Susan Arthur

So. I went to the library yesterday to look up answers for a class. No, that isn't cheating, it's what we're supposed to be learning to do. Unfortunately, most of the questions she asks are extremely easy to answer via Google, so I have to go out of my way to find other ways to answer these siliy things, or at least document the answers I find on Google. One of yesterday's questions was "What is Elton John's real name?" The amusing part is that I kept thinking... "Reginald Dwight.... Reginald Dwight... Reginald Dwight WHAT?? What is his last name?" and then found that Dwight IS his last name. Or was, anyway, since it's "John" now.

Anyway, while in the library of course I had to scan the new book shelves to see if there was anything there I wanted to read that I hadn't already read, because I'm a junkie that way. And behold, there was a book called "The Perfect Fake." No mystery genre sticker on it but my instincts were right and the blurb sounded good. Brought it home. Finished my homework like a good girl and sent it in before The Sopranos came on. Watched two hours of quality TV entertainment. Went to bed. Found new book on bed. Started reading. And kept reading. Until I finished the book, in fact, at 3 AM. Made me very happy I didn't have to go to work today.

The name of this book that I stayed up reading is The Perfect Fake by Barbara Parker. I'd never read her stuff before but she's apparently a NY Times bestseller. Of course, I think James Patterson is, too, and I absolutely can't read him. Anyway, it's about a man who is hired to replicate a Renaissance map and it's excellently done. It's a caper, of course, and I'd say I could imagine a movie of it, but Hollywood would have to change it to something more glamorous than a map, fergodssake, and then it'd get really weird as they tried to adapt everything to fit. One of the things I appreciated most about it was that as Parker introduces the characters, she presents almost all of them sympathetically and it isn't till later that the reader (at least this one) realizes what a nest of vipers it is. I'm used to authors signaling early on which are the good guys and which are the bad; even if you're supposed to like the bad guys you know from the first time you "meet" them what they are. Not here, baby. After watching The Shield on Tuesday night, The Sopranos last night and then reading this, I feel like I'm drowning in moral ambiguity and maybe I need several hot showers and a scrub brush to be fit to go out in polite society again.

Ah, well. Back to reality, I guess. I need to get started on the next paper, this one for the good teacher who is really hard. This is a research proposal on graphic novels and I'm dreading it for reasons entirely different than the reasons I dreaded the last paper.

I'm also meeting a couple of friends tonight. One's husband is in ICU; nikulai and I are taking her out for dinner. Talk about reality, that's gonna be plenty of reality right there. In that context, doing a paper for grad school is merely a pale imitation of reality. Still, it's my reality and I'd better get to it.