Phil sent a book recommendation–I’ll look for a copy tomorrow–
Have you read any of Nick Hornby’s books? I’ve avoided them up to now, but bought one last week because it was on sale for four bucks (hardbound). This one is entitled “A Long Way Down” and I can’t recall enjoying a book so much. I almost never laugh at things I read anymore, but I’m laughing out loud on this one. I’ve only read a hundred pages and I keep expecting it to go downhill, but it hasn’t so far. If you need some laughs, I heartily recommend this one.
It’s about four very different people who have decided to kill themselves. They go to the same rooftop in London on New Year’s eve where they proceed to annoy the hell out of each other. And it takes off from there. Hornby is a master at getting the voices of the individual characters down perfectly. Below is the young American:
“The trouble with my generation is that we all think we’re fucking geniuses. Making something isn’t good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something: we have to be something. It’s our inalienable right, as citizens of the twenty-first century. If Christina Aguilera or Britney or some American Idol jerk and can be something, then why can’t I? Where’s mine, huh?….The life I was leading didn’t let me be, I don’t know, who I thought I was.”
