Desperately Seeking Humour

[rhythmaning]

I was in a quandry this evening. I was very close to finishing the book I have been reading for the past day or so - the very brilliant Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I think it is a work of genius - truly - a very powerful, affecting book, that has had me laughing and crying.

But it is also - well, kind of traumatic. I shall write more about it later, but take it from me, brilliant though it might be, it is isn't light.

And here I was close to finishing it, knowing that I would have a whole lot more reading time this evening in between concerts and on the tube and stuff, and I was wondering how to fill it.

So I went into Foyles on the South Bank, since that was where I happened to be. I wanted somethnig fun, light - frothy even. A quick kind of throwaway book, something to make me smile, not too deep.

I looked for the humour section. There wasn't one. I looked for the table of three-for-two offers - usually full of that kind of stuff. Not a sign.

I trawled the fiction section - and could see nothing that grabbed. Many non-funny, serious, even suicidal volumes; these were jumping out at me, but no! Not for me, not tonight.

f4f3 and white_hart have both been raving about the Princess Bride, in both celluloid and print versions; I asked at the desk, but they didn't have it. (And the woman behind the desk raved about it, too.)

Someone was going on about Terry Pratchett - but they didn't Small Gods, which seems to be the usual recommendation. I even looked at the Neil Gaiman, but again, none of the books they had were ones people had tried to get me to read.

I settled on a book about Italy by Tim Parks - and so far it is just what I wanted.

All this took me a lot longer than I had expected; such that the time I was looking to fill had been filled, and I had to go to my concert. So I needn't have bought a book anyway...

Comments

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I think I have Brookmyre pretty well covered - though they do all seem to merge together in my mind! I particularly liked "the Fine Art of Stealing" - and "Be My Enemy" sticks in my mind for gruesomeness - I shall never, ever eat ostrich...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought the self-decapitation in Be My Enemy was particularly fine. The more autobiographical novels stick out in my head most, since we seem to have identical lives up until we left Uni - A Tale Told in Blood and Hard Black Pencil sums up my Catholic school years quite nicely, with the advantage that it's set in Barrhead, a town I know well enough.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I can't think that I have even seen those titles. I'll look out for them.

He must end up blowing up the school, though - doesn't he?

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

No - not in that one :-)

Actually, there are two books dealing with surviving schooling, both of them dealing with his fictionalised Barrhead, although one of them is mostly set on the Cromarty Firth - One Fine Day in The Middle of the Night is a school reunion story in which very many things (and people) are blown up - it has my favourite use of an angle grinder in fiction - and "A Tale Told In Blood And Hard Pencil" is relatively bloodless - just a couple of murders which relate back to the childhood of the characters.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Yup - I've read "One Fine Day..." - very entertaining. I'll bet he wrote that just to think of ways to exterminate the others kids from school - and of course to get off with the school beauty!