Reading

I seem to be on a fairly morbid stint book-wise.

It started with Mary Roach's "Stiff" about the afterlife of corpses. Then onto "The Joy of Funerals."

I recently finished Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven," about a couple of senseless murders committed by Mormon fundamentalists. (I can't believe such people are thriving in the United States; fundamentalists, not necessarily Mormon).

Right now I'm on page 284 of Norman Mailer's 1,000-plus page novel about murderer Gary Gilmore, "The Executioner's Song." Mailer is some extraordinary writer. The whole time I've been reading it, I kept thinking, Now how the hell did he get all this detail? And still 700 more pages to go. I sort of felt the same way when I read Gay Talese's classic about The New York Times empire, "The Kingdom and the Power."

I've been blogging more since Chris moved back to New Mexico, but I'd still rather have him here.