Dog days.

The very same day I found out my Weimaraner, Greta, has lymphoma and is terminal; an amazon.com box arrived containing a copy of The Dying Animal (Philip Roth). I ordered this title on a complete whim after seeing mention in The Week about a movie coming out based on the book and I've always wanted to read Roth. Why now? Why that book? The world is a very strange place.

It has been a week of endings as I also finished both Half Broken Things (Morag Joss) and A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby). There were some really very disturbing parallels between these two novels and again I wonder how particular things find us at particular times. Of course, it is just human nature to make such leaps. The chaos of the universe is immense and so it is very easy to latch on to random details and in our scrabbling, grasping way try to make some sense of them. No matter how horrible.

The Roth happens to be fantastic. It is a short, taut read and should probably be consumed in one sitting (oh, if only such things were still possible!) as it is written without a single pause; without break or any kind of respite. It is as if he just heaved this whole life onto paper in a single go. Incredible.

Suicidal Tendencies.

I feel like a dabbler of late. A literary dilettante. I roam from title to title as the stack at my bedside grows taller by the day. I shift restlessly and get to the meat of nothing. The combination of an intense two-year-old and the busiest month of the year at work may have something to do with my lack of focus.

I've picked away at Half Broken Things (Morag Joss) which came recommended by my friend Sarah. I'm about half (ha!) way through and stalled out. It has it's moments but overall the characters are a really unlikeable bunch. They are a frustrating lot but also oddly intriguing. I do need to find out where this is going...

Along the way (hey look! something shiny!) I veered off into A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby) which, coincidentally, is also populated with some really annoying personalities. Both books deliver accidental compatriots into a completely bizarre situation and then let the reader watch them squirm. Hornby's version is just slightly less dark, almost funny sometimes, and I think that is the current attraction for me.