The future approaches ...

Most people are probably feeling the holidays bearing down on them. I've got some of that but mostly what I feel bearing down on me is the 2012 Key West Literary Seminar -- which will be quite early in the year (starting Jan. 5!) -- and which, this year, features an even-more-astounding-than-usual lineup of writers. Atwood. Gibson. Letham. Egan. Shteyngart. Whitehead. Coupland. I could go on. The title is Yet Another World, the subject is dystopia (sort of). Or at least visions of the near future. Unfortunately for anyone who would like to shell out $600 and attend this year's Seminar it is beyond sold out. The waiting list has a couple hundred people on it. So if you don't have a ticket, there's no hope. Except ...

There are multiple ways to participate in the Literary Seminar even if you can't get a ticket. For example:

* Read the books. This is the most important way to participate -- and at the Key West Library we have a helpful display of the books by Seminar authors, right when you walk in the door. Books by Literary Seminar authors, by the way, are the focus of our Book Bites Book Club in January. Meeting is Jan. 12 at 4:30 p.m. So read along, then come and talk about the books!

* Attend the free Sunday session. That's right -- free and open to the public. Every year, the Seminar offers up this opportunity to the community. If you scroll down to the bottom of the Seminar schedule, you'll see the lineup for that session and it's impressive: Billy Collins! Margaret Atwood! George Saunders! Gary Shteyngart!

* If you're of the tweeting persuasion, follow along on Twitter, by following @keywestliterary and their list of Seminar authors who tweet. Once we get closer and into the Seminar, start looking for the hashtag #yetanotherworld. I'll be using it (I'm @keywestnan) and no doubt others will too, hopefully including super-tweeters William Gibson (@greatdismal) and Margaret Atwood (@margaretatwood). Program chair -- and esteemed writer in his own right -- James Gleick -- is at @jamesgleick.

* Keep an eye on Littoral, the Seminar's excellent blog, as well as the Audio Archives, where some of the Seminar sessions should eventually make it online and be preserved forever in what William Gibson called cyberspace, back in 1984. That's right, I'm finally reading Neuromancer. Which is great though I am starting to suspect I am not really smart enough to read William Gibson.

Teaser Tuesdays: In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood

It's that time. Time when the approaching Key West Literary Seminar starts to morph from concept to reality. And what a reality this one will be, especially if you are a fan of speculative fiction -- or, in some cases, what people call scifi. High-quality scifi to be sure. We've got your William Gibson, we've got your Douglas Coupland and yeah, we have your Margaret Atwood. Along with a couple other people like Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Lethem, Gary Shteyngart and ... well, just check out the link above. The bad news, by the way, is that the Seminar is totally, completely, utterly and without hope sold out. There are something like 400 people on the waiting list. So there's no buying a ticket at this point. But there is the Sunday afternoon session, free and open to the public. I imagine the line for this one might start forming on New Year's Day.

Margaret Atwood, conveniently, has just written a book that is one of my absolute favorite kind of books -- literary criticism, or analysis, or description for the non-academic. Rescuing the examination of literature from the academy! God bless her! So anyway, In Other Worlds is my Tuesday Teaser this week, just under the wire since I started reading it on my lunch hour. The rules, as always, are to take two sentences from anywhere, then post the link in the comments section on the Should Be Reading blog.

"My field of specialization was the nineteenth century, and I was busying myself with Victorian quasi-goddesses; and no one could accuse [Rider] Haggard of not being Victorian. Like his age, which practically invented archaeology, he was an amatuer of vanished civilizations; also like his age, he was fascinated by the exploration of unmapped territories and encourters with 'undiscovered' native peoples." -- p. 109

Teaser Tuesdays: The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Nonfiction a-go-go continues: Now into The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, about the Renaissance rediscovery of Lucretius' poem "On the Nature of Things." I had requested it from the library even before it won the National Book Award for nonfiction. I'm only 50 pages in and I haven't hit real traction but that's not the book's fault -- it's more readable than I had thought, even. So here's the teaser (the rule is two sentences from a random page, post the link in the comments section of the Should Be Reading blog. Or if you don't have a blog, you can just post your teaser in the comments):

"Despite the vigorous efforts that Thomas More made, during his time as chancellor, to establish one, England had no Inquisition. Though it was still quite possible to get into serious trouble for unguarded speech, Bruno may have felt more at liberty to speak his mind, or, in this case, to indulge in raucous, wildly subversive laughter." (p. 236)

Folos

Couple items of note: In my review of Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin, my only complaint was that there weren't enough images (especially of the original dog) and my hope was that someone was putting together a documentary using Orlean's work as its basis. My prayers are mostly answered! Orlean herself has put together a visual presentation -- and she's coming to Key West! Hooray! She'll be at the Tropic on Monday, Nov. 21 -- you can already buy tickets and you should do so. They're $12 for Tropic members; $15 for nonmembers. This is especially welcome this year since I won't make it to the Miami Book Fair (though if you are anywhere in South Florida and have the time and are interested in reading at all, I highly recommend it). And, since I wrote about the Shakespeare authorship question and read a whole book about it -- Contested Will by James Shapiro -- I went to see Anonymous. As always, I enjoyed the Elizabethan sets and costumes. And it was way fun to see theater of that time presented in its original context. Vanessa Redgrave was great as Elizabeth and her daughter, Joely Richardson, was, too. I don't really have a problem with historical inaccuracy in service of telling a dramatic story -- Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, is one of my favorite movies ever. I watched the entire run of The Tudors, and enjoyed it, even though every single character was historically preposterous. But. I do have a problem with rampant inaccuracy (I'm no expert but I can rattle off about six in Anonymous without even trying) when you're purporting to be truthtellers who are correcting a giant historical inaccuracy/conspiracy. And, I have to say: Rhys Ifans' eye makeup. What was up with that???

Teaser Tuesdays: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

I am definitely on a nonfiction jag these days -- punctuated by bouts of mostly trashy fiction -- and the current one is Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. I'm a little over halfway through and it's great so far -- I'm fond of 19th century American history, especially about lesser known figures, and of historical true crime. This fits both categories. What I've learned so far is fascinating though heartbreaking: James Garfield, assassinated a few months into his unlikely presidency, was a good man who would have been a real asset to the nation in the middle of its Gilded Age excesses. And Charles Guiteau, the assassin, was even more of a wackjob than I realized after reading Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Anyway here's the teaser:

To submit your own teaser, post two sentences (spoiler free, please!) and submit your blog post in the comments section of Should Be Reading. Don't have a blog? Then post the teaser itself in the comments.

"To Americans in 1881, the principal danger their presidents faced was not physical attack but political corruption. With a determination that shocked even the most senior politicans, they turned their wrath on the spoils system, the political practice that had made Garfield the target of the delusional ambitions of a man like Guiteau." -- p. 249