?" What could I do but respond honestly, "An article about a convention for people who like to have sex dressed as stuffed animals"? -- Jim Flannery newgrange@newgrangemedia.com One cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage that is required in holding it. -- George Orwell np: Emmanuel Tuts-Schiemsky, _Rust voor de Stilte_ nr: Henri Bergson, _Matter and Memory_