As you might have noticed, via the Current Music field, I found a copy of Toad the Wet Sprocket's P.S. It's quite good. I shortly thereafter discovered that there was yet another new track on the retrospective disc I don't posses, entitled Eyes Open Wide, or something to that effect. Cool... my favorite band is gone, yet I keep finding new tracks by them.
I've read a few more books, and have neglected to dissert thereupon. My sincerest apologies.
Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk, is quite similar to his other books, blathered on about elsewhere in this blog. Suffice it to say: bilking the Ronald McDonald house, hitching rides in pre-form houses, and manning a Bizarro-Samaritan hotline for those in need. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the book and browse earlier, in that order, damnit.
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, is the most disturbing "children's" book I've ever read. Neil himself says that "...as a general sort of rule, kids seem to read it as an adventure. Adults get nightmares." Well, no nightmares yet, but I'm thinking I didn't miss by much. Take a gander at this, one of the illustrations in the book:
Yes, that is indeed a disembodied, shriveled, long-nailed human hand skittering across young Coraline's floor. In the middle of the night.
Egad.
And, yet, it's an incredible book; I can understand how so many children love it. Coraline's tale is one of self-reliance tempered by wisdom, understanding and love. I've yet to be disappointed by Gaiman.
Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, is, as one would expect from the author, disjointed, surreal, and thoroughly enthralling. Vonnegut takes the most outrageous premise -- in this case, a slight contraction by the Universe which forces people to relive a rerun of the past 10 years of their life before continuing onward, once again in possesion of free will -- and uses it to poke fun at a myriad of seemingly unrelated topics, most notably capitalism and free will itself.
The book is hard to explain, harder to make sense of, and hardest to put down.
Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper, is a children's book I read originally in 4th grade. I found a copy in a used bookstore, and decided to find out how it stood the passage of so many years.
It stood quite well, thank you. The tale is as enchanting now as it was then. I have a nigh-irresistible urge to run out and buy the remainder of the series.
Ok, enough about books, and I've already yakked about Citizen Kane. You're all off the hook. Git.
I'm off to bed.