Reading Is Fun(damental)

There is nothing wrong with a good mystery novel in the summer (or at any other time), and I recommend The Long Fall by Walter Mosley if you haven't read it. This post makes me glad I don't live where people are so cutting about each other's book choices. (Constant Conversation)

But sometimes you don’t want to read a history of antisemitism in Great Britain or a memoir of a gay soldier or of the importance of the Talmud in the formation of modern republics (!?). No matter how well they’re written. Sometimes you want spies and sex and murder and, well, sometimes you want some good filthy fun.

Like Philip Kerr.


As I made my recommendations to the woman (There are new Parker novels out! Every Man Dies Alone!), the man, her husband, sidled closer and closer, and finally joins the conversation. The books are for him, but he was too shy to ask. An extreme example, but true. Now that we’re finally talking, he refers to his new-found (or so he’d have me believe) penchant for what he calls “page-turners” a bit sheepishly. His wife called it “that thing you’re doing that I’m not doing” before retreating to the poetry section