Pre-Summer Reading Gist

 

Hey, page slaves! 

So I finished "In Cold Blood" over the weekend and then immediately dove into "Tales of the City," a book that somehow wasn't on my suburban Phoenix childhood radar. I remember feeling so left out when the television adaptation premiered in January 1994 -- everyone was buzzing about it at Trumpets on 17th Street -- but then ate up the series and all its sequels. 

To read it more than 30 years later was still a pleasure, although I must say whoever wrote the teleplays for those miniseries deserves a huge round of applause because they are nearly identical in style and tone as Armistead Maupin's classic works. 

Yesterday I started Erik Larson's much-acclaimed "The Devil in the White City," which I had received as a gift from a reader-turned-close friend. (We actually met up with him on our recent trip to the Coachella Valley.) 

I'd attempted the book once or twice before, only to get distracted. But in the words of the great Donna Summer, this time I know it's for real because A) I'm back in a reading groove and B) I finally realized that although it's written like a novel -- which regular readers know isn't my favorite genre when you get past the 20th century -- it's actually a novel in the way that "In Cold Blood" is, so I'm loving learning about the World's Columbian Exposition (aka Chicago's World Fair) celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery as well as the B plot about of H. H. Holmes, who is widely considered the first serial killer in the U.S. 

This one's going to take a while so until then, follow me on Goodreads HERE and tell me what you're reading in the comments.