Books too few

I've read a few books lately. Not as many as I would have liked, mind you, but I haven't become completely illiterate.

After the partial re-read (I confess to not re-reading the entirety of the death row section) of In Cold Blood, I read The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. I learned a lot about the process and history of freehand tattooing. It was well written and researched, but didn't grab me as much as I had hoped, since it had received raves from reliable sources. I think the style put me off a bit -- descriptive, focused on the interior life of someone I found rather dull. Deep rather than broad and, as Philip Roth might say, I'm much more of a fox than a hedgehod.

After the Capote and the tattooing, I needed a little frippery and Neal Gaiman's Neverwhere fit the bill. Quite charming fantasy about the shadow world existing in London's tube. Mind the gap.

England, England embodied the good, the bad and the annoying of Julian Barnes. Some moments were pure comic genius, others very trite and predictable, the insights obvious and tired. Barnes always fizzles out a bit, I find, even though his books are relatively short.

I read Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Talents while on holiday. It irritated me, yet I couldn't put it down, probably because the protagonist's daughter was kidnapped and, given my present maternal circumstances, missing daughters hit home. I liked that science fiction elements of the book were concerned with environmental and social issues, rather than pure science, and I think Butler had some insight into the importance of religion to socitey. Yet the self-consciousness of the two narrators really got under my skin.

For our bi-monthly book group, Robin picked Frank Norris' McTeague. I am that much more well-read for having plumbed this "realistic" novel of 1899, but I can't say I enjoyed it. To claim that the characters were 2-dimensional would be giving Norris credit for a dimension or two too many and I found the race science in the novel repugnant. Norris also had real issues with sex. I know it was made into an opera a few years back and I think it would suit a libretto quite well. The image of the melodramatic final scene in the novel made finishing it worthwhile and I would be interested in seeing Greed, a Stronheim (?) silent film based on the novel, just to see the ultimate image on a big screen.

I am almost finished with Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which I am enjoying quite a bit. Although I appreciated that Beloved was well-crafted, I had many issues with it, so I've been putting off giving Morrison another chance for, well, a decade. Charity pays off.

Okay, so that's six books in slightly under two months. Pretty pathetic, I know. I have read a lot of the New Yorkers, so I can still feign mild literacy. (OK, who didn't cry reading the Calvin Trillin piece about his wife?) The divine David Mitchell's new book, Black Swan Green, is sitting all lovely and hardcovered downstairs, calling to me. I need to finish Song of Solomon before Eli finishes his current book, else he'll get dibs. Noooo!