Honestly, Midnight's Children is not a book you read. It's a book that must be eked out like a quarry with only one worker harvesting the rock with a pickaxe. I bought Steve Tesich's Karoo a while back, opened it and started reading it aloud. The guy is engaging. Tesich's style reminds me of Russo's Straight Man (also involving the decline of a professor-like main character) and his plot reminds me of the hilarious Duck, Duck, Wally, a silly book worth reading if only for the giggles obtained reading chizapters instead of chapters.
Everyone probably knows this but me, but Tesich's also the guy who wrote Waiting for Guffman. Here's a sample:
With the chaps? Sure, Corky. On the high wire.
Definitions:
manque (adj) As postmodifier. That might have been but is not, that has missed being.
Used chiefly to describe a person who has failed to achieve a role, profession, etc., to which he or she aspires or is suited.
lepidopterist (n) one who studies butterflies and moths.
Random fact of the day: John Frusciante's kicked the Chili Peps. Yeps! He's out on his own now. If he does more songs like "The Sides" (he did this with Ataxia) and "The Past Recedes," I'll be happy, but honestly, I can't sit through a Frusciante album like I can sit through a Chili Peps album. I can sit through Stadium Arcadium more than I can through anything off his discography. We'll see what happens to the Chili Peps. AK's vocals have been lacking punch for me, but I'd rather he be healthy than a rawk star. Flea can do whatever. He's solid gold.
