Dear Neal,

I’ve been enjoying meeting some of your other readers and decided to chime in myself.
Amazon recommended The Skinner to me about 6 or 7 years ago, and I checked it out of my school’s library (Oberlin College in Ohio), read it way too fast, bought my own copy, and read it again. I never read books twice.

And I’ve subsequently read fifteen more of your books (all of them?)

You may be happy to know that you’re now one of my four favorite Neals! (Neal Asher, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stepheson. And my friend — Neil — who is not an author.) I’m also a big fan of China Mieville, Stanislaw Lem, and Jonathan Carroll, among others, in case you’re interested.

I am a 25-year old composer living in San Francisco, not yet making a living with music. Soon enough, I hope, though! (I’ve put a ton of my original music on my website — www.sethgsamuel.com ). I worked at two bookstores in Atlanta while in high school and summers during my college years — Chapter Eleven and Wordsmiths — and now both are gone, which is sad. I got a Masters in Film Scoring at NYU after getting my Bachelor’s in Composition at Oberlin, and while in New York I interned at the literary agency Black, Inc — the agency of, among others, Mitch Albom. Yep. I got Mitch Albom coffee! He said “thanks.” To me!

And now I live biking distance from a great, great store in San Francisco called Borderlands that carries all your books. I got my last two Ashers there, and they were pleased. Maybe I’ll work there.

Anyway, 99.9% of my books are back in Atlanta, in my parents’ house, but I’ve catalogued just about every book I’ve read to date on librarything.com. I’ve attached a screenshot of page one from it to this message.
Right between Woody Allen and Isaac Asimov — that’s you!

Best,

Seth