More books

[geekchick]

Today is Boomtime, day 5 in the season of The Aftermath, 3271.
It is the sacred Apostle Holyday of Maladay.

Stuff that's been read in the last month and a half or so, in more-or-less reverse chronological order:

• Sex and Sunsets, Tim Sandlin. Our narrator hears voices in running water, has an ex-wife who refuses to admit that they were ever married, a thing for waitresses, and an insane passion for a woman he first laid eyes on as she punted a football before walking into the church for her wedding. Kelly crashes her reception to ask her to leave her husband so she can be with him. (He insists frequently that no, he's not crazy.) Most of the rest of the novel is about his persistent attempts to win Collette's heart, including a hang-gliding stunt that ends up like something out of a Road Runner cartoon. The ending seems particularly improbable (and given the rest of the story, you can only imagine) , but there are lots of extremely funny one-liners leading up to it.
  
• Night of the Avenging Blowfish. Screamingly funny, except for the fact that the main character, Secret Service agent Doyle Coldiron, is trying to deal with being extremely lonely and longing for the White House secretary that he's in love with, who happens to be married to someone else. (It wasn't an intentional theme for the month, I swear.) Regardless, nearly every page of the book had me cracking up, it's full of wonderfully smartassed exchanges. The subplot about the White House chef getting his revenge at a perceived slight to his cooking by serving Spam and cat food at a state dinner for the British prime minister and the consequences thereof is amusing, but the spookball game subplot is by far the best. It's a baseball game (which may or may not actually exist) between the Secret Service and the CIA on Bastille Day, time and location classified. The game is to be played at night, without lights, to keep the opposing team from finding it, and clues are supposed to be given as to where and when it takes place. If only one team manages to find it and show up, they win. Very funny, although I happened to read it while dealing with my own bout of loneliness (and in particular missing the friend who recommended this book to me a while back) and I don't necessarily recommend you do that. Made it onto my "favorites" tag on LibraryThing, and is much funnier than not.
  
• Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace, John Falk. The author suffered from profound and untreated depression as a child and into his early adulthood, and interestingly his descriptions of his experience make me realize that while I have had debilitating episodes from time to time and generally tend towards low-level depression, I've been really lucky that it's never been as pronounced as his was. The book jumps back and forth between Long Island in the 1980s and Sarajevo in 1993, when Falk took off to the region to become a freelance war reporter with faked credentials and absolutely no training or experience at all. Luckily for him, he gets taken under the wing of an experienced freelancer and is welcomed into the family that he ends up boarding with, the latter eventually leading him to the story that was turned into the movie Shot Through the Heart. Quote that made my boss ask what I was snorting at: "[the Serb soldiers] were dressed in purple-and-blue tiger-pattern fatigues that could only have been useful if they were fighting their way across Liberace's living room". Another recent addition to the "favorites".
  
• Little Birds, Anais Nin.
  
• Shutterbox: Orientation, Vol. 1, Rikki Simons (GIR!!) and Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons. When she dreams, a recent high school graduate finds herself at the afterlife's premiere educational institution, Merridiah University, where she'll study to become a muse in an exchange program that allows a living student to attend the university. Wasn't quite what I expected, but I admit that I picked it up because I liked the cover art (and because it was $3 and not $10 ;)). Maybe in later volumes the plot picks up a bit, this was pretty much all set-up.
  
• Atonement, Ian McEwan. This one has all the gloom with none of the snappy one-liners. Which is not to say I didn't really enjoy it, mind you; in fact, this was a banner month for finding new favorite books. I'm running out of steam as far as writing up the plot or my thoughts, but if you read the review blurbs at Powells, I'd say I agree with a large portion of them.
  
• Polar Star, Martin Cruz Smith. I still love the Arkady Renko character, although I think overall I enjoyed Gorky Park more than this installment.
  

I think that's it, although I'm probably forgetting something again.