The SF moratorium is on

As I mentioned a few days ago, I realized that my normally somewhat-balanced reading took a definite turn for the improbable last month, with nothing but science fiction actually getting read. Now I like SF as much as the next geek, but enough is enough, so for the month of September I declared a moratorium on the genre. (The exception was Niven's Ringworld's Children which was due back at the library today and I was re-reading in hopes of blogging a book review soon.)

Then I thought, why not plan this out a bit, and deliberately design a little bit of variety into the program? So this is the plan I came up with, in no particular order:

• Something I haven't read since high school. For this I chose Jimmy Breslin's The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight, which I thought was a laff riot in grade 11. Once upon a time, there was a newspaper columnist with a sense of humour who wasn't at all the sad bitter shell of a man he's become.
• Something I should have read, but didn't. I chose Henry James' short novel The Turn of the Screw, part of the syllabus for OAC English Literature back in high school. Yes, Mrs. Emmerton, I BSed my way through pretty much that whole course, except for Apocalypse Now, The Wall, and Macbeth. Sorry about that.
• A contemporary, critically-acclaimed novel. Non-SF, of course. I've chosen Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
• A collection of short stories. No choice made here yet. Flannery O'Connor, perhaps.
• A collection of poetry. Again, I haven't made a choice yet, but I'm thinking maybe George Herbert, if I can find him.
• A biography. This time, it's Here I Stand by Roland Bainton, the classic bio of Martin Luther. I'm jumping the gun a bit on the church-history Sunday school class I'm currently enjoying, but I couldn't resist when I saw it at the library.
• A work of theology. Another acquisition from the church library: Keep in Step With the Spirit by J. I. Packer.
• Another work of nonfiction. I grabbed Volume One of the New Oxford History of Music, which covers primitive and non-European music.

And now we wait and see how long it takes me to go crazy.