First things first, I finished Bright Lights, Big City and was severly annoyed with it. There was no real story at all. It just stopped right in the middle. I realize it’s largely a preference issue. I like stories like I like pop songs. Maybe this is for classical or jazz people. I don’t know. Mind you, if I had read the book when I was 18, I would have thought it was the greatest thing ever. But I’m not 18 any more.

It so annoyed me that, though I finished it at 1 in the morning, I picked up Richard Russo’s Straight Man and read a chapter just to remind myself what I like about books. I laughed out loud at Straight Man again and didn’t laugh at all at Bright Lights, despite the quote on the book that said it was “hilarious.”

So I’m back in the middle of Fargo Rock City and enjoying it.

I figured out yesterday why I don’t read GQ and Esquire anymore. I’ve been wondering for about a year why I purchase issues of those magazine and they sit unread in my house. I was flipping through some old issues this weekend and I figured it out. It’s the effing advertisements. Jesus. 100 pages before the content actually starts. That is what we in the ping-pong world call “bullshit.”