Yep, another little theme shuffle here. I got tired of having slow scrolling on the old theme, though I loved it so.

I finished up Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself and have to say it's climbed to number two on my favorite Bryson books list, closely following In a Sunburned Country. After I wrote my previous review, the next few episodes in Stranger were simply sublime pieces of humor, some of Bryson's most humorous work. Serves me right for reviewing a partially-read book.

I followed that up with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle which, as many Dick novels, has a somewhat cryptic ending. The novel is about the movements of the I Ching and its relationship to a novel that all of the major characters are reading. Man in the High Castle is an alternate history, but so is the novel that the characters are reading as they go about their various activities. Reading or interacting with this fictional book is a minor glue that holds together the characters, becoming more and more important as the novel proceeds. The conclusion has some fascinating psychological gyrations that I won't spill. Suffice it to say that this mental twist of an alternate history inside of an alternate history takes a spectacular dive off a cliff by the story's close. Additionally, there is a strong theme of cultural interaction as Eastern, European (German, actually), and American cultures collide and intermingle in the book. Dick stereotypes and humanizes these various cultures, commenting with deft strokes, and leaving no clear winner in the comparisons. As you can probably tell, I dug it muchly.

A friend's loaned me Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and its sequel. So far I like the setting, the characterizations, and how the plot's flowing, but I'm starting to see a religion vs. science theme that might get a bit irritable to me. Hopefully it's not drummed up too much.