Yong 2/26: Rapture by Susan Minot

The second book that I picked up by randomly browsing the shelves at the library, it caught my eye because it looked familiar. I think I saw one of my students with it earlier this year. This better fit the bill for light reading. How light, you ask? At 107 pages, it felt about 25 pages too long.

Two ex-lovers unexpectedly find themselves again sharing a bed. Step into their heads as they reflect back on how they got there, what it all means, where they go from there. Nothing too deep here, the book provides medium insightfulness on the truths, rationalizations, misinformation, and lies we tell ourselves about love and sex. One character is painted fairly well, the other glaringly shallowly. Perhaps that's reflective of the truth, that men by nature have shallower motivations regarding sex. But please, couldn't you convey that with a little more subtlety and skill, and not in a way that blemishes your credibility?

Still, like trash romance and cheap sci-fi, it was a quick little guilty pleasure. With some decent insight. And really not that much guilt.

Yong 1/26: Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery

At long last, I get to read again.

So I was in the library, mostly because one of my kids wanted tutoring on his summer assignment for AP physics next year. Anyway, one of the many things I was looking forward to with the school year ending last Friday was being able to read again. Not having many books in mind, I picked a couple out the old fashioned way: By picking something off the shelves that looked good.

Being in full decompression mode, I was looking for a light read. Well, this wasn't it. Not that it was heavy. Rather...the book starts with a sock-it-to-'em punch. But the first half has such an overexuberant emphasis on style that, while impressive and at times giddy, it left me waiting for substance. And waiting. And waiting.

One of the commenters on Amazon left this pithy bite: "Some people will call this science fiction. It's not. It's more like being trapped in an elevator with a circus."

It actually wasn't that bad. But the second half was very different from the first half. The main course here is a stylistic rhumba across a vivid painting of New York City. Thrown in almost as afterthoughts, not even side dishes but merely garnish, are aliens, green ray guns, and superhero kung fu with machetes and assegais. That's an African spear, by the way. I had to look that up.

Mixed thoughts. Not regret. Plenty of food for post-read digestion. But I don't yet know exactly what I think of it.