All right, I'll admit it.
Books about Books Week: Real Lives Revealed

Links about town, and giving up.

Any interest in business books? I've got a short article in Library Journal this week offering Business book "short takes." Although none of the books I reviewed set my world on fire, there were several serviceable choices published this summer. Two of the best were Daniel Solin's The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read and Julie Jason's The AARP Retirement Survival Guide: How to Make Smart Financial Decisions in Good Times and Bad. If you're doing any kind of budgeting, looking at your finances, or money planning (not just for retirement) you may want to take a look at either of those books.

In other news, I continue to struggle with Dan Simmons's Drood. I'm on page 400 now, and please note, I really don't have a problem with the story OR the writing. It's interesting enough so that I kind of want to keep going, and if there were only 100 or 200 pages left, I could do it. But 400 more pages? I was wondering what to do last night when I got an email from a friend whom I had earlier asked if he had read this book. And this is what I got back:

"Simmons is a primadonna glorified hack.  He's clever enough to hide his hackiness, but it's there to be despised...he can't edit his own work.  It's distasteful.  It's also indicative of hackiness.  Nobody these days needs to write a novel over 300 pages.  For any reason.  But I'm bitter, so maybe you should take my opinion with the proverbial grain of salt."*

Oh, so funny. So perfect. Everything I was thinking but hadn't articulated. That's it. I'm reading the last few chapters to hopefully achieve a tiny sense of closure, and then I'm going to go into my weekend unfettered to make all new reading choices. Thank you, my friend.

*Please excuse the quoting, you know who you are...if I made any royalties here I would share them with you. Plus? Bitter people are my FAVORITE. Keep up the good work, kindred spirit. You do my soul good.

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