The summer is coming to an end. I'm sitting in the waiting room while my car gets checked up, and since they offer free wireless here (thanks, Honda!), how about an update. Over the past few weeks, I've been working an easy-but-tedious job, and so I've been listening to a lot of books on tape. In fact, in addition to the handful of books I actually physically read, here's my reading list since the end of April:
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union [thoughts]
Stephen Fry - Rescuing the Spectacled Bear
John Hodgman - The Areas of My Expertise
Khaled Hosseini - A Thousand Splendid Suns
Chuck Klosterman - IV
Chuck Klosterman - Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
Jonathan Lethem - Men and Cartoons
Jonathan Lethem - The Disappointment Artist
Howard Marks - Book of Dope Stories
Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men
David Rakoff -Fraud
Ian Rankin - The Naming of the Dead
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter 7 [thoughts]
Louis Theroux - The Call of the Weird [thoughts]
Kurt Vonnegut - A Man Without A Country
Sarah Vowell - Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell - The Partly Cloudy Patriot
Knowledge is power. From now til December, it's only gonna be this and this for me. Weep.
Wrapped up in books
Your mom's a Horcrux
Like one out of every three humans on the planet, I bought and read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this past weekend. Outside the window, it was raining heavier than it has all year. Lights flickered. These phenomena may or may not be related to the fact that Cheney was President at the time, due to GW's operation. The climate suited the book's apocalypse-or-bust vibe. Also befitting the mood, during the course of my eight hour readathon, I got through a large chunk of the Constellation Records catalogue - all of Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada, Yanqui UXO, half of Levez Vos Skinny Fists, Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upwards, and the first few songs from You, You're A History in Rust. I don't know why enigmatic Canadian post-rock best befits images of elves and dragons and giants and whatever-the-fuck Aragog the giant spider is, but it does.
So much has been written about the book that I feel any opinion of mine would be redundant, so I'm not going to tell you what I thought of it. Ask me if you really want to know. But really, I wanted to tell you about a friend, Lara, who is engaging in that popular American summer pastime, being a camp counseller. She told the kids not to spoil the book for her, she told them many times. And then, one day, one of them came up to her and said "Have you finished yet? I can't believe that Ron ************ and Harry finally ************** and *********"
Of course, Lara had not finished the book yet.
So she shot the kid in the leg with an arrow.
Lara Calloway, though you don't have internet access where you are, Congratulations! You are the AYGH? HERO OF THE WEEK.
