Readsday

What did you just finish reading?
A slightly less mixed bag than last time, I guess: Night Film, by Marisha Pessl, which just Did. Not. Work. In so very many ways. Including the awful, unbelievable narrator. It's very pretty in hardback, though.
The latest Chelsea Cain, Let Me Go, which was also a bit disappointing -- Gretchen seems like a cliche, a cartoon, for the first time, and there's less of the gritty beauty of local Portland I love -- but hell, it was entertaining enough.
Pessl's oh-so-famous debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, was a whole helluva lot better than Night Film, mainly because (I think) it seems autobiographical. The plot actually worked as a mystery, and "Dad's" characterization and Blue's narrative voice were both great, but the minor characters -- Hannah, the teachers, especially the kids in the Bluebloods -- were unfunny failed satire and fell really flat. (Hannah doesn't work any better as a woman of mystery than Ashley Cordova -- ASHLEY! How can you have an Exotic Dead Girl at the center of your private dick noir and call her Ashley? Did no editor catch that at all?)

What are you reading now?
Nothing so far, am cooking lunch: broiled salmon with brown rice, and sauteed veg (rainbow chard, rainbow carrots, chopped onion coloured yellow with turmeric, red bell peppers. I like brightly coloured vegetables, sue me). 

What do you expect to read next?
Some GoodReads friends said Flicker by Theodore Roszak was "like Night Film, but actually good," so I think I'll get started on that after lunch. It's "hot" (Seattle hot: eighty degrees with high humidity and no air conditioning, but supposed to rain tomorrow!), so I'm going to laze on the bed with the cats and drink tonic water and read. #nicelife