Beetch Reading

So I'm glad to see that the tenacious one is still fired up about this nomination contest. Any political strategy that can turn TMcD, one of the most steadfast Clintonites of the 1990s, into a Clinton hater . . . brilliant work, Clinton team. They managed to be sort of like the political George Lucas, with the 2008 nomination fight as Phantom Menace, but with extra Jar Jar!

I've actually been back from vacation for the better part of a week, but that week flew by.

Vacation was great, for the most part. As you all know, the powers that be have decided to make getting anywhere (by air) in this day and age a royal pain in the ass, so there's that. And there was lots of driving on hot Southern highways. But the beach house was comfy, and the weather in Gulf Shores was hot.

I managed to read five books while on vacation--well, actually four and a half, and I finished one after getting back. So back on pace for the year.

I continue to dig Michael Connelly novels--this trip read The Lincoln Lawyer and The Black Ice this trip. The Black Ice is an excellent noir, not to take anything away from the other one. I am getting pretty close to having read all his novels, so he better write some more. Also read Pelecanos's Night Gardener, which was pretty good, William Gibson's Idoru, which seemed a bit dated to me (and it was published in 1996, so go figure), and Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, which was good but not really my thing, if you get my drift.

With Lethem, the thing is that the writing is too distracting, which reveals one of my preferences, in professional prose and in leisure reading. I like the writing to be direct, even simple, and the story/character/plot to be interesting. I think a lot of writers try to take a pretty uninteresting story, and bland characters, and try to make things interesting with fancy writing. I get annoyed at this. Pretty quickly.

Motherless Brookly also suffers from "gimmick writing," as the narrator of the story has Tourette's. That might strike some folks as clever, but not me. It's a gimmick. In addition to his Tourette's, which may or may not be believable, he's also the most self-reflective faux mobster I've ever encountered in print.

Anyway, I'm going to try to write more. Promise.