36. Werewolves in Their Youth

I tore through Ghostwritten and finished it yesterday afternoon after a productive day of figuring out my Italy itinerary up until November 29 (when I'll be meeting Brook in Milan) and booking a place to stay in Rome. What a fantastically good book Ghostwritten is. I have one more Mitchell book (number9dream) left to me before I have to start waiting for him to publish new stuff. Luckily for me, he seems to publish a new novel every two years or so.

After I finished Ghostwritten, I had to go downtown and get my hubby some last-minute birthday gifties (besides the books I gave him at midnight the day before). I took along a new book just in case I had time between the shopping and the meeting him for a birthday dinner and movie. Turns out, I successfully finished my shopping in 15 minutes flat (a new record I think - someone call Guinness!), so I walked my bike over to Nathan Phillips Square and had a sit and a read. The new book in question is Michael Chabon's Werewolves in Their Youth, a collection of short stories.

I've read the first two stories and enjoyed them both, the first more than the second; the second was good except for its rather trite conclusion. Anyway, these stories are easy reading so far and that's good; there's only so much Mitchellesque mind-blowing I can handle at a time these days!

3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

I just started this book yesterday on the train back to K. after finishing The Carpathians on Saturday.

I ended up quite enjoying The Carpathians - there's a really great/ultra-horrifying scene near the end when letters and punctuation marks start raining from the sky and everyone save the narrator loses the ability to either articulate or understand language because of it. Crazy!!!

So, I started the Chabon book yesterday and am now at page 160. It's a dead good page-turner and compelling yarn. And man, there just aren't enough good yarns out there. It's 600+ pages long so I suppose I might become less enamored of it than I am now. But right now I'm thinking I'm going to make a point of reading all Michael Chabon's stuff. Except maybe for Summerland which is apparently about baseball (yawn!).

Anyway, Kavalier and Clay is about two "boy geniuses" in 1939 NY City who are trying to break into the burgeoning comic book industry. I thought that because I haven't read many comic books I wouldn't get into this one, but it doesn't seem to matter in terms of readability, etc.