What I'm Reading

On the floor ^ next to my bed:

Why I Write, George Orwell
I barely relate to Orwell at all, but I've always relished this bit:
Writers, he says, are driven by ego... "And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane."

I'm not sure I'd say "efface your personality", but... "don't use yourself as the measure of all things, yes.

Four Seasons in Rome, Anthony Doerr 
US writer Doerr's memoir of living in Rome with his wife and their twin babies.

Caped Crusader: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture 
---already mentioned this--reading it slowly.

The Poe Shadow 
Picked up from a Little Free Library box, but why do I bother with mysteries? I never like them.  (There must be exceptions, but I can't think of them at the moment.)

Hillsider: Snapshots of a Curious Political Journey (2015)
Fun autobiography in blog-like style (photos & short essays) by Don Ness, who became mayor of Duluth, MN, when he was 40. I bought this from Amazon because of my interest in Duluth.

City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Star Trek Teleplay by Harlan Ellison, in comic book form,  pub. IDW, 2015.
To save the future he knows, Kirk travels back in time to Depression era USA, where he falls in love with a woman who is a pivotal figure in the stream of time.
Ellison's original script envisions the problems of love & time travel slightly differently than the TV version, which became one of Star Trek's top-ranked episodes. Both are good and go well together.

The Best of Trek: From The Magazine for Star Trek Fans
Letters and essays by fans---I love this stuff!

This letter pre-dates Star Trek---it's from sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories (I don't konw the date)--but it represents a kind of fan---the "mathy" kind of fan, as opposed to the "myth-y" kind:
 
This is a fandom turning point: By publishing the letter-writers' addresses, publisher Hugo Gernsback in 1926 sparked the first mass-media communications between fans (as opposed to fan clubs that met in person).