If you're reading this site, you probably already know this, but just in case, here's the text of an email I sent around early last week:

Dear friends and colleagues:

This is just a note to let you know I’m leaving Dead Horse and to pass on my new
contact info. (My partners and I have an insurmountable difference of opinion regarding
long-term strategy for the company and we’ve come to point where I would like to
do some projects that are materially riskier and more experimental than Dead Horse’s
existing properties, and they would prefer to pull back and focus solely on the
sites we have. There are reasonable and good arguments to be made on both sides
of the issue, but ultimately we had to pick one or the other and pulling back was,
for me, a dealbreaker--pun only slightly intended.)

Anyway, I’m in the process of deciding whether I want to pursue the aforementioned
experimental projects independently or just chill out for a while and do some writing.
In the meantime, if you need to reach me, this email address works...

I'm probably going to use the next 6 months or so to write, regardless of whether I decide to do a startup again. Along those lines, something else that was going around last week: my not-very-enthusiastic review of Conde Nast's new business magazine, Portfolio. They've got plenty of time to improve it, and I'm sure they will, but the first issue was horribly mediocre--especially for a Conde Nast publication.

I tend to read several books simultaneously. And by several, I mean 20 or so. I'd feel weird about this freakish behavior except that people have been paid to write about doing the same thing in the New York Times Book Review, which means that I am not alone. (I am alone with Joe Queenan.)

At any rate, I haven't updated the "Currently Reading" category on the sidebar here because that requires clicking the "template" button, then clicking the index link, then typing some stuff, then clicking the "republish" button, and that's just too much clicking and typing for me. After all, I'm a very busy person. I'm trying to read 20 books at once, for god's sakes.

I put the category in the sidebar in the first place in the hopes that people would see it and send me new recommendations based on what I was reading, but the only recommendations I've ever gotten were (A) blog more, (B) blog less, or (C) start writing about Christopher Hitchens again. To which I say: (A) no (B) no, and (C) no.

But I'm looking for book recommendations. After the jump are 8 of the 20+ books I've been reading lately and particularly enjoying:

The Royal Flash by George Macdonald Fraser - My book editor was reading the Flashman books a while ago and recommended them. He says they get repetitive after the third book or so, but I'm still finding them hilarious.

The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski - Kapuscinski's book on violent conflict in Africa. It's first-person reportage and beautifully written, with a depth of emotion you don't normally see in this sort of non-fiction. I can already tell I'm going to have read everything else he's ever written.

Hilaire Belloc by AN Wilson - This one's out of print and I got it for research purposes, but am enjoying it immensely. Belloc horrifies me in many respects, but I like his wit and he was a great rhetoritician.

The Man that Time Forgot by Isaiah Wilner - Dana Vachon recommended this to me on the basis that I reminded him of Britton Hadden. I'm almost through it and I'm still not sure it was a compliment. The book is about the founding of Time magazine and while the idea of comparing it to birth of blogging strikes me as inherently repulsive, there are some funny parallels. (p. 65: "Instead of gathering his own news--an arduous and expensive chore--he would assemble the most interesting information from newspapers... the main problem was not a lack of information, but too much...")

A Circle is a Balloon and a Compass Both by Ben Greenman - Ben's a pal and I like his writing so I went and got this when he told me it was out. I love George Saunders' stories and as one of the reviewers noted, Ben's have a very similar feel.

A Distant Episode by Paul Bowles - My boyfriend demanded that I read this, and I haven't been able to tear myself away from it. It really is stunning. The stories are set largely in Morocco and other parts of North Africa, and they're beautifully dark with an economy of writing I wish I had.

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq - Also a recommendation. When the blurb on the back says "novel of ideas" I usually assume that means there's no plot or no character development. Not the case here. I think there's a reluctance to incorporate science into fiction on the basis that it might suck the romance out of the emotional, physiological and philosophical underpinnings of life that are the basis of great fiction. Sheer speculation, of course, but I don't see it done often or well. TEP is technically brilliant in general, but particularly in that respect.

The Friend of Women and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss - Also in the research vein, I'm reading a lot of American novelists who write fiction about upper class Americans who are not inherently sympathetic. Auchincloss wrote almost exclusively about them, and quite prolifically. His moralism is a little heavy-handed for my tastes, but I've been accused of being too nihilistic, so maybe the problem is less Auchincloss than me.