I've read three books in the past few days: Michael Crichton's Airframe, Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. they were all very different books. airframe was very technical, very well-researched, and engrossing. harris' book was very intriguing, but more in terms of character development, or should i say character revelation, as most of the tale is told in flashback. the hitchhiker's guide was amusing in the sardonic way it treats lifeand the Big Questions of the universe. I also got the sequel, the restaurant at the end of the universe, which i plan to read tomorrow since i only have two periods of school before i'm done with high school. oooh and a new book of billy collins' poetry. well not entirely new, it's "selected and new poems" which means it has my favorites from all his books in there! i wants it, i wants it! except that it's twenty two dollars for a pretty slim volume. i'm notoriously cheap when it comes to buying books. i consider them a good buy only if they're inexpensive. i consider paying more than twenty dollars for a book outright fleecing, and only for harry potter will i stomach it. the thought of paying a lot of money for a book that i don't know that i'll like or will have a satisfactory ending, one which i may never read again, is not to my liking. i buy books that i already know i love and would like to have permanently in my possession, like harry potter, howl's moving castle, the oracle glass, the master of all desires, the last don.

but i love billy collins, i truly do....he is my number one favorite poet. i used to love ee cummings, and before that ae housman, and then tennyson, and i still like them, but collins' poetry uses the most mundane images in the most extraordinary ways it just hits me like nothing else i have ever read. oh well--i'll put it on the List of Things to Tell People to Buy Me When Gift-Giving Occasions Occur and I Am Out of Ideas. i dont have one of those, but now i do!