Last year (maybe at Christmas?) Alex gave me Ann Patchett’s novel Run. Inspired by Alex’s example, I shall blogify it. And my love for Patchett’s fiction, in general. Short version? It’s awesome.
Review: Run (&c.)
May 30th, 2009 — thoughts
W is for WTH*
May 21st, 2009 — thoughts
Review of Sue Grafton’s T is for Trespass (SPOILERS AHEAD)
Alternate Titles: A very special Kinsey Millhone Mystery. T is for Tedious. Sue Grafton Discovers the Collective Values and Book-buying Power of the AARP. Ow My Ears and Brain Judy Kaye Please Watch a Detective Movie and Take Notes Before Reading Your Next Audiobook.
Final Grade: C- or maybe a D+. Past Alphabet Mysteries, though inconsistent in quality, were all entertaining, and with just enough offbeat quirks to set them apart from the crowded field of mystery fiction. They were slightly goofy, occasionally unpredictable film-noir detective novels, in which the femme fatale just happens also to be the hard-boiled detective. With this latest installment, however, Grafton has written a plot that could easily be discussed for 30 minutes on The View. That’s right; it’s one long, drawn-out, carefully politically balanced domestic dispute.
Santa Claus is Coming to Town – Uninspired semireligious dystopian imagery in a major key
December 19th, 2008 — thoughts
Santa Claus is Coming to Town (SCICTT), the 1934 holiday anthem penned by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, is a dank and terrifying morass of Western religious child terror, wallowing in the threadbare banality of Orwellian paranoia.
The first strains of this well-worn dreadnought of a carol set an appropriately hopeless tone: “You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout…” Children — ostensibly the intended audience of this misanthropic musical melange — are put on notice. They are to be observed, measured, and managed. Not only their behavior but their mental and emotional states will fall under the purview of a merciless overlord in red and white fur. A cheerful melody and jaunty accompaniment lay a whistling-in-the-dark veneer over the lyrics, which summon a haunted existence so unoriginal as to numb the mind.