March, 6, 2004 archives

monkey in the middle by josh pryor was another impulse check-out from the popular library section of the central library, based mostly on the title and inside-the-cover description. the book is almost sunk by its overly wrought prose, but manages to pull out a mostly-satisfying story about genetically engineered monkeys and a former special ops soldier sent to kill saddam hussein. did i mention that the story is a little off-kilter?

and looking back at previous entries, i see that i forgot to mention buzz monkey: a novel of crime by sam hill. it’s another slightly-off-kilter detective story, basically, and the protagonist lives in a 1930s-era school (his bedroom is the gymnasium, and his company operates out of the classrooms and offices).

there’s another book i read this year that was supremely weird, but i can no longer remember the name or author, and my searches have turned up fruitless. it was set in a world where all food was made out of meat, solid clouds of stuff floated through the air, and many more strange things. the story was told as vignettes obtained by listening to the pockets of air in giant cement pits that people were put in for reasons that are never entirely clear.