Books for a Fried Brain - 09/30/2007

After reading the Hemingway book, I decided I needed some light reading. Having only read one book in September, my reading goal had gone WAY down.

I read "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White, mainly because I never had, but also because I knew I could knock it out in one day, which I did. Cute story of friendship and I know had my brain not been Heming-fried, I would have cried, but I didn't.

The second book I read was "S is for Silence" by Sue Grafton. Ms. Grafton has a series of books about a female private eye named Kinsey Milhone, and all the books start with a letter of the alphabet. I started reading them years ago, stopped reading them for whatever reason, forgot about them (swiss-cheese memory) and decided to re-read them all. In 2005 & last year I read "A is for Alibi" through "R is for Ricochet." Some stories are good, some are mediocre, but I like the character Kinsey, even if she cuts her hair with nail clippers.

Weird problem with this series: When Ms. Grafton started writing the series, it was 1983. She gave Kinsey a firm date of birth of 1950, so then, Kinsey was 33. Well, here we are in 2007, and Kinsey would be 57 years old. Mr. Grafton meant to write the books quicker? did not think about the dates she had set? Not sure but now Ms. Grafton is stuck making her character be in the 1980's, even with her current books. Kinsey can't use the internet, she doesn't have a cell phone, she goes to the library and makes photocopies of things, she carries a portable type writer in her trunk, she uses 3x5 note cards for Pete's Sake! She's stuck in the 80's and Ms. Grafton even explains this time warp in the introduction to one of her many books. This book was a quick read, but the whoddunit was a bit of a letdown. I await for "T is for Trespass" in December.