Hooray!

It's quite heartening to already read, in Geoff Nicholson's The Lost Art of Walking, the term 'ex-president' applied to George W. Bush.

Weeding Fun

I just pulled a book from the shelves of my library called Varmint Hunter's Digest: The How-To Book for Varminters. I do believe that this is the first time I've ever encountered the word varmint used in correct context, and it is certainly the first time I've come across the noun varminter. Fan-tastic!

p.s. Even the Blogspot spell-check doesn't recognize varminter...

New Ivan Doig

I read the first 100 or so pages of The Eleventh Man last night, and am, as usual, in awe of Doig's ability to create using the English language. More folks from back east should read this man.

Romance novel, my ass

Davidson's debut, The Gargoyle, is frequently referred to as a romance novel or a love story. I'll buy the latter, but the wonder of such an engaging story is the infusion of Dante's Inferno, both as a plot point and as a structural device. This is a great book, with a new favorite quote about the existence of God: "I can no more believe in God than I can believe an invisible monkey lives in my ass; however, I would believe in both if they could be scientifically proven." I'm working that baby into every conversation I can!

More Cain

Sweetheart, Chelsea Cain's followup to Heartsick came out last Tuesday. It's always fun to read novels that take place in areas you know well, and I know just enough about Portland to follow the action in Gretchen Lowell's world. This sequel is solid, if a little too linear for my tastes. Though the characters are well established, I kinda felt like there should have been more insight into why Archie continues to blindly follow his psychopathic crush... That said, I still stayed up late turning the pages.

I'm not dead, yet...

Three books worth noting:

Exit Music by Ian Rankin. Apparently a fan pointed out to Ranking that Rebus should now be 60 and therefore at retirement age, so this marks the end for the greatest single-malt swilling inspector from Edinburgh. Sniffle (wait, that's from my cold, really!).

Bit of a Blur by Alex James. I'm often suprised at how good these bios are from the British Indie bands, so I just may check this one out. If nothing else, one should be sure to check out In Search of the La's by Matthew Macefield. Fantastic look by a fan.



Rugby. World politics. HOLY @#$%-ing shit! A BOOK ABOUT RUGBY AND WORLD POLITICS!

I should know better...

than to make a promise to post every day. Pneumonia knocked me flat for almost two weeks, so I'm back to 'whenever the hell i feel like it' as far as this silly thing goes. I did just start Empire Falls by Richard Russo. I haven't read anything of his, but based on what I hear, I'll most likely have to tear through them all as I did with Larry Brown and Jon Irving.

Apologies...

varied/non-existant readers. Been out yesterday and today with a fever pushing 103. BIG FUN! I'll resume posting on Monday when I BETTER be able to go back to work.

Specifically for MTR

There are a billion coffee shops in the PNW, as you may know. I've had drinks at most of those in Eugene, but I had a severe flashback the other day when picking up a cold mocha drink for Jen. I tasted it on the way home, and it was as close as you'll ever get to a Dog Street Chill. Memories...

Tarnation...

Saw this trailer the other day and was shamed into pulling out the copy of Saramago's book that I've been meaning to read now for many years. I've heard incredible things about his writing, but somehow never traveled far enough down the stack to read Blindness. Always hard to tell from a trailer, but this film looks fantastic.