You can go home again -- but should you?

I'm home again -- in western Massachusetts, where I grew up -- and I recently went home to the Miami Herald, with a book review in Sunday's paper. The book, called The Lizard King, is a great read -- lots of South Florida weirdness, in a telling that's appreciative without being over the top. It's the same kind of stuff that Carl Hiaasen and many others write about in fiction; I find it more compelling when you realize these people are real and these crazy capers actually happened. The book got a good review from Janet Maslin in today's New York Times, too. BTW, the famous Tom Wolfe phrase from the subject line of this blog post? Turns out he didn't make it up -- he got it from Lincoln Steffens' widow, to whom he was describing his novel in progress. But he asked her permission to use it, so we'll keep him off the list of literary no-goods for now. I learned that from an interesting book we recently added to the collection at the FKCC library -- called "Nice Guys Finish Seventh," about quotes and phrases that have been misquoted through history. The title of that is closer to the original of Leo Durocher's actual phrase, which was apparently "The nice guys are all over there -- in seventh place." Which I think is better than "nice guys finish last" but admittedly not as pithy.

catching up

I really have been reading a lot, or at least I was until we got cable and the Tour de France took over my waking, non-working hours. But I can see the end and the stack is piling up. I read Dominion by Calvin Baker, who will be appearing at the Key West Literary Seminar in January. It was a little outside my normal reading, which is the best kind (it's the reason I joined a book group years ago although that fell by the wayside when I was pursuing my master's). I read Women and Ghosts by Alison Lurie, a slim book of short stories that I think I might have read before, unless that was an effect of its eerieness. It reminded me how much I like her, and how much I need to read The Last Resort even though I have a strange fear of reading about places I know and love. (Haven't been able to make myself read Tracy Kidder's Hometown yet, either, about Northampton, Mass., where I was born.) I read Sacrifice by Eric Shanower, the second volume in his Age of Bronze series of graphic novels about the Trojan War -- it was as good as the first, though it does suffer from that effect of many of the guys looking the same; you can distinguish them by their headbands, though. Over the Fourth of July weekend, perhaps influenced by the reintroduction of cable television into my brain, I found myself craving brain candy so I read The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory (author of The Other Boleyn Girl and numerous other works of Tudor Trash). I gulped that down in a day and a half so maybe I'm not over my Tudor thing entirely; plus it was fun to hear from/about a couple of the lesser-known Henry VIII queens (Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, or Nos 4 and 5 if you're counting). And just today I finished Dreaming Up America by Russell Banks, which I'll be reviewing for Solares Hill shortly. Whew.

Littoral Gets Critical (or Critical Gets Littoral)

Must be synchronicity -- or is that serendipity? -- but just a day after I point out how cool the National Book Critics Circle's blog Critical Mass is, they go and link to Littoral, the most excellent of local literary blogs (or national literary blogs for that matter). The specific item that caught their interest was Arlo Haskell's interview with Barry Unsworth, historical novelist and one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar. Since taking on this blog and making it his own, Arlo's really classing up the joint.

Radio saved the literary star?

Amid all the mourning for disappearing book coverage in newspapers, Publishers Weekly reports some good news: NPR is increasing its books coverage. (That's 100.5 on your FM dial in Key West, most of the time, or anytime on the web from a station of your choice -- I like the NPR books podcast they put out every couple of days which collects a bunch of their books stories -- reviews, interviews, features -- it's free and you can subscribe on iTunes then pop them right onto your computer and/or iPod.) I found this story about NPR, by the way, on Critical Mass, the excellent National Book Critics Circle blog. Don't know if anyone but me uses my blog's blogroll as a handy way to check in on various book and literary sites but some of them are fun. And today I added a new one, PhiloBiblos, the blog of a young and, judging from his blog, extremely smart librarian up in Massachusetts. Found that one through my new addiction, LibraryThing.

Tax Free Tuesdays at Voltaire Books

Sure, it's hot and sticky around here in July -- but Voltaire Books is rewarding those of us who stick around with Tax-Free Tuesdays. For the entire month, locals -- who already get a 5 percent discount -- can take an extra 7.5 percent off purchases at the island's best independent bookstore. Let's go! (The store also offers a 15 percent discount for all Key West High School required summer reading books, all summer long.)