i finally finished a book

it's so lame that magazines don't count. i'm talking about the new yorker. since my last post, i've read a trillion new yorkers, and would like it to be noted that i think they should count. i mean, have you ever read a new yorker? mini novels, my friend. mini novels.

anyway, i finally read a book. if there's one author that can snap me out of my coma, it's sue grafton, and her kinsey millhone series. u is for undertow is the most recent one in the series - i have been addicted ever since a is for alibi. i must admit that i am getting nervous because there aren't that many letters left in the alphabet, and it will be a sad day when it all ends.

but three cheers for this quick and well-written novel, and now the wait for v......

kicking your ass

by the way i am so going to beat you this year. i am still behind two book write-ups. you best get busy reading lady. feed your soul. i prescribe lord peter whimsy stories by dorothy sayers.

i'm cheating by pasting a synopsis but i just am so far behind and cannot think about trying to describe this really cool, unusual noirish book

In this tightly plotted yet mind- expanding debut novel, an unlikely detective, armed only with an umbrella and a singular handbook, must untangle a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams.
In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency. All he knows about solving mysteries comes from the reports he's filed for the illustrious detective Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing and his supervisor turns up murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted to detective, a rank for which he lacks both the skills and the stomach. His only guidance comes from his new assistant, who would be perfect if she weren't so sleepy, and from the pithy yet profound "Manual of Detection" (think "The Art of War" as told to Damon Runyon).
Unwin mounts his search for Sivart, but is soon framed for murder, pursued by goons and gunmen, and confounded by the infamous femme fatale Cleo Greenwood. Meanwhile, strange and troubling questions proliferate: why does the mummy at the Municipal Museum have modern- day dental work? Where have all the city's alarm clocks gone? Why is Unwin's copy of the manual missing Chapter 18?
When he discovers that Sivart's greatest cases - including the Three Deaths of Colonel Baker and the Man Who Stole November 12th - were solved incorrectly, Unwin must enter the dreams of a murdered man and face a criminal mastermind bent on total control of a slumbering city.

people of the book

i liked this book. not as much as i liked the year of wonders, but geraldine brooks is an excellent writer. still, the story felt too simple and too complicated at the same time. i love that the reader was allowed to glimpse at part of the story of the book (a rare manuscript, a sarajevo haggadah). i liked knowing that though the book expert would only be able to trace the smallest parts of its history, more of the mystery was only revealed to me. it is a shame people don't pass things down through generations and communities more. not only are our verbal histories dying out but the value of a book or an heirloom die in the light of a society too busy to value much of anything worth valuing. god i hate that vapid walmart tv america. so quick to give up what really matters. anyway, beside the point. i really enjoyed the sections of history of the jewish people in this book - i have a huge gap in my knowledge about the full extent of their persecution as a people. i was shocked at how little i knew. also, how little i knew about sarajevo and how this was a place where all types of people and religions mixed peacefully, until they weren't allowed to anymore. anyway, pretty good read and well-written.

burn burn burn

So, i read my first classic during this entire booky blog experiment. I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. God what a writer. Reading an exceptionally well-written book really calls attention to all of the crap I read and try to make better in my head. It is about many things and has many levels to it. I could write a paper. But, for the purposes of the here and now I will just say that it is about an alternate society, one that Bradbury felt was a potentially possible future for society. It is about a society that has burned all of their books because the ideas have the potential to make them sad or dissatisfied in a way the people do not feel is necessary. Better just to watch the gigantic tvs and not even really interact much with each other. The firemen, which our eventual hero is one of, do not put out fires but in fact answer tips for suspected book owners and burn the books and the houses that hold them. The fireman meets a girl and her observations of the world and his role in it start to wake him up to a different way of interacting with the world. He ends up on the run from the police and meets up with a group of intellectuals who have been forced onto the fringes of society, tramps living by the tracks. And as each one introduces himself they say things like I am Great Expections, I am this part of the bible, I am this classic or the other, because they have all committed at least one book to memory in order to save a part of literary history. It is amazing as they trudge into the uncertain future with parts of books in their heads. Who knows if there will be a chance to write them down again some day. Or if they will just pass them along to willing future recipients. It is shocking and prophetic and extremely well written. Quite satisfying. And the point when they start introducing themselves as books is really moving.