BooksFirst - December 2006

Books Bought

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
The Executioners by John D. MacDonald

Books Read

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
Why Things Are, Volume II: The Big Picture by Joel Achenbach

Commentary

The Grafton and MacDonald books were bought at Ace Books in Culpeper, Virginia. Culpeper is an exurban town near Washington, DC that has become a trendy pastoral refuge. The town has a genteel country manor feel and the main street is lined with gourmet restaurants. Lodged over a bicycle shop, Ace Books is a sprawling chaotic used book store of the type that are increasingly hard to find. I collect first editions of both Grafton and MacDonald and while neither book was high on my must-have list, I love browsing and rarely leave a used bookstore empty handed.

I have read about every word of fiction written by Carl Hiaasen and nobody is better at bitterly showcasing the absurdity of Floridian culture and politics. For Nature Girl he has dialed back the sarcastic commentary and focused on his trademarked oddball characters. The titular nature girl is a divorced mom living in a trailer park that executes a revenge fantasy on a sleazy telemarketer. Most of the action takes place on Dismal Key, the most heavily trafficked deserted island in the Everglades. The whacky characters that make landfall include a culturally confused half-breed Seminole, a ditzy FSU co-ed, a crazed stalker, an over-sexed amazon, and the ghost of a drunken tourist.

The book disappointed me because my hopes are always so high for Hiaasen and he seems to have taken the low road. Telemarketers and Indian casinos are fodder for bad stand-up comics, not someone of Hiaasen’s caliber. I expect a deeper cut at the dysfunctional culture that is slowly choking south Florida. Still, mediocre Hiaasen is better than most everything else.

Normally, I don’t buy short story collections, but when I was at Balticon last year, Neil Gaiman read a couple of selections from this as then unpublished book. True to it's title, Fragile Things comes in a thin translucent onion skin book jacket. Gaiman has made his reputation as a dark macabre comics writer, novelist, and blogger. The stories in this book have a lighter more contemplative touch. Frequent themes include melancholic childhood memories and perplexing encounters with strangers. A Sherlock Holmes-H.P. Lovecraft mash-up deserves to be an entire novel. The last story is an American Gods follow-up that is worth the entire book by itself. I ran across a podcast interview where Gaiman talks about this book and other topics as well. His preternatural mastery of words in any medium makes me think he has powers beyond mere mortals.

The last book I read before having to give up non-fiction for NaJuReMoNo Month was a freebie from a Boodle Porching Hour meet-up of Achenblog groupies in early December. Master satirist and unofficial Achenbach liaison, bc, had scared up a case of remainders from Joel’s basement to distribute as door prizes. In his more loquacious days, Joel wrote a column called “Why Things Are”. In typical journalistic repurposing, these columns had been collected into books as a secondary revenue stream. Why Things Are, Volume II is obviously the second of these.

I love light science oriented trivia books. I cut my teeth on everything Asimov I could put my hands on and still have a hard time passing up a Stephen Jay Gould collection. In tone, Why Things Are II (and I assume Volume I as well) most closely resembles the Imponderables series (Do Penguins Have Knees?, et. al.) but has a wider ranging choice of topics. The answers are well-researched and clearly tax the Rolodex of Achenbach. Unfortunately, many answers seem to reduce down to “Because I said so.” Even better than the short answer sections are his longer “special reports” that cover interesting topics like serial killers and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. Now I need to hunt down Volume I. Maybe next time I’m in Culpeper I can spend more time treasure hunting at Ace Books.

I can’t promise you a free book if you show up at a Boodle Porching Hour, but the great conversation and cheap happy hour eats can’t be beat.