Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Reading Report: William Gibson On Wednesday night, I went with my son and his girlfriend (who I just met) to a reading-with-book-signing by William Gibson, one of my favorite authors. I’ve read his novels Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, Idoru, and The Difference Engine (co- with Bruce Sterling), as well as his short stories in the Burning Chrome collection. Virtual Light is one of my all-time favorite books: I own it on cassette and re-listen to it about once a year. I also name most of my computers Wintermute, after his AI character in Neuromancer. So, yeah, I’m a fan. The event was in the Coolidge Theater in Brookline, an old-fashioned theater with some style and elegance, not like the mall movie theaters of today, which look like they were extruded out of sheet aluminum. He’s a tall, slender guy, obviously both shy and mild-mannered. He looks like someone you might see feeding the birds in the park, or leafing through old magazines on the quiet sidel

Book report: The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho What are your dreams in life? Santiago dreams of traveling to the pyramids in Egypt and discovering a great treasure. But how can this possibly happen? He’s a young shepherd in Andalusia with no money. He has no idea how to get to Egypt. And yet he has this dream. His dream is enough to induce him to take the first steps of a journey. Along the way, he meets many people, some good, some bad, but their influence – whatever their intentions – helps him on his way. And as to where he ends up – well, it’s not where he thought originally. This story is written very simply, like a parable. I kept having the feeling that certain characters were symbols for grander things, but I’m not clever enough to puzzle it out. There is a fable-like quality about it, a bedtime-story simplicity about details of where the story takes place and when. One of the recurring elements of the story has to do with omens. Omens, in this story, are little signposts th