Yes, I've been out of town much. And busy much of the other times. And I made a vow when I started to never apologize for a lack of posts, so I'm not.

I also do not find myself with too much time to read, but I do enjoy reading myself to sleep each night. The secret is hiding under my pillow with my pocket PC and using ISilo and auto-scroll. (Warning: dozing off while your book is scrolling will cause you to lose your place. Trust me.) I cannot afford to buy many books and the library does not lend ebooks, so instead I rely on the Gutenberg Project. Some texts are already availble in iSilo format and it is also possible to convert text and html texts into a suitable format. I love having 15-20 books with me at all times, in case I get stuck in a waiting room or find myself waiting for my kids somewhere.

Yes, the books are old but so what. I've been trying to get some of the classics I've never read under my belt as well as some unknown titles by famous authors and occasionally something completely random. I'd never read Burroughs before and never really wanted to - I knew the Tarzan story so why read the book? However, after trying a few of his other works, I will probably go back and read all of his stuff, including the Tarzan stories. Stories I particularly enjoyed were The Outlaw of Torn, The Efficiency Expert and The Mucker. They are all fairly light reading but have interesting (and very diverse) plots and settings and the writing is excellent.

Those are enjoyable enough but it is another book that prompted me to generate this post. I started reading Dumas and found The Three Musketeers enjoyable enough. On a whim I download several of his more famous works and one I'd never heard of before: The Black Tulip. Best decision of the year. This is a beautiful work with compelling characters and beautiful prose. I'm not quite finished with it but the author's craft at making the blooming of a flower terribly suspenseful has already placed this volume onto my all-time favorites list. (If you want my iSilo version, just email me and I will send it.)