brian, you slacker, you almost forgot a whole week back there. and it’s not like you’re doing anything important, so what’s your excuse? overly enjoying the copious use of your new Very Large Television does not pardon you from regular blog updates, unless you openly admit you’re a lazy sack and give in to the higher power that is consumer media.

funny, a few weeks ago when i was complaing about not having enough down time i couldn’t wait for summer to go into decline so i could spend a bit more time sitting around doing nothing. now that i’ve done that for a week or two i’m already starting to feel like a boring and semi-useless sloth. why does leisure time always seem to lead to overly introspective ruminating about the quality of my life as a whole? can’t i just enjoy some decent tv shows, netflix movies, do some reading, and kick back with a smile? the eternal curse of the overactive mind — always turning on itself to make you question if it’s being put to good enough use.

home land – sam lipsyte – 5 stars

speaking of which, i just finished a great book which is an exaggerated tale of this very problem.

[i know i haven’t reviewed a book on here in forever, but that’s because i’ve mostly only read books i’ve felt lukewarm about this year, as sad as that is. well, that, and i’ve been attempting to scale Mount Quixote for so long my enthusiasm for the printed word is being put to the endurance test of its life, as i oh-so-gradually near the peak and my resolve weakens in the thinning air. the new strategy, however, is to take it on in 50-page chunks and use other books like oxygen tanks to keep me up to the task, and this last one was the most refreshing yet.]

maybe it’s just my weakness for stories of over-intellectual, underachieving nobodies having to face their ultimate meaninglessness, but i whizzed through this one and quite loved it. true, it may be a little farfetched that someone who’s done so little with his life would be blessed with such control of language. however, the idea of writing brutally honest updates to your high-school newsletter — chronicalling your unemployment, failures, lost (or never had) loves, doubts, down to the details of your boredom and habits of personal pleasuring — has much the same appeal as a really juicy personal blog would, and part of the pleasure is knowing you might well think or even write some of the same things if you dared. lucky for us, this guy has nothing to lose, so we can delight in his every hilariously pathetic non-adventure, and his endless analysis of every bland encounter.

it’s the hyper-literate quality of his telling that makes all this sadness so much fun to read though, so the thing that makes it the least feasible turns out to be its main selling point. boring conversations seem profound and carry great implications, and every small-town loser is a symbol of all our modern discontent. it’s obviously very dark humor, so we might not be talking beach reading here, but i don’t think i’ve been to the beach once this month and i thought it was a fantastic read.