HOW TO HOW TO; or, ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

i finished the canal nearly two weeks ago, and i've been reading the woman in the dunes. i did, though, venture off the summer reading list to read the wild creatures (sam d'allesandro's collection of stories, mentioned at the BUTT blog a couple of weeks ago) and to review bonsai by alejandro zambra. the zambra book i'd read last year over a week during which i spent a part of my lunch each day in the aisle of the bookstore standing and reading one of its sections. it's short, but i wouldn't necessarily recommend reading it in one sitting as zambra's new book has been recommended in the review at powells.com, the website that showed a used copy of that new book at powell's burnside where neither i nor a staff member were able to find said copy after i rushed to get it about five minutes later. so i settled for buying a copy of bonsai -- of which of course powell's burnside had five new copies at a reduced price. damn bookstore. and now i couldn't want the private lives of trees more.

reviews of the canal are popping up everywhere; but nowhere you'd look, and that's why you come here. expect my review (to be date stamped) tomorrow. both the book and my impressions are, worry not, still fresh. the salon.com book club is already a failure. well, i suppose they did discuss through that one book. but we're not so ashamed anymore of a club not springing from 'looking good in pants' -- though it's sounding like melville house might give free copies of every man dies alone to any interested clubs, so...

in lieu, we'd hoped to start on a series on date lurking, but the cat was let out early on our subject, and although our cover wasn't, purportedly, blown (i.e. no identifications could be made), a victimless crime merits an unsuspecting victim. but oh the telling! what power of observation! what insight! bravura! alack.

this summer's been a bit of a daze. it's not the sort of thing that you really remember, but i remember waking up in the night last night and summarily declaring my confusion. and nineties again this weekend.