I'm still reading, I promise!

I'll be back to writing soon...

Not on the list reading: "Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask" by Jim Munroe

Ok, so imagine yourself at the library in a cramped little aisle on your hands and knees looking on the bottom shelf for a book written in 11th century Japan that you do not actually want to read.  Then imagine that next to that book on the shelf is a book about a guy who can turn into a fly.  What would you be more interested in reading?  I'm going with the one called Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask.


I'm not going to say this is the best book I've ever read, but I am going to say I enjoyed it a lot more than the three chapters I read of The Tale of Genji.  That's not actually giving it enough credit.  This was pretty fun to read.  Flyboy was published in 1995, and it's a total reflection of its time.  It's all riot grrrl, anti-George Bush (the first one), let's dye our hair blue and pretend we're in Green Day.  Oh, and let's have a superpower, too, but not really a useful superpower; let's be able to turn into a fly.  Hmm.


The book follows Ryan, "Flyboy," as he meets Cassandra, who turns out to also have a secret of her own: she has the ability to make things disappear -- including cops' guns, an honorary diploma for George Bush (right on stage!), and even people when she has to -- and I mean disappear permanently, not some magic trick.  Ryan and Cassandra fall in love, of course, and begin a life of world-saving action-heroism that mostly is all Cassandra with her actual superhero talent and then a little bit of the fly.  A fly, really?


So, yeah, it's not the best book ever, but it totally kept me occupied and entertained, which is really what I think books are for.

#90 - "Under the Net" by Iris Murdoch

I'd like to begin by saying a) I liked this book and b) I have no idea why it's on this list.  Under the Net is the story of Jake Donaghue in London, who's a 30-ish, unmotivated, kinda lazy, fun to have around kind of guy.  I actually think Jake would be my friend if I knew him.  He drinks a lot, gets himself mixed up in all kinds of crazy schemes and caught up in ridiculous situations, and he's just not really all that interested in doing his actual job, which is to translate French novels into English, something he does instead of writing his own novels as he should.


The plot revolves mostly around Jake and his complicated love life.  Basically, he finds himself in something worse than a love triangle, it's a love quadrangle.  You practically need a fancy diagram to figure it out.  Jake loves singer Anna Quentin (she's six years older than him, which makes me think Jake is pretty awesome).  Anna, however, loves Jake's really good friend turned mortal enemy, Hugo Belfounder (millionaire and fireworks company owner/movie producer).  Hugo, meanwhile, is head over heels for Anna's younger sister and famous movie actress Sadie.  Of course, to round out the quadrangle, Sadie loves Jake.


When Iris Murdoch wasn't busy making this book too philosophical and serious, which happens on (boring) occasion, I actually really liked it.  Some of the messes Jakes gets into and the wild drunken ideas he has are laugh-out-loud funny, and it's fairly lighthearted.  Until the end.  I don't even want to talk about the end because I really don't know what happened there.  For the most part, this was an enjoyable read.  However, I have absolutely no idea why it's considered the 90th best book ever written.  It may have something to do with all that philosophy I skimmed past.  But, either way, I liked this book and I'd recommend to anyone.

#91 - "The Tale of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu

The Tale of Genji is considered the first novel ever written in the world, in 11th century Japan.  Does that make you want to read it?  How about if I tell you it's over 3,000 pages long ... written in the 11th century ... in Japan ... ?  Because my answer is "no."  I read three chapters, which I think gives me a good enough idea that I can't possibly care enough to commit myself to that.  Go ahead and judge me.  I'm moving on.

#92 - "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons

The next book I forgot to write about is Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.  This one grew on me.  Whenever anyone asked me how it was when I was about halfway through, I’d say, "meh, well at least it’s short," only 233 pages -- little ones.  But by the time the story was coming to a close, I found myself kinda caring about these crazy characters and sorta wanting to know what was going to happen with them.

The back cover of my book nearly ruined the whole thing for me.  It says: “Very probably the funniest book ever written.”  Um.  No it’s not.  It is a well-known fact that I am not a good judge of funny.  I really don’t think most things that are supposed to be funny are funny at all, even when I’m the only one in the room not laughing.  However, I know that this book could not possibly be the funniest book ever (seriously, “ever”?  That’s pretty assumptive, right?).  Once I accepted that I wasn’t going to laugh out loud reading this, I decided it was a pretty cute book.  That’s the best word for it: cute.

Basically, Cold Comfort Farm is a big spoof on a certain type of ridiculous melodramatic early-20th century British novels aimed at young women.  Quite possibly that made it quite funny to people at the time it was published (or "very probably"?).  The story follows 20-ish, recently orphaned, society girl Flora Poste as she moves in with a ragtaggle group of completely crazy distant relatives on a farm in rural England and pretty much takes over everyone’s lives.  She sets out to "fix" everyone and everything at Cold Comfort, and creates an intricate web of schemes and plans to do so in the most well-meaning and always over-the-top ways.

I have to admit, I did find one thing pretty funny.  The names of the cows at Cold Comfort Farm are Graceless, Pointless, Feckless and Aimless; and the bull’s name is Big Business.  The rest of the book was mildly amusing, pretty cute, and, in the long run, definitely worth the easy, light read.

#93 - "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" by John Le Carre

I’ve been reading, I promise.  I’ve also been busy forgetting to write about what I’ve been busy reading.  That’s just real dumb of me because now I have to go back and try to remember what I read, which was the whole point of me writing about these books in the first place.  Ugh.  

So first I read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carre.  I liked this one!  It’s a spy mystery, which had me a little skeptical at first.  I mean, I like watching spy movies just fine, but I wasn’t so sure about having to read one.  However, this was not at all what I expected.  Tinker, Tailor is not at all an action-packed, shoot-’em-up, Matt Damon-starring spy thriller.  It has some action.  It has a little shooting.  It has a few thrills.  But for the most part it’s way more focused on the psychological, on the mindset of the spy, than on the action.  It shows the spies as real people, and these people are definitely not James Bond.  These spies are overweight people, injured people, people whose wives cheat on them, people with children at home, people who live in fear.

Set during the Cold War, the premise of the mystery is that there is a Russian mole at “The Circus,” the name given to the British Secret Intelligence Agency, and middle-aged, chubby, retired George Smiley is charged with the task of finding out who the mole is.  The story backtracks through the memories of George and several other key characters to build the timeline of events that lead to the discovery of this double agent.  The name of the book, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, refers to code names from a nursery rhyme that I’ve never heard of.  

Wikipedia tells me that there may be a movie in the works.