What I'm reading now

It's a little ironic, looking back at my last post, when I felt I had such a wealth of books and media in general.  I finished the Peter Hessler book, which was brilliant, and the one about Henry Aaron, and I'm glad I did that too. 

Then I just blew through Michael Lewis's Boomerang, although I skipped the first two chapters, on Iceland and Greece, cuz I had read them in Vanity Fair already.  On the one hand, Lewis is just brilliant, able to write about anything and usually add insight.  On the other hand, he does just continue to dial it in much of the time. He's reached that rare state of elevation where he can pretty much interview anybody, and he does. He is such a golden child of prose, I think it would be nice to see him really challenged by something.  What would happen if he had Joan Didion's luck, a husband who just up and has a heart attack and then her kid dies a year later? I don't wish this on Lewis, but I suppose I'd like to see him tested in some way just to see him grow, because I'm not seeing much growth book to book. Just continued virtuosity.

I started a Ruth Rendell novel, as I tend to do a couple of times a year. This one, just like the last one I read, features some deeply disturbed young working class kids in some dusty corner of London, soon to get involved in some sordid violence.  I gotta say, I'm not sure I'm gonna keep with it. I don't need to be cohabitating the skull of a psychopath, even where it's done well. When I think about it, I suppose I tend to prefer Rendell's Inspector Wexford novels, where the narrator more or less tracks alongside the detective, trying to restore order.  I guess that's pretty much where I am in life these days.

I'll take Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto upstairs.