The Rebel Black Dot Christmas Song of the Day
Barenaked Ladies, "O Holy Night" from Barenaked For the Holidays (T.L.A.M.)

Project TROIKA
True and honest, I love the pressure of a deadline.

The Queue
Recently Finished
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (and the short story "Witch War")
Caroline Alexander, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

In Progress
Richard E. Crabbe, Suspension ***interrupted***
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale ***suspended***
various, Great Adventures with National Geographic ***piecemeal***

In the Wings
Ernest Shackleton, South
John Toland, The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters (possibly piecemeal)
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise

Farther Afield*
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
Rudyard Kipling, The Man who would be King and Other Stories
Rudyard Kipling, Kim
Saki, The Complete Saki

Project TROIKA is just the first step. The turning over of all Project TROIKA data and materials to The Professor by the revised and much more logical deadline of 11:59 p.m. E.S.T. Sunday, 4 January 2009 completes the non-sequential Phase 2 of a much larger undertaking, the most ambitious enterprise of my life: codename CADMUS. (CADMUS is named after the mythological figure, he of the dragon's teeth, but in deference to the phenomenal Superman comics of the '90s and the work of Jack "King" Kirby from which they took inspiration, CADMUS shan't be called "Project Cadmus" or "the Cadmus Project." The leading contenders are "Operation CADMUS," "the CADMUS Endeavour," and "the CADMUS Initiative.") I need to read and I need to write. Several writing projects are already lined up for after TROIKA, and now I need to get back into prose in a serious way. There are no shortcuts here, there's nothing to do but read, read, and then read some more.

I defer to the title of a fantastically wild anime: Read or Die.

The Holidaze
The Loot
An Unfortunate Sojourn in Ohio
Eye of the Tiger

*All are recent additions to my personal library.