Books

I read The Brooklyn Follies fairly quickly. It was good to read some new Paul Auster, but it is a bit less substantial and less fulfilling than some of his other books. It also seems like it should have come out quite a while ago; I remember reading the first chapter in Granta and hearing it read probably at least 18 months ago. I guess some people weren't into the coincidences and neat tie-ups, but that didn't bother me. The 2000ish political references seem very 2004 orientated.

I think this would have been very ideal as a serialized thing as is now being tried in the NY Times Magazine funny pages.

I also finished The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. It's such a nice looking book, and a good idea. It's a novel with graphic accompaniment. The concept is: old guy loses his memory and attempts to reconstruct it by going back through a childhood stash of books, documents, records, comics, etc. I think I was just a bit out of the target audience age, however. All the graphic add-ins were a bit too foreign for my full appreciation. Although that part held me more than the coma fog part. I started this book months ago, and it took quite a while to slog through the final fog.

I also was reading Jerry Spinelli's The Library Card today. I hear from an authritative source that the middle schoolers don't dig it. I'm not surprised...it's a bit young, and the kind of book that should probably be read to kids instead of read independently by kids. Also, the four stories are pretty uneven. I've read three of the four. The first I was OK with, the second less so, and the third I care not for...