I've been receiving a nearly constant stream of free books in the mail. It's a little daunting, but very cool. Today I got a voluminous self-published science fiction novel called "The Number of Infinity" and an autographed pre-production copy of John Shirley's forthcoming book on Gurdjieff (which is about as seamless and satisfying as biographies get; I hope this gets the attention and acclaim it deserves).

Waiting in the wings is "The Orion Protocol," an intriguing-looking novel about Mars by Gary Tigerman (who has a cool website) and numerous related nonfiction titles. My plan right now is to hop back and forth between Van Flandern's book and Shirley's while reading McAuley's "The Secret of Life." Then I'll crack the cover of "Mars: The Living Planet" -- a book I should have read a long time ago. Of course, by that time I'll have a new stack demanding attention. But I can deal with that later.

By the way, it actually snowed. For a few minutes, before the street-shovelers and snow-blowers could work their dark magic, the world seemed satisfyingly alien.