Between Panic & Desire by Dinty W. Moore

211. Between Panic & Desire by Dinty W. Moore

I was disappointed to see this book when it arrived for me at the library. Awful cover. Looked like my fifth grade niece did the artwork. I’d read Moore’s piece, Son of Mr. Green Jeans, for a class this summer and loved it. Raved about it. Masterful. This was the first selection in the book. Oh dear. Is Moore a one-hit wonder?

No. Happily I can say no. Ignore the cover. Moore can write, at least about the sadnesses of his life. It’s a lovely book. Funny. Clever. Glad I read it.

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld

210. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld

A graphic novel told from seven points of view about the events before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. I loved Zeitoun, a recent read about Katrina. I loved A.D., too. I suppose I will always find it jarring to see comic book characters smoke and drink, but hey, I would imagine there was a lot of smoking and drinking in NO after Katrina.

The Royal Ghosts: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay

209. The Royal Ghosts: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay

Two things intrigued me when I saw this book posted at BookCrossing: the Nepal setting and how much the reader loved the book.

Story one left me regretting my decision to join the ring for this book. What? I thought. But then I got into the way the author writes and I liked it. Each story felt like the author had written an entire novel about the characters and then randomly deleted the first fifty and the last hundred and fifty pages.

Abrupt starts and stops. Unfinished narratives. Events, conversations that sounded like they could have been taking place in my small Texas town and then, suddenly, the author throws in a Nepalese festival or food or riot and I realize, Hey, wait, this is not Kansas.

But it turns out that I liked the book a lot. Yes, I’d recommend it.

Beowulf at the Beach by Jack Murnighan

208. Beowulf at the Beach by Jack Murnighan

I do not think there could be a person on earth (1) who obviously loves reading as much as I do, yet (2) who has completely and totally opposite reading tastes.

Let me make one thing clear: Jack is a GUY. He is looking for action in books. Plot. Fighting. Killing. Plunder. You know. That sort of stuff.

I could care less about plot. I want to get inside people’s heads. I want to understand people. A group of intriguing people, sitting around in chairs, talking? Excellent book for me.

So Beowulf at the Beach had nothing for me. Jack looked at fifty classics and showed all the violence and action you didn’t know was there.

The good news is that I think I can safely cross about twenty books off my list of Books to Read Before I Die. I’m just not interested in ever reading Blood Meridian or Lolita or Tropic of Cancer or, really, Faulkner. I can get that on the six o’clock news or the latest blockbuster movie.  So that is a kind of usefulness, Jack. Thank you for that.