Books 12/30/04

Just poking my head in here before I fly off to visit family elsewhere to say that while flying is fun, airplane trips across country are long, and books are wonderful. On this last flight there and back again, I read:

McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories edited by Michael Chabon. Quite an excellent collection of creepy stories in the Tales to Astonish/Twillight Zone vein. Daniel Handler’s contribution Delmonico is one of my favorites, which I’m sure comes as no surprise, but how can you not love a character who says “Time and time again I want to tell Davis that I love her, but she’s so smart there’s no way she hasn’t figured it out already” ?
I also especially liked China Mieville’s Reports of Certain Events in London about feral roads, and Roddy Doyle’s The Child.

Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart is a funny funny man. This collection of essays (is it a collection if they were written specifically for this book? I don’t know.) tackles, as the title suggests, famous people. The pieces on vacationing with the Kennedys and on being a successful cult leader are especially funny, and my favorite is Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold, wherein a high school misfit looking to make a splash at his high school reunion finds out he’s not the only one.

The Complete Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers is an incredible mystery writer, and these short stories are great. Her detectives are clever people who stumble into mysteries, and the solutions are always tricky but believable. I have to start on her huge backlist of novels now.

Current total: 114
Just Finished: The Complete Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers
Currently Reading: As we Remember Her by Carl Sferrazza Anthony

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