Praha, Pivo, Prosim

Although I’ll have limited space in my luggage for anything other than clothing and toiletries, I’m taking suggestions on any new books you think I should read. I saw a nice big stack of historical non-fiction at Joseph-Beth the other day and I would gladly have purchased any one of them.  I’ll have lots of down time on my big travel day so I don’t necessarily want something fluffy or something I can get through in 2 hours. An engrossing book would occupy more of my time, anyway. Otherwise I’m likely to go drinking at the Detroit airport. (Here’s a brief update for anyone who has been to the Detroit airport–it no longer looks like a bus station. Dare I use the word nice? Yes, I do.) 

On the note of books, I came across this Wiki entry the other day and it struck me as well…just being stupid.

Go ahead and call me an idiot for never having heard of the genre of ’speculative fiction.’ According to the Wiki entry, it’s as sub-genre of general fiction. Ok, then it starts blah blah blah-ing about different worlds, etc. However, what strikes me as just stupid is the SPECULATIVE part. Isn’t by it’s basic meaning fiction already speculative? That’s kind of WHY it’s fiction as opposed to NON-fiction. According to dictionary.com, speculation is 

1. the contemplation or consideration of some subject OR 4. conjectural consideration of a matter; conjecture or surmise   

I understand that not all of the contents of fictitious book are false or bullshit. There are usually very real and factual parts to a work of fiction. Dictionary.com defines fiction as the following…

3. something feigned, invented, or imagined; a made-up story  

But, again, if a book is classified in the FICTION section of your local library or bookstore, it’s generally received to be not necessarily a work of lies but perhaps one of non-truth. So, if we put all those little words together–consideration, contemplation, conjectural, invented, imagined…. hmm, they all read rather synonymous to me. Or am I just being stupid?

/end rant

Book recommendations wanted!

Before I get started on this blog I’ll mention there seems to be a Wordpress glitch I need to resolve. At first I thought it was maybe Safari but the same issue is occurring in Firefox as well. Each time I attempt to upload an image file, the browser gets killed. I’m asking The Google about this issue because I have some humorous uploads for this entry. Suffice it to say that the title should be enough for any curious readers provided said readers understand what the prefix scat means…. Until I can resolve this issue, no photo uploads and to that I say BOO!

Ok, update–got the kink worked out so here are a few pics.

The first is from my cell therefore the quality is shitty. The second pic is from Amazon because (of course) I asked The Google about the book and these are the suggested/paired readings. Just makes me laugh.