Summer Reading

I've been off on a beach vacation for the last two weeks and I'll be gone for another two. I won't lie -- I do have wifi. But I have given up on fine and improving books for the moment, and have fallen back on P.G. Wodehouse. There are about 10 Wodehouse books sitting here. How can I not read them? I started off with Jeeves in the Morning, and now I'm heading into Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves. I have read both of these books before. I went through a stern Wodehouse phase around the age of 12. I've relapsed often; this is one of those relapses. I consider P.G. Wodehouse an absolute master. So funny, sometimes I just set the book down and laugh.

I also read, accidentally, three Jeffrey Deaver novels. I started out with The Bone Collector, which I found via bookcrossing.com. It was released near my house, so my excellent husband picked it up on his way to work. I had seen the movie, but I still liked the book, and thought the characters were unique. I saw two more Jeffery Deaver books at a used book sale, and bought them. The first one, The Devil's Teardrop, was academically interesting because it was about all this document analysis stuff, how you can tell what kind of pants a person is wearing by how much ink bleeds from his signature in thirty minutes or if he folded his letter to the left it means he's next door, or to the right it means he's a redhead. Like that. Very engrossing.

Then I tried The Blue Nowhere, which was about hackers, and it was very awful. Deaver obviously did enough research to get the general idea and acquire some vocabulary, but this hushed reverence for IRC and "MUD games" and stuff like that... kinda asshatted. And the character kept sitting down at the keyboard, and going "into the Blue Nowhere" and it kept being capitalized and it kept meaning cyberspace. Just ultimately dull. So there you have it; I went down the tubes with the suspense/horror, so I've seen the light and I am sticking to British farce until further notice. I did bring Brian Evenson and one other Important Contemporary Work (the name of which I can't remember at this moment) so there's hope I'll redeem myself before the month is out.