The Hungry Detective

I have been reading the same book for the last two months. AN UNCERTAIN PLACE by Fred Vargas. I started it over the Thanksgiving weekend. I thought, incorrectly, that I would have the time to read between Parades, Turkey, and shopping. I read one chapter. And then proceeded to barely look at the thing for the next two weeks. I picked it up infrequently. I took it with me on our Holiday to England. I don't believe I read a word. January arrived and I picked a chapter or two off every few days. Another airplane trip, this past weekend, meant that I would have four hours of confinement to finish off the last 150 pages. I am still not done. I'm still not done and I am writing a blog post about not be done rather than actually finishing it.  I am nominally trying clear out all of my 'To Be Read' pile by the end of 2018, and even a chapter in I could tell this was going to be a long read. I should have put the book aside. With 11 months to go, I know that I will not make...

This past Sunday  I watched THE ALIENIST. I, more or less, waited 24 years for this show. It was exciting to see, even if by comparison it is doomed to a kind of failure. Much to my wife's ever-patient chagrin, I am not a binge TV watcher. I like to savor things, but I can tell already that I would prefer to binge THE ALIENIST rather than watch this show teased out over the next ten...now nine...weeks. I feel like it will be death by a thousand cuts. On the upside, I think it is a very good cast. I imagined Lazlo Kriezler taller, but Daniel Bruhl is a capital G, capital A, Great Actor. I'm cautious but intrigued. Over the fall  I read Caleb Carr's most recent work 2016's SURRENDER, NEW YORK. I wrote a post about the book and then sat on it for a couple months. The post was largely negative. I felt the book was overlong, the dialogue was by turns bizarre or stilted, and the story was by virtue of its length both overstuffed and underdeveloped. Mr. Carr clearly had a...