It's (not) a hard life after all

Happy Friday My People. It was a long time coming this week, but it's here, so enjoy your weekends. Going to the Portland Brewer's Fest this weekend, or whatever the hell it's called. I'm a bit scared of the crowds, but I'm more scared of the wrath of Liz and Major if we don't go.

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Read an interesting book yesterday, an imperfect and yet fascinating book that I can't quite seem to clear out of my mind today. Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones, was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and it is worthy of that, I suppose. Roughly, the book is about a small war-torn island near Australia, as seen through the eyes of a 13 year old girl named Matilda. Her mother comes from the hard-line religious school of thought, and her teacher is an agnostic/athiest white man who over the course of the novel uses Great Expectations by Charles Dickens as his core curriculum. The rough outline of the plot concerns Matilda's going back and forth between believing her mother and her teacher, all the while struggling to live in a harsh environment. In many ways, this book works, but only up to a certain point, a little over mid-way through the plot. At this point, abruptly, in the middle of the book, the plot takes a gruesomely violent turn. From this point on, everything that happens is colored by the violence Matilda has seen.

In some ways, what this book is really about is how people can identify with great writing, no matter what their life experiences are like. It's also about how two good people can be correct about opposite ends of an argument. I do wish the author had made a couple of different decisions, and I don't think some of the way the violence is described works very well.

Like I said, this is far from a perfect book. It did suck me in and carry me along, and I don't think I will forget it soon. (It's also fairly short, which didn't hurt. I'd rather have a book leave me wanting more, than have it carry on too long.)

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Big plans tonight for this guy. Gonna go home from work, take the pooch for a long walk, and clean up around the house. Once the chores are taken care of, I'm going to crack upon a book, crank some music, and drink some wine and read for a while. Come 7:30, I'm going to tune in to ESPN to check out my new-look Celtics play their first game of the season against the Wizards and Gilbert Arenas. I assume I will fall asleep on the couch by nine. Good times, good times.