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#1
20th July 2011, 07:29 AM
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Summer reading thread
Since I don't see a "Whatcha readin'" thread, I reckon I'll start one myself.
I'm reading Hell, by Robert Olen Butler. I just picked it up at the library last night, and have barely started reading it, but it's petty good so far - funny and well-written. It's about a news anchor who's been sent to hell, and the other damned souls he is with (that list being a sort or ironic who's who of world history). Excerpt from the web site... “From Broadcast Central in the Great Metropolis where all rivers converge, all storms make a beeline, and all the levees look a little fragile, it’s the Evening News from Hell. And now here’s your anchorman, looking a little fragile himself, Hatcher McCord.” The voice of Beelzebub, Satan’s own station manager, mellifluously fills Hatcher McCord’s head from the feed in his ear. He squeezes the sheaf of papers with both hands, and he knows even without looking that they’re blank by now and he’ll be on his own—the last thing he wants is to rely on the teleprompter, though he will be compelled to try—and yes, he’s feeling a little fragile—and the three dozen monitors arrayed before him burst into klieg-light brightness with his face pasty and splashed with razor burn and dark around the eyes. “Good evening,” Hatcher says, from the teleprompter. “Good evening, good evening, good evening,” he continues to read. “Poopy butt, poopy butt, poopy butt.” And he wrenches his eyes from the scroll that is about to drop its baby-talk irony and get into some serious obscenity. Hatcher has been allowed to keep his anchorman ability to improvise, though even in his earthly life when he had to do this, which he did most every night—to cut or expand to fit the time hole—we’re eleven seconds heavy, we’re twenty seconds light—he churned with anxiety at the grasp of every phrase. He understands, of course, that his anxiety is why he’s allowed to keep the skill. And Satan does indeed seem to want the news to be the news every night. Hatcher knows he gets to pulls this off, though that doesn’t lessen his worry. I also grabbed Stephen King's newest novella Blockade Billy, which looks like a baseball story. I skipped Duma Key, but I've read most of the rest of his stuff. While it's true there have been more than a couple of clunkers lately, he's still in my top 10 all-time favorite authors list and I don't apologise for being a fan. Anyways, I read the first page or so at the library and decided it was worth a read. It's a novella, so depending how engaging Hell is, I just might get it read this weekend. We'll see. How about you? What are you reading? 
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#2
20th July 2011, 01:47 PM
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Linear Mode
