What is Edward Ashton reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Edward Ashton, author of Mal Goes to War.

His entry begins:

I've been spending a lot of time on airplanes recently. Downside? Deep vein thrombosis. Upside? Lots of reading time! Travel is stressful, though, so I tend towards comfort reads when I'm flying. For me, that often means re-reading books that I first grew to love when I was a child.

On my most recent trip, for example, I brought along City, by Clifford D. Simak. This book is a classic--I mean, all of Simak's books are, but this one holds a special place in my heart. It's a collection of eight separate but interrelated stories chronicling the decline and fall of man and the rise of doggish civilization over thousands of years, told through the eyes of the Webster family and their associated dogs, robots, martians, and other assorted hangers-on. Each tale is preceded by a snippet of scholarly discourse among doggish scholars arguing over whether the stories are meant to be taken literally or figuratively, and whether "man" is meant to refer to an actual creature that once lived, or is simply a part of dogs' origin myths. As someone who loves dogs, scholarly discourse, and Simak in roughly equal measure, this book is pretty much tailor-made for me.

When I'm not on the road and I'm able to read things that actually require me to pay close attention, I tend to bounce between...[read on]

Visit Edward Ashton's website.

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Writers Read: Edward Ashton.

--Marshal Zeringue