Recent Reading

Anthony Beevor: The Fall of Berlin 1945 (nonfiction, history).

Anita Shreve: The Last Time They Met (novel, romance, chick lit).

Sue Monk Kidd: The Mermaid Chair (novel, romance, chick lit).

Stieg Larsson: The Girl with Fire in Her Eyes (novel, crime, mystery).

All three of the novels threaten to cross the line between literary and popular or commercial fiction, but that’s all right with me because I think they all have validity as literature.

I was particularly impressed with Anita Shreve. She’s underrated. I usually don’t read books like this anymore, but there’s a reason books are popular bestsellers.

Anyway I’m a bit tired of being a snob. Might as well get down there in the mud with the proles and roll around for a bit. It can’t hurt to get a little dirty now and then.

I definitely don’t read romance fiction, but here I am, inhaling some of it. Most of it is dreck if you ask me, but it’s dreck that women need to gobble as part of their souls or basic characters, a legacy of their cavew…