Chain Reader resurrected on Instagram! Big news! First post up!

Gabo!

Rest in peace.

Seating Arrangements

A very satisfying read: a cross between Lucky Jim and A Cheerful Day for a Wedding. A WASP-y wedding weekend on  New England island with multiple unpleasant characters bumping off each other. Shipstead has a lovely way with language: a character watches another with "a knife-and-fork-sharpening look of sexual appraisal", an old woman is complaining about the cold in the rehearsal dinner and Winn Van Meter, the bride's family's patriarch tells her "maybe you feel the chill of approaching death."  Tee hee. 

What to do?

Life's Too Short

Despite it's beguiling cover this book wasn't so beguiling. I read 250 pages--- realized there were 250 more---and put it down. I then picked up an actual Victorian mystery Lady Audley's Secret. Hope springs eternal.

Encore Flavia

I am quite fond of these Flavia De Luce mysteries---although how long can she be 11? I think this is the 4th book and she is still 11. I Am Half Sick of Shadows is set at Christmas and another murder happens under her 11 year old nose. Like reading Nancy Drew but a little more sophisticated. Fun.

Lost Memory Of Skin

Oh that Russell Banks! What a fun guy! This is about a bunch of homeless Registered Sex Offenders living under a bridge in Florida. My other favorite was The Sweet Hereafter about a school bus of children that veers off the road and they're all killed. Oh wait! Don't forget Rule of the Bone, about a 14 year old punk who is also homeless and abused and wanted by the police. But he is a great writer and once you get over your gag reflex you can't stop.
The Lost Memory of Skin is quite good told through the eyes of Kid, a pathetic damaged young man who did something stupid once (or twice) and ends up unable to rent an apartment or keep a job and on parole for 10 years with an GPS ankle bracelet. You see the vicious circle of his life---he can't get a job because he has a record, he can't live in town because he can't be within a certain distance of a school zone, he can't get an apartment anyway because he has no money because he can't get a job because he has a record....Banks does highlight the inadequacy of how we deal with criminals once they are back in society.
But Banks seems to have lost some memory on what the topic was and veers off with this very annoying other character the Professor and it goes a bit downhill from there. Surprisingly enough I found myself longing to be back under the bridge in the tents with the sex offenders rather than hurtling around in a van with the Professor. Only Russell Banks could make me want to do that. Shows you how good he is.