Good Reading

I've been reading a lot lately and watching very little. I usually start several books at once and let them compete for my interest. Sometimes I end up dropping all of them but usually one grabs my attention and I'll abandon the others to their fate. If they deserve to be read, they'll remind themselves to me I figure.

The latest winner was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a charming novel (?) written entirely in letters, and thus constantly juggling ~10 voices. Though I really liked the book, I'm a very lazy reader, and when towards the middle I realized that this character Susan Scott, who showed up less frequently than the rest, was a blindspot in my mental cast lineup, I bulldozed through Susan's latest letter without skipping a beat. Someone else may have flipped through to the beginning of the book and sniffed out this woman's role (I'm reasonably sure she's a woman), but I'm not bothered by such minor inconveniences as not knowing who a character is. I read purely for the pleasure of the process, which is why I can reread all the books I've already read and enjoy them the same the 2nd time around. In fact, when I was younger, this was exactly what I did. I had two books that I loved, which was the only fact I remembered after reading them each time, and I would read them over and over while my parents tried to inveigle me into reading something new. "Didn't we say you'd like Three Musketeers? Trust us, you're going to LOOOVE ...(I forgot)." Yea, and you were right, Three Musketeers rocked so hard that who would ever need another book?

Anyway, dear Susan, these days, I'm more adventurous and I constantly read books I've never read before. I think. It's hard to tell sometimes, every book's a bit of a deja vu once you start either enjoying it or stop caring a fig for it.

The current book I'm munching on is Daughter of Smoke and Bone. So far it hasn't blown me away. It reads a bit like the supernatural (vampire, werewolf, zombie, turducken) adolescent melodrama crap my sister binges on (no offense sis, and good to see you here!), but it's also got a bit of a spunky Hellboy touch to it, which was decent fun...but I draw the line at decent. The main reason I'm still reading it is that it comes with Patrick Rothfuss's effusive recommendation, the Patrick Rothfuss who has us all biting our wrists (we already gnawed fingernails, fingers and hands off) waiting for the last installment in the Kingkiller Chronicle. I'm way more excited about it than you were about the 7th Harry Potter book. Trust me on this one Susan, go to the nearest bookstore right now (don't fret, there's one right on your Kindle), and get yourself a copy of The Name of the Wind, the first book in the soon to be trilogy.

Now I must really bid you farewell Susan, I've got some mean potatoes to peel.

Expiration

I just realized I forgot to blog yesterday, for the hundredth and nth time in a row. On the one hand, that's a sweet 100 day No Blogging Trial in the bank, a story I can't wait to tell to my grandchildren (who will visit me from a parallel universe. The current plan is to not have any children, planned or unplanned). "One time I held it in for 100 days...100 DAYS! And you, your bladder exploded after a mere 10 hours!" On the other hand, a hundred opportunities for cheerful self-appreciation have been lost irrevocably. Every cloud has a cloud.

I got some dirt-cheap peanut butter today. I checked just in case and it wasn't dirt, though Mario would say it's as crunchy as dirt is. Apparently, Chinese people, with their uncanny intuition for bargaining and their boundless talent for ripping you off, don't know that peanut butter is like a visa: when it expires, you just slap a new label on it and it's good for another six months. And as this peanut butter probably came from overseas, it was probably made in the 1950s anyway and only made it here when they ran out of trees to make labels.

Anyway, it was delicious and I didn't vomit up much blood at all afterwards. I used the rest of the jar to rub on the sores that sprouted all over my body. Talk about multipurpose. And all for 3RMB a jar! 300RMB well spent.

I'm kind of a fanatic missionary when it comes to certain literature, movies and music. I've channeled so much various psychology into convincing people to read The Three Musketeers that it kind of amazes me when I see other books on shelves of bookstores. Maybe it's all the reverse psychology I've put into the task that's been canceling it out. Damn it! Now I understand why I haven't convinced a single person yet. I've failed miserably with my sister, my mom absolutely refused to read it again after the 63 time we read it aloud together and if my girlfriend were on a diet of books, she'd be long past rotting corpse. You'd need carbon dating to identify her period.

Currently she's nibbling at Twenty Years Past, but there's only a ten year warranty on the Kindle so she was doomed from the start. Thinking the fault may lie with the Chinese translation, I decided to take a peek. Happily and sadly, the fault lies completely with the reader; the translation is engaging, humorous and not disappointing at all.