kitewithfish

Having finished the Rose Parade and a small tray of cinnamon bread, it's probably time for an update.

I finished Crooked Little Vein last night. It was bizarre and wickedly funny. It's also got an incredibly high gross out factor. If you can get past the first chapter, you're still in for a long bumpy ride of foul and nauseatingly slimy stuff, but it gives you a very clear idea of the goal of the story from very get-go. Seedy pathetic detective hired to find a lost secret Constitution meant to save the modern United States from the foulness of the new mainstream culture and return it to the upstanding virtue of the 1950's. (Some interesting talking points were raised about how much the internet culture is 'mainstream'. If something is on the internet already, can it truly be called a subculture anymore? Book's answer: No. It's in the culture, you've got to deal with it.) I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'm not squeamish about certain things. Bear that in mind while cracking it open.

In other reading news (which is really all I do at home) I tried rereading one of the YA vampire novels that actually never really turned me on: Look for me by Moonlight by Mary Downing Hahn. I would be okay with it, but for the vampire's alias being "Vincent Morthanos." As in Mort+Thanos= Mr. Death-Death. You might as well call the man "Bitey McBloodsucker"- I just can't take him seriously enough to keep reading. Bad sign. It's also clearly falling into one of those novels that would really have been better told in the first person, since it's completely focused on the main character with no variation in POV at all. With that going on, and the fact that she's essentially narrating the novel, one might as well just suck it up and write it from the first person and accept whatever further minor limitations that entails.