What I'm reading

Reading:
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson
Marley & Me by John Grogan
Getting Away With It by S. Soderbergh

Bought:
Bruno's Dream by Iris Murdoch ($2.50 used)
Banana Diplomacy by Roy Gutman ($1 used + $5 shipping)
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold ($7.50 used hardback)

Read:
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

We can all see where this going...

I am not overly fond of magicians. They're fine. I have nothing against them. They don't creep me out like clowns. I've just never been wowed by seeing the Statue of Liberty disappear or watching some dude escape from a buried glass box filled with water and sharks or whatever. I rather grudgingly watched The Illusionist. It pretty much furthered my previous opinion of magicians and also of Jessica Biel's acting ability.

So it was with something less than enthusiasm that I agreed to read Carter Beats the Devil when it was handed to me by Deadman as a MUST read. I set it aside and it has mocked me since April. I finally decided I had to read it so I could send it back.

Well I have to tell you, I just finished it the other day and I LOVED it. Toward the end, though I had guessed most of the ending, I still couldn't put it down. I stayed up one night till 4 a.m. getting to the story's climax. I bought a copy of the book because I liked it so much and I have someone I plan on forcing it on.

After finishing it Wednesday night I was surprised to find out that Charles Carter, the main character, was a real person that the author based his fiction on. This made me realized, in turn, that I knew very little about Warren G. Harding. And THAT made me depressed at once again how little I know about everything. I have resisted the urge to go and immediately buy a book on Harding. But I plan to make a visit to a certain used book store in the City when my parents are visiting in September. Don't be surprised if the next installment of my book review lists some biographies.

In fact this is why I am now reading the Che book, because I realized after a year of pretending to know stuff about Che that, of course, I knew nothing about him other than he had something to do with Cuban revolution, my dad and others like him hate him and The Motorcycle Diaries. I'm a little disappointed because I had hoped for at least a semi-unbiased account of his life, but the author of this book did the weirdest thing by putting his acknowledgments at the front of the book, in which he gushes about Che and Cuba, etc. I'm only a few pages in, but it's already colored my judgment of everything he writes.

And in case your interested, I'm reading Marley & Me because 1) I love dogs and 2) the Che book is not at all transportable. I needed something that I could take "to go" and you need a pushcart to move that Che book.