First, here’s a quote about research for writers (or anybody):

“I don’t use the internet much, because having looked up things about myself I know how much of it is rubbish.”

— Louis de Bernières

(That’s in memory of my mother, a one-time librarian.   🙂 )

 
Anyway, apparently it’s “weird 1970s time,” because this is what I’m reading right now:

1) The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (the first book in the Illuminatus Trilogy). I read these books once before, when I was in college, over several days when I was sick with a high fever and unable to sleep. My memory of it is, to say the least, fuzzy. If I start to get sick again, I’m going to stop reading immediately.

2) The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock (the first book of the Cornelius Quartet). I began it once. I’m fairly sure, but I’ve never finished it, as far as I can remember. I’ve always found Moorcock better to read about than to actually read.

But what the hell. It seems to go with the other two.

3) Sacred Locomotive Flies by Richard A. Lupoff. Difficult to describe. The most lighthearted of the three. Also the shortest, by a wide margin. The only one I really remember and the one I’m most likely to finish this time around. Also, the one that doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page.

4) Oh, and Mockingbird. This is the one that’s a modern comic book as opposed to freaky 1970s novel. The one with a dry and somewhat absurd wit. The ones where the individual issues fit together like a puzzle box — where, if you pay attention, you can keep track of where the Corgi dogs all came from and why Bobbi (Mockingbird) can explode Ping-Pong balls with her mind, though even so it’s hard to track how much Chardonnay Bobbi drinks — mostly because she keeps changing how much she’ll admit to.

I particularly appreciated the AV Club article I link to above, since in reading the actual book, I had missed the final page, with the yoga poses.