Sunday, July 21, 2013

Beat the Reaper

Met Daryl for lunch today, and ended up returning home with 5 books - 2 from the National Library. The day was woefully hot, and we both felt sort of dissatisfied, so we ended up wandering from Bugis to Duxton to Chinatown. It was nice seeing him after a year, catching up and talking about silly things, and going around in search of good books. I think we pored over every inch of Littered With Books at Duxton Road.

The five books I returned home with were:
1) Josh Bazell - Beat the Reaper (NLB)
2) Bragi Olafsson - The Ambassador (NLB)
3) Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed
4) Dinaw Mengestu - How to Read the Air
5) Michael Ondaatje - The Cat's Table

That being said, I'm still reading Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. I know it's been widely lauded, but somehow I never quite picked up the pace of the book, even after carrying it all over Japan with me. I hope to finish it by tonight, so I can move on to Beat the Reaper which looks highly amusing.

The first line of Beat the Reaper goes, "so I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!"

Looking forward to starting it. 

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