Dog Days

A peek at the books that find me during our early August swelter.

Smokin' hot August days and the Bacchus world blisters with activity. Downtown Golden is full of both the hustle and the bustle of summer wanderer's. Somewhere, in the time in between, I have found myself tucked within the covers of several new reads. Currently I am chugging through the Bacchus Book Club's read of the month, "The Raw Shark Texts". It is a debut novel by UK writer/artist/video producer/producer Steven Hall. Winner of the Borders 2007 Original Voices Award, the novel is concept driven (some may say "gimmicky") and quirky, with pieces of superb dialogue and the odd brilliant sentence that makes the read worthy regardless of how the whole novel pulls together. I am around the half way mark and give it the thumb at the three quarter tilt so far. I will expand on a fuller review as the back cover is closed for good. Prior to this I gobbled up a strange raw metaphysical western style Americana novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer titled "The Drop Edge of Yonder". I give it one bent thumb and one thumb tucked into the waistband of some dirty jeans. The writing style was a combination of an older Cormac McCarthy crossed with a semi-lucid William Burroughs, complete with Sam Sheppardish hill people, Indian curses, Mexican style voodoo, exotic Russian concubine sex, drinking gambling and general weirdness. I also have the new Griffin Poetry Anthology on the go, cuz one should always have a little piece of poetry on the go.
Time for eggs.
TTFN