Boooooooks 20 August 1998

OK, then, let's try and get this back on track, in gear, in focus and all of those success-oriented prepositional phrases, hmm?

My days are completely inverted now - up until 10 AM, asleep until at least 3 PM if not 6 or 7. Good show! Apart from never having really adjusted to this planet's day, I know why I do things like this. It's only when I'm acting completely nonsensical that I can be sure that I'm doing what I want to do, and not what someone else wants me to do. Brilliant. Think I hit on that little strategy back when I was around, oh, 8 years old.

I also just like reading all night. It's quieter. Yesterday I came out of Aardvark's book store with a good sized haul, and the prospect of shutting out reality and falling into one page after another was wonderful. Still is, would have been - damn tenses - it's just that I am not sure if I can still get away with it.

Reading what, let's see. Mysteries most recently. Earlier this week I'd finally found a used copy of Traitor's Gate by Anne Perry, one of her Charlotte & Thomas Pitt series. Not that long ago, I'd read/re-read the books on either side of it, and I was sure that I had a copy of this. Think not now though, because it was totally unfamiliar upon reading. Which was, of course, much more fun anyway.

If you don't know the series, it concerns a London policeman and his wife during the Victorian era - around the 1890s, I believe. The characters all have faces that are full of character, which everyone seems to be able to interpret in amazing depth. I try looking around at the people I see and doing the same thing, but either it's a lost art or we're just less distinct. Such a controlled people, too. They'd have a very hard time in California. Not sure who that reflects on.

Reading that, plus some subliminal echoes of watching the lawyers bark on Monday, put me in the mood to seek out some more courtroom dramas. And happy luck put one of them in Safeway the other night, when I was in there putting together a Nostalgia Meal: a bucket of their truly ungreat fried chicken, a sourdough round, a bottle of Coke and a paperback. There was a time last year when I would wander in there around 3 AM two or three times a week for just that sumptuous spread. I think I may have mentioned that I have no taste?

Anyway, a good find: Guilt by John Lescroart. Courtroom stuff, good lawyering, characters nicely done, an interesting plot that didn't depend all that much on guessing who did it. That's important, because after a while you almost always can. What I found I liked most, though, was that it was set in a San Francisco I could recognize. There've been some other popular schreckfests nominally set here, but in an exclusively Marina world. (The Marina is where the upper-class white yuppie fucks, you should pardon the expression, live.) A tourist version, you know, name the landmarks, slip in some brand names, mention Napa wines. Yich.

But Lescroart seems to live in the same city I do - well, mostly. And that's my own limitation, I just don't go into some parts of town - like anywhere you have to drive to. He also has the Hall of Justice here pegged: U G L Y, it ain't got no alibi. An intrusion from the Bureaucracy Universe.

I am just going on and on here, aren't I? Type type type. Can you tell I'm not finding many avenues of self-expression elsewhere? Is my slip showing?

A package is supposed to be arriving today from UPS. Originally sent to a wrong address on my street, they called for a correction. No idea what it will be. Doubt it's a letter bomb, but you never know. Mom does get in her moods now and then.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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