I want a wombat. I've always fancied playing wom.

Seen - Let The Right One In
Late I know, but I only saw this on Friday and it was blooming ace. Swedish coming of age vampire film which touched me and scared the pants off of me. Maybe the best film I've seen all year.

Heard - Akron/Family Love Is Simple
Patchy, but mostly good, freak folk Americana country types. Download Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead if you're curious and take it from there.

Read- The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
Enjoyable sequel to the Girl Who Played With Fire. The author died before it was published and parts of it could do with rewriting. Obviously not possible but a right good enjoyable page turner and I'll cheerfully recommend to anyone who likes crime books.

Seen: il Postino. Italian movie from 96(-ish) about a postman in a fishing village who befriends exiled cuban poet, Pablo Neruda (the excellent Phillipe Noiret).

Heard: Have been playlisting a few old soul gems on Spotify for a later purchase. ALL good stuff, obviously.

Reading: Cause For Alarm - Eric Ambler.

SEEN: Funny lights over the north of Wiltshire on Saturday night. At least 8 tins of Tangle Foot had been consumed, but I can assure you they were there. Fellow barbequers assured me they were merely Chinese Flying Lanterns being released by party goers, probably in Grittleton up the road. But I know the truth, and it's out there. Man.

HEARD: Crimson Moon by Bert Jansch, which is playing as I type. This was part of the recent Amazon low price doo-dah, and cost me four quid. With Butler and Marr on board I had my doubts, but I'm pleased to say it's rather excellent, and will be getting more airings over the coming mellow summer nights.

READ: Just finished Siegfried Sassoon's 'Memoirs Of An Infantry Officer', which is a fantastic account of one officer's WW1 experience, up until the point that he decides to state his profound opposition to the ongoing futile slaughter. Needless to say, this doesn't go down well. The book leaves you rather in the lurch, as he is sent off to the funny farm as a result of having the temerity to simultaneously possess both a brain and a conscience*. If any of the massive have a copy of 'Sherston's Progress', the final volume in the trilogy, I'll give yer a fiver for it.

* In the context of current disputes, it's worth noting that Sassoon relates how H.W. Massingham, the Liberal editor of the One Nation newspaper, with whom he took dinner at the Reform Club, told him that, "our (Britain's) aims were fundamentally acquisitive, what we were fighting for was the Mesopotamian Oil Wells." Ring any bells?

Seen: Can't keep my eyes and ears away from the situation in Iran. That lttle old man who dubs himself "The Supreme Leader" is surely straight out of a Peter Sellars spoof. Lets hope him and his truly frightening but daft set of Mullahs are shown the door without anymore bloodshed.

Heard: Gift for Fathers day off my lovely son "SuperApe/Return of SuperApe/Roast Fish On Cornbread"-Lee Perry-superb 3 on 1 Cd destined to be the sound of my summer..thanks for the tip of from one of the Massive on Mr Crowther's blog about summer compilations.

Read: Little Children-Tom Perotta...more struggles in suburbia as Tom takes on soccer mums, stay at home dads, child molesters and people who never grown up. Hilarious as always.

Read: The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow (not Winslow the pornographer). A surfing private eye based at California's Pacific Beach goes in search of a stripper who was an arson witness only to find that there is so much more dirt beneath the surface of his oceanside paradise. The use of the surfing vernacular gets a little wearing, but that aside the second excellent novel I've read by Winslow. I'll be looking out for more.
Heard; South Of Heaven by Matraca Berg. I've mentioned this elsewhere on this blog, but I love this album. Her first for 10 years; ostensibly a country artist but a richer "sonic tapestry" (sorry I felt that I had to use that) than that would suggest. Lyrics touch on mortality, lust, human weakness generally and adultery. The gorgeous You And Tequila and Racing The Angels follow one another making the best song pairing I've heard for years. Your Husband Is Cheating On Us is an original and amusing take on adultery. Highly recommended. Album of the first half of 2009 for me.

Seen - I'm watching The World at War on DVD. It's a magnificent series, truly one of the best I've ever seen. The use of source material, interviews, editing, music and narration is absolutely superb.

Heard - The marvellous Studio One Scorcher compilation on Soul Jazz Records, featuring skanktastic instrumentals from the likes of Jackie Mittoo and The Skatalites.

Read - The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in which Israeli historian Ilan Pappe argues that a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population.

Lots of my listening and reading has been nudged by threads on here - so thanks everyone!

Heard

The Ramones - It's Alive. - waves at Stimpy - I still can't fathom how I had failed to listen to this more often, given that I still love the Ramones and bought the lot down the years, even the not-so-good later albums, adn listened to them all, them all.

Jimmy Reed, on vinyl - maybe he was the king of them all. Perfectly lazy gentle blues, gently funny, and wise, and great with a glass or two of pretty much anything.

Arvo Part - waves at Doods - from the thread on modern classical, I had a blissful Sunday morning catching up on it again and castigating myself for not listening to more like this.

Grails - post-rock ? whatever you call it, great music for travelling or to have on to block out the rest of the city noise. Or as I am doing now, chilling with a glass of red and looking out over Birmingham. My current favourite of theirs is "Burning Off Impurities"

And Jimmy Lewis - Girls from Texas, - waves at magneticfields - which I ripped from my cassette of "What's Happening $tateside" and I have now found that on vinyl, and another Minit collection of similar gems.

EDIT : Also listened to & loved SAHB at the BBC. Alex Harvey was my first hero, and now I'm older than he was when he died. I'm finding that concept ratehr odd.

Seen

Nowt. Nada. Too much music to hear, obviously.

Read

The Colonel - The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker & Elvis Presley, by Alanna Nash. Fantastic unravelling of the Colonel's shady past, and how his lack of legal right to be in the USA explains his fear of The Authorities - under the Colonel's tutelage, Elvis paid regular tax all his life.

How about that Bono??

Peter Temple - Black Tide : dark, funny, Melbourne crime thriller.

*pours another glass*

Seen - The first series of The Inbetweeners on DVD. In one sitting. I think it was The Smash Hits, Q and The Word magazine maker who posited that Skins relayed the adventures of the school kids you wanted to be, whereas The Inbetweeners portrayed the kids you actually were.

Heard - Jason Lyttle. A friend gave it to me the old-fashioned way (steady chaps!) on CD to listen to in the car. "Oh", I said "He's one of those 'I play everything' types..." and he is. But charmingly, and I've been getting to work a lot more relaxed these days. I believe he's from that California.

Read - Still woring through 'Homicide' by David Simon. I took a break to catch up on the series 3 boxed set and, beautifully and synchronicitously, the two episodes I watched were exactly those relating to the chapters I'd just read. I was mouthing the dialogue along with Pembleton (still the coolest TV detective, like, evah).

Seen- Flight Of The Conchords. Managed to miss the first series completely but thought I'd give the second series ago. So glad I did - it manages to be very charming without being soppy. My new favourite comedy. Also caught Once on Sky movies. Very good. Bought a tear to my eye for al the right reasons.

Heard - The Cake Sale album. Nina Persson singing Black Winged Bird is absolutely lovely. Have also been listening to The Perishers Live. And the new Art Brut album is so very good.

Read - Last Shop Standing by Graham Jones. Very enjoyable and sort of feels like the end of an era that resonates with people of my age. Am now reading Homicide by David Simon. Good two chapters in, which is a good sign.l

The Light and I loved it

Didn't we do this on 05JUN09

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/first-friday-month

Anyway, here goes:

SEEN: Iron Man on dvd. Switch off the brain and enjoy the nonsense. Also still watching Flight Of The Conchords on BBC4. After a slow start it has improved. HIGNFY still proves to be the only panel show on tv you should not miss.

HEARD: Finished off series3 of Theme Time Radio Hour. Known, but mostly unknown, treasures abound. How is this possible after all the hours of listening?

READ: Currently half-way through GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson. It's a letter from an old man to his young son. Beautifully written.

SEEN: Just finished the entire West Wing box set series, all 154 episodes, soup to nuts. Annoyingly, just as brilliant as everyone had always told me it was when it was on in the first place. At £50 the lot, worked out at around 30p an episode. Best money I've spent in years.

HEARD: Gone back to burning CDs for the car. Feels old-fashioned but somehow right for the summer. Did one of just classic Neil Young intercut with dialogue from The Wire. Shouldn't work but it does.

READ: Been on a Gladwell frenzy and reading The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers all at once. Get mixed up but in a good way.

SEEN: But I'm A Cheerleader and Itty Bitty Titty Committee, two films by Jamie Babbit (from 1999 and 2007, respectively). But I'm A Cheerleader is essentially a gay teen romcom, with the premise being the ridulousness of 'reparative therapy' for homosexual teenagers. Itty Bitty Titty Committee is the story of a young woman who works as a plastic surgeon's receptionist until she joins a radical feminist group, spray painting slogans and dancing to riot grrrl. Both very entertaining films, and something a little bit different.

HEARD: Judee Sill, The Asylum Years. A bumper package of both studio albums plus live tracks. Converted to this beautiful voice thanks to Mr Retropath2's comments way back in the Female Icons thread - thank you sir.

READ: http://www.questionablecontent.net/ - a webcomic with everydale tales of 20somethings at work and play, including the love lives of their anthropormophised ipods. Often quite literally laugh out loud funny, and if you go to the beginning and read the archive up to present date, the ideal way to waste several hours.

Seen: I was watching a BBC documentary about the first flight to the moon last night. Very interesting. James Burke was on, and they did the countdown from 5 Minutes and Counting, which will always be thrilling. Otherwise been at my in-laws watching fishing programmes with my father-in-law. Well, reading the papers while the fishing was on.

Read: Sunday Times and Observer Sport. Currently working through Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of The World for the second time. He's such a wonderful writer that he can keep you on-side while he goes off on the weirdest tangents.

Heard: I had a mad drive over the weekend from London to Glasgow, down to Northwich to see my brother, back up to Glasgow and then back to London, so I managed to get through a fair bit of listening. However, half the CD cases I opened were devoid of CDs, as I clearly hadn't put them away properly last time I drove. So I was limited to Fleet Foxes, Station to Station, Youth and Young Manhood, a Walker Brothers Best-Of, Pocketbooks 'Flight Paths' and War Against The Mystics. And the bits of cricket and Grand Prix I could sneak under the radar when my wife's attention had wandered. Needless to say, the CDs I played haven't been put away properly. Will I ever learn? Probably not, no!
I gave Vashti Bunyan a whirl on Spotify today. And it's lovely.

Seen: Night At The Museum 2 - my 10 year old son's choice. One or two funny moments in an hour or so of dreck. I also watched a couple of episodes from Series 2 of Mad Men with my wife.

Heard: Quite a lot of Pet Shop Boys after their tumultuous performance at the Manchester Apollo last week and The Original Sound Of Sheffield: The Best Of Cabaret Voltaire '78/'82 - mmm...

Read: The Miracle of Castell di Sangro by Joe McGinniss. Egotistical American writer spends year following newly-promoted Serie B football team from tiny town in the Abruzzo region of Italy and produces a very good book based on his experiences. I wanted to smack him by the end though.

Read: McMafia by Misha Glenny, a sobering, scary and informative read on how organised crime operates on a global scale and corrupts absolutely everything.

Heard: Walking on a Dream from the weirdly wonderful Empire of the Sun. I should be too old for this kinda stuff but it´s fab

Seen: The climax to the US Open from Bethpage and what a finish it was.
and just finished Peep Show series 4. Cracking stuff

HEARD: Thanks to the kind assistance of fellow Word bloggers, I'm on a Northern Soul tip. So, The Northern Soul Story, Vol. 1: The Twisted Wheel is getting some heavy rotation. Also enjoying the new albums by Jarvis Cocker and Manic Street Preachers.

WATCHED: Not much, though I'm sure it'll be solid Wimbledon for the next fortnight. Other than that, steadily working my way through season 4 of 24.

READ: I think the thing I read most is probably this very site, but I'm currently about halfway through A Bit of a Blur by Alex James. Despite the fact his writing style treats you as if you were five years old, it's good fun. Yet again, I'm thinking of changing my life entirely and pursuing an unattainable dream based on a book... I have to stop that.

Give us a chance, still reading the same book as last time, and it is still Pies and Prejudice, nearly finished. It gets better but I feel, now he is in now the North East, that he is trying to finish it at speed. So am I, as my other reading is of the constant stream of impractical algorithms about how to manage Swine Flu in the hotbed that is B28. Advice is currently that I should be swabbing (a wire up the nose, wearing mask and gown) everyone and anyone with the remotest symptom and prescribing anti-virals ahead of any result. This is currently for an illness milder than "normal" flu that I would not ordinarily treat at all, at a time when the anti-viral stockpile is not bottomless. A guarantee of disaster should we get a more severe version in the winter, when it has all run out. The "theory", actually in direct anti-logic to the fact that this is pandemic, which assumes all will have or will get, is that by acting in this way we will "prevent spread". (Anyone who remembers the sneeze scene in Outbreak, or whatever that cheesy Dustin Hoffman plague film was called, will know it doesn't actually work like that...)
Oh, and don't panic.......

Very much looking forward to dedicating a lot of time next month to the moon landing commemorations, but in the meantime...

HEARD - the excellent Pet Shop Boys at the O2 Arena, Jean Claude Vannier's "L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches" (amazing, though I could do without the sound effects), Ry Cooder's "Paris Texas" soundtrack (finally replaced my worn-out cassette version!), and typically I'm one album behind, having just bought the wonderful Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood."

SEEN - the "Star Trek" movie, which I loved (sue me!), series 2 of "Californication" on FiveUSA, which is just about coasting by on David Duchovny's not inconsiderable charm, the about-time-too DVD release of Season 1 of 70's classic "Rhoda", and the end of season 2 of Channel 4's "The Big Bang Theory", which seems to get no coverage whatsoever anywhere, but I get 2 or 3 good belly laughs out of each episode, more than most sitcoms... oh, and the just-started "Psychoville" from half of The League Of Gentlemen has potential...

READ - Walter Yetnikoff's "Howling At The Moon" is hardly well-written, but his tales of 70's/80's record business excess can't help but be compelling. P.J. O'Rourke's "The CEO Of The Sofa" is just disguised reprints of earlier articles, but none the worse for that. I'm currently on the home straight of Richard Russo's "Nobody's Fool", previously unheard of by me (though it was made into a film with Paul Newman) but recommended by a friend, and it's superb, funny and "real", albeit rather long for the story it's telling, however marvellous the detail Russo includes.

Seen
Was given a copy of Australia the Hugh Jackman/Nicole Kidman shitfest. It's cliche ridden & poorly paced (the climax seems to arrive about halfway through) The bombing of Darwin came as a relief. Nic claimed she agreed to make the film before a script was written. I believe her.

Read
Private Theatre by "Mistress J"
Odd book to pick up in a Salvation Army store! A Canadian born Australian dominatrix tells her life story and how she got into the S&M business. Every word rings true, from the little I know of it the title is as good a description of the business as I've ever heard.

Heard
Lots and lots of Russian language mp3's I've nineteen hours worth on my ipod and know every nuance, can anticipate every response and still cannot understand a word of the TV Russian news.

SEEN:

The Family Mahone at a local folk festival playing their delightful set of drinking songs supported by the equally tunesome Stan's Magic Foot who finished their set with a rousing folk version of Rage Against The Machine's 'Killing In The Name'.

READ

Goodbye To All That, Robert Graves. Having read As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee I've been reading and re-reading plenty of material by the 'Lost Generation' from both sides of the pond.

HEARD

Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Further Out. My father-in-law has original pressings from the classic jazz era of the late 50s to early 60s. We sit and listen while he tells me about his days working for NCR building some of the earliest business computers whilst at night cutting a rug in the Halls and venues of Manchester.

I need a new boxset. Have spent the last few months doing The Sopranos, The Wire, and just finished The West Wing, Loved them all, obviously. Tried Dexter but a tad too creepy/weird for me. What should I go with next? Deadwood? Studio 60? 30 Rock? Conchords? All advice gratefully accepted.

Currently working my way through the box set of all four original Monty Python series and it’s a bit of a slog. Only ever seen highlights before and it’s easy to see why the famous sketches are famous – far too much of the rest is genuinely bad. Film-wise, over the weekend finally caught up with Borat which is superb and Tropic Thunder which is entertaining enough.

Heard
M Ward, Vetiver and Andrew Bird are all on heavy rotation. Wonderful one and all. Andrew Bird in particular. Manages to take stuff I hate – whistling, violin, a voice somewhere between the two unspeakables Thom Yorke and Rufus Wainwright – and make something utterly wonderful out of it. Quite a feat.

Read
The One from the Other, Philip Kerr. A modern take on the hard-boiled private detective but set in Nazi Germany. Superbly realised hard-boiled dialogue coupled with a way over the top plot mixing elements of crime, war and spy thrillers. Shouldn’t work, but it does. Have now ordered all the others.

SEEN - Role Models comedy. I was expecting it to be good (unlike everyone else) and it surpassed my expectations. Very good film.

READ - Watchmen comic. I have little to no history with comic books so this was really me out on a limb. It was excellent and a fun experience reading one of the twelve 30 page comics a day.

I have not seen the film but I get the impression it's pointless and redundant. The comic is not a blueprint for other future media adaptations. The comic book version is the definitive version, complete in and of itself. Further versions are not needed. The film is comparable to someone making a musical on ice out of it - an interesting but pointless idea.

HEARD - John Martyn's One World. I had the original version. I only listened to it once, thought it was awful and sold it on eBay. The Deluxe Edition was on sale in Fopp for £4 so I thought I would give it another chance. No, I was right first time. It's a very boring album. Oh joy, now I've got a bonus disc to wade through.

NOTE: The best version of "Big Muff" can be found on the budget 2CD reissue of Live At Leeds.

The 2CD Deluxe Edition of Solid Air can be bought on Amazon for £4 at the moment.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Solid-Air-John-Martyn/dp/B0026ONZC8/ref=sr_1_1?i...
I personally have the 2000 version and feel no desire to own the bonus disc so I haven't bothered with it.

I'll contribute anyway. Mr catch-up fails to catch-up in general.

SEEN: Virtually nothing (do this from time to time). Then switched on the TV late on Friday night just in time to see the Leonard Cohen live in London concert on BBC4. Had never really seen what the fuss was all about with Leonard Cohen until fairly recently, but now I do. A great band, too.

HEARD: Again, very little, but listening to the Eels latest on Spotify right now and realising it'll probably find a home chez DLM at some point. Want desperately to listen to some vinyl to atone for selling some, but need a new cartridge (the old one self-destructed, but it was a 20-year-old model).

READ: Absolutely nothing tht sticks in the memory, very much out of character, though surrounded by books I haven't read yet (very few of them recent).

Been an enjoyable past few weeks on the culture front for me.

Seen: The Adventures of Desperaux. Chosen by my daughter. Slightly darker and slower paced European animation than the, admittedly top notch, Pixar output. We both liked it. Also Burn After Reading. John Malkovich is wonderfully pissed off all the way through. Great performance.

Heard: Lots of Terry Evans albums downloaded off iTunes. Immense blues voice powering out from swathes of Ry Cooder backing! Joy!

Read: To Kill a Mockingbird. First time I'd read it. At my age too. I ought to be ashamed. Currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Which so far is the very embodiment of the 'rollicking rollercoaster of a novel'. Mind at 1295 pages it needs to be a bloody page-turner alright.

Maybe too soon for the Word approved 3/12 revision but I feel I have to contribute my feel of Elvis Costellos latest T-Bone Burnett produced LP, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, widely touted a worthy successor to King of America. Well it isn't. Sadly, unless he can come up with something good soon, I will have to believe he has shot his load. By and large this is EC by numbers, with songs being either new versions of old material or virtual reruns of slightly disguised old material, My All Time Doll being a prime example, with rather too many echoes of I Want You. The arrangements are forced and lumpen, however well played and I was expecting o so much more....... The best songs are those in the pure country idiom, where the pleasure is only in the stock melodic waltzes thereof, rather than in any originality.
Disappointing.

is this a medical term?

All used up. In the teat at the end of the sheeve.

Seen: Grooving with repeats of sitcom Hippies (inexplicably missed it first time around), shocked by Californication (but in a good way), missing the subtitles by recording and watching The Wire Series 3. Bought but not really started: The Lakes, Entourage, Carnivale.

Heard: Fanfarlo (on the latest Word CD) is really excellent (still available for $1 download from their site, folks), summoning up the energy to play the bits of the Neil Young Archives I didn't already have, the new Eels CD.

Read: Finished the new Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow last week, now on the latest Harlan Coben. Waiting for the new James Lee Burke. Summoning up the energy to read the Neil Young Shakey biography I've had in hardback since it came out.

Wondering whether to go see Fleet Foxes & Neil Young at Hyde Park...

Read: Y. The Last Man. Which is brilliant. I got into Brian K. Vaughan (known to some as a Lost writer?) through his excellent comic series Ex Machina which is well worth reading for a fascinating realisation of an alternate post-9/11 New York. He also wrote the award-winning Pride of Baghdad, Marvel's Runaways and did a stint on Buffy: Series 8 while Joss Wheadon was having a lie down.

Anyway, Y. The Last Man follows Yorick, the last man on an earth where a plague (or something or other) has killed every man on the planet bar our protagonist and his pet helper monkey. It's a pleasure to read with nods to Preacher and a story to match, a fantastic cast of characters, great art by Pia Guerra and stuning covers by JG Jones. If anyone is interested in the old 'sequential art' but is put off by tights and capes, this is a good place to get in.

Heard: Lots and lots of the new Eels album Hombre Lobo, and Edward Lear-loving hip hopper Scroobius Pip.

Seen: Most of Arrested Development, all three series, in huge, Mr Creosote-esque chunks. David Cross is the best thing ever.

You and I have to beg to differ on the new Costello. I was similarly of the belief that he was running out of ideas when last years Momufuku yielded maybe only 2 decent tracks but I really believe the new Sugarcanes cd is a return to form. Yes there are several 'old' songs on there but songs never previously apperaring on Costello cd's - I am glad he has put them out in this genre as i had no intention of checking out the Opera versions. Leaving these aside there is a reworked version of complicated shadows which is better than the original and a song that was given to Johnny Cash which fits perfectly with the mood of this cd. I dont see any similarity between My all time doll and I want you either musically or lyrically and the former is probably my favourite song on the album. I guess we all see things differently.
Anyway to get to the point of the thread:-

Seen - Sly and Robbie at O2 Shepherds Bush - great show by two artists fully deserving of their legendary status. Dead Man and exceptional Shane Meadows film that is menacing, drk and hilarious in equal measures. Essily the best film I have seen this year.

Read - The last shop standing. Almost finished this hugely entertaining book about the demise of independent record stores. Has made me sign up to the Rough Trade Email list and convinced me I need to go to Sheffield to visit The Record Collector.

Heard - Best of Ethiopiques which crawls deeper into my brain with every repeat listen. Also the new Madness cd which is every bit as good as the excellent review in Word said it was. And for Old - Dusty in Memphis (cheap at Amazon) JJ Cale - Rewind (ditto) and An introduction to Alejandro Escovedo. I didn't need the introduction but this cd features songs from his first couple of albums which I do not have and they are stunning.

SEEN: The very wonderful Yoko and Son at the Meltdown. Backed by the wonderous and tight Cornelius group. Bit emotional at first seeing Lennon's sprog in the flesh...if Julian is the early pop star then Sean is the later avant garde John model.

Heard: The preposterous Tommy Broadway Soundtrack. Why they thought singing like a chorus of Dick Van Dykes was a good Idea I'll never know. George Martin produced it...why didn't he just say 'Guy's...what are you doing?'

READ: The venerable Robert Anton Wilson's Email To The Universe. This man has made sense of the mayhem that acid can cause to the closed mind. He is my God. But I will not worship him. RIP

never heard of Amy Speace - nice take on a classic song. She write her own stuff too?

Seen- I too am doing The West Wing,So to speak, Every bit as good as the massive said. Waltz with Bashir is, without doubt, an experience not to be missed.

Heard- Whilst not his best, I enjoyed the New Elvis Costello and I like the New Wilco album too. Living in Spain, i record Danny Baker's BBC London show and listen to and from work. It never falls below excellent.

Read- As Recommended by the Massive "Crosstown Traffic" by Charles Shaar Murray. A bit wordy but an absorbing read.
Carl Hiaasen "Nature Girl" usual collection of crazy Floridians and wonderfully funny back stories for the protagonists