Monday

[nightdog_barks]

Cool and very windy, with the barest possibility of snow flurries tonight. Thank goodness all our seedlings are still inside. :D

Finished Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End last night, and I will totally admit I skimmed the last quarter of the book because I cared absolutely nothing about any of the characters. Okay, I take that back -- I cared enough about Lynn, the boss, to see what happened to her, so I skimmed just enough to find out how she turned out. What can I say? This one is going into the "donate" box right now. Started reading Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, which I think I must have read about a million years few decades ago, but if I did, I don't remember it at all. So far it is awesome.

So much love seeing Dame Shirley Bassey at the Academy Awards last night -- I hope she and Barbra Streisand got to hang out backstage, being regal as shit and all, because damn. Shirley Bassey.

Comments

[namaste]

"Then We Came To The End" is something I liked more for its style than its characters. I enjoyed it well enough, but at the same time, a few years after reading it, I still remember the style more than anything else.

I'm now reading TC Boyles' "San Miguel," and loving it, as I do all of Boyle's stuff.

[nightdog_barks]

I thought Ferris' writing style in Came to the End was wonderful. That use of "we," drawing the reader in so the reader, in a way, becomes part of and complicit in the story. I just wished he'd come up with some more interesting characters. *g*

Have you read Boyles' Drop City? I LOVED Drop City.

[namaste]

Yes, it's that ability to not only use "we" -- which would have seemed nothing more than pure literary exercise -- and making it feel as if you're sitting in that office, bsing about the coffee and gossip -- that I loved. But the characters? (Though I was taken in by the whole paint gun incident at first as well.)

I've read "Drop City," and "Road to Wellville" and enjoyed both. And I've read some of his short stories. Every time I read him I think: "I really enjoy his writing. i should read more," and yet it seems to fall off the reading list, for no good reason.

[nightdog_barks]

Yep, I was totally suckered by the paint gun chapter. That was also the last chapter I started out interested in, and then ... I don't know what happened, really, but all of a sudden I just wasn't interested anymore. Maybe there wasn't enough differentiation between the characters, but I didn't want to read any more about them. I did want to see what happened to Lynn, so I watched for mention of her name, but that was it.

I've read Drop City, and Road to Wellville, and San Miguel, and liked them all. I know I've read some of his short stories in The New Yorker, but I can't remember any of them. Oh well. *g*

[blackmare]

Hi hi from lovely I-75 by moonlight. About an hour from the old homestead, where I will doubtless snuggle into the welcoming grasp of the Sofa of Joy. I am not being sarcastic, here. It is a wonderful sofa.

I can't get my main email account on this, my brother's ipad, so I'm just dropping by here to read the fun book discussion and wave at you. So: *waves*