"early bird: a memoir of early retirement" by rodney rothman

i don’t know about memoirs. some are masturbatory (“a heartbreaking work…”), some unbelievable (“running with scissors”), some just plain untrue (“a million little pieces”). (note: i haven’t actually read “a million little pieces”) i don’t know if i’ve ever read one i’ve really enjoyed, but the cover of this book really appealed to me, plus there was a jon stewart quote on the front and if jon stewart endorses it, how can it possibly be bad?

rodney rothman was a writer for the david letterman show when he got fed up with his 70 hour work weeks and decided to retire at the age of 28. he moved into a senior’s residence in florida where he takes up shuffleboard and eats supper at 5pm.

it is books like these that give me hope of one day writing a novel. not that it’s bad, but just very simple and, in a word, cute. it’s funny, but not the laugh-out-loud david sedaris funny that rothman was going for. it’s not going to make any best-of list’s, but it’s well-written and i enjoyed reading it.

"the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" by douglas adams

as previously mentioned, i've been having trouble getting into books this month. i've been meaning to give this book a re-read for quite a while, and this seemed like an apt time.

arthur dent is all that remains of earth when an alien race decides to blow the planet up to make way for a galactic superhighway. he is is rescued by his friend, ford prefect, a space traveller from betelgeuse who was stranded on earth where he was conducting research for the titular publication.

this book is hilarious and imaginative. god disappears in a poof of logic, a suicidally depressed robot saves the day, earth is merely a experiment run by superintelligent mice and the president of the galaxy is a two-headed, three-armed idiot.

nothing really comes to a conclusion at the end, but having read the series previously, i'm not in a panic to find out what happens next.

selected quotes:

"Time is an illusion. Lunch doubly so."

"It must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays."

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

"no country for old men" by cormac mccarthy

i've been havin a real hard time gettin into books the last couple weeks. i'd start one, not be able to get into it, and give up. i was tempted to part with this book, but i forced myself to keep goin. it took about 150 pages, but i finally got use to the style an figured out how to read it.

prior to this, i had read no other novels by cormac mccarthy. i don't know if his other works use a southern america colloquial, lack punctuation like quotation marks an apostrophes and use plenty o fragments. this style added to the frustration of plodding through the bleak landscape of this novel which is filled with simple, yet strikin images, stark violence an, at time, a biblical like tone.

i’m sure most people already know the story. one day llewelyn moss is huntin in the texas desert when he comes across a whack of dead bodies, a truck load of heroin an over two million dollars. he takes the money an is, from that point on, on the run from a merciless killer (anton chigurh) after the money, an the law tryin to get to him before the killer does.

with the recent coen brother’s adaptation of this novel onto the big screen, it was interestin to note the differences an similarities between the book an the movie. the most notable difference is of the character of sheriff bell, who, in the film, is a minor character; his quiet search pushed aside by the dramatics of the moss and chigurh chase. in the book, the sheriff is the central character, having beautifully melancholic monologues between each chapter which give his history and reactions to the bloodshed that’s part of his job. these monologues make sense of the title as he struggles with how times are a changin an he’s no longer cut out for law enforcement.

once i got the hang o this book, i enjoyed it. because it took me so long to get into, i had the urge to go back an re-read the first 150 pages. i’ll suffice with seein’ the movie again when it comes out on video.

"white teeth" by zadie smith

zadie smith is a fabulous writer. have i said this already? the scope of this novel is massive. it's reminiscent of john irving, however, smith adds a cheeky self-awareness that makes it that much better.

"white teeth" is essentially the story of two families; the joneses and the iqbals. the patriarch's, archie and samad, met during world war ii and the book follows their lives in a north london suburb.

while this book was harder to get through than "on beauty" and veers off into an occasional tangent, it was a worthwhile and meaty read.