I fininished 2 books recently

that I had picked up from the thrift store, you may recall the pictoral I did....I liked them. I am not much of a book reviewer, so I am going to just pick a few lines from each that will give a taste of the book.

from Hot Damn-by James W. Hall-a collection of essays he wrote as a regular feature for the Miami Herald. It made me wish I could live even further south,(sock-free 24-7) He writes on all things Florida, with some insight, amazement at the weirdness, and lots of affection.

Though I didn't have words for it then, I knew the light was different too.
It had an almost romantic, twilight rosiness, a quiet light, yet far more vivid and precise than any I had known before. A painterly January light. And while I had been on the platform of the Hollywood train station for less than a minute, I knew with utter certainty that I had taken a mortal wound.

From Tomcat In Love-by Tim O'Brien- a novel, very funny, about a linguistics professor with a bit of a wandering eye...divorce, revenge, betrayal, more revenge. Playful and thoughtful language, great characters. The footnotes are awesome.

If commitment comes undone, was such commitment ever commitment? By what slippery standard? What small print? What fickle sliding scale? The betrayal of love, in other words, seems also to entail a fundamental betrayal of language and logic and human reason, a subversion of meaning, a practical joke directed against the very meaning of meaning.
My mood in any case, was far from peppy.