S’update Again

No sugar. No fast food. No processed foods of any kind. No tobacco. No alcohol. No movies from NetFlix. No problems.

I finished reading Janet Evanovich’s To the Nines and reached for the next book in the stack only to find – OMFG – I’m out of books! This sucks like an Electrolux. I feel like a junkie prowling around the apartment, looking for cereal boxes and DVD covers to shoot into my veins. Fortunately I found Joe R. Lansdale’s Bumper Crop, a collection of short stories I put away only partially completed. Hopefully it will get me through tomorrow. Withdrawal is a bitch, and she’s been visiting much too much here lately.

Actually, I do have one unread book from the library, Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a piece of Serious Literature that moves at the pace of soybean growth but without the unexpected plot twists and breathtaking action. The writer reminds me of so many people I’ve met in the U. S. who seem determined to convince me that their country of origin is both the best and worst place on the entire planet. The first chapter can be summed thusly:

Mother: Daughter, welcome to your home about which you know nothing, the Dominican Republic. Here the dirt is clean, the ocean contains many nutrients essential for farming, and you can swim in the air.
Daughter: Great. I think I’ll go out for a guava.
Mother: If you step outside you will be immediately raped and killed, and not necessarily in that order.
Daughter: I thought this was a good place.
Mother: Absolutely, the best in the world. Our history is rich with heritage and background and culture and our language is sexier than that of the Americans.
Daughter: Okay, then I’ll…
Mother: Oh, dear. The government’s been overthrown again. I think we’re still rich, but all your father’s friends are fugitives now.

I abandoned it for Joe R. Lansdale’s Sunset and Sawdust, a lovely work of art that contains one rape, one attempted rape, three murders, and a town destroyed by a tornado in the first five pages. If you think I’m exaggerating, look for yourself. Just don’t be discouraged by the slow beginning; it picks up from there.

Literarily, out