Can't stay in Yorkshire, can't get out of Yorkshire.

What I liked most about Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse, is that I think there is a little bit of Billy in lots of us. Billy has a hard time making any decisions, overthinks everything, lives a rich fantasy life because his ordinary life is not so interesting, and struggles when the half-truths he tells people come back and get him. He wants desperately to move to London to pursue his writing hopes but can't bring himself to take the measures necessary to do so.

I didn't think I was going to like this book as much as I did, but I did. I kind of felt bad for Billy that he couldn't quite figure out how to make his life go the way he wanted it to, but it was entertaining.

Totalitarianism and paprika cheese.

Billiards at Half-Past Nine is a fairly readable story of a few generations of a German family coping with their opposition to totalitarianism in the early to mid 1900s. It dragged at times, but wasn't too bad. Definitely a book more for literature/ history types instead of the mainstream reader though.

Gross: the grandfather wants to be remembered at the restaurant where he hopes to become a regular, so he orders paprika cheese. Cream cheese mixed with paprika. Yuck!

An anthropomorphic frog. And Billy Budd too.

Lately Peanut has been liking for us to read her Froggy Plays Soccer by Jonathan London. In Froggy Plays Soccer, an anthropomorphic young frog plays in the big soccer game. But he keeps forgetting the rules and using his hands! Will Froggy remember the rules in time to help his team beat the Wild Things and win the City Cup? You'll have to read it to find out!

I would estimate that I have read Froggy Plays Soccer 963 times this week. I also kept putting off starting Billy Budd this week. I remember being assigned to read Billy Budd in high school, really struggling with it, and not really giving it the effort it deserved. My second reading of Billy Budd was pretty much the same. You know how I summarized Froggy Plays Soccer just now? Well, I am not sure I can even summarize Billy Budd that way. I think basically Billy is this sailor? And he manages to irritate his superior, who trumps up some b.s. accusation against him. And when the captain confronts Billy about the accusation, he punches his superior, accidentally killing him, rather than defend himself. So then he is put to death. Of course it takes Melville 4 pages to write a simple sentence, so this just dragged. And dragged. And dragged.

I think I will stick with Froggy Plays Soccer. At least I have some clue about what is going on.

Before the Sopranos...

...there was Billy Bathgate. This is a really interesting story about a young kid trying to get into a life of organized crime. I normally don't really enjoy crime and violence in books but this one really was good and the violence, while definitely there, didn't ruin the story for me.

It was weird, as I read the book I kind of realized that something was going to take place, that the characters weren't all going to continue to live their lives as they were doing so, so there was this sense of foreboding. Was the main character going to get knocked off?

I really enjoyed this one and even though it was long, I went through it really fast!

I would be a terrible detective.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is a fun detective story. I like the 1930s historical details like the phone exchanges, people wearing hats, etc. I really enjoyed reading this. The one thing about detective stories is that I can never figure out how the clues are fitting together and then the detective is like, aha! And I'm slightly confused and feel like I missed something. Very clever...I guess that is why I wouldn't be a good detective. That, and the getting shot at all the time.

Details, details.

One of the many things that amazes me about Peanut is her attention to detail. She will notice and remember these little tiny details of things - the blue frog is the one that doesn't light up at Gacky's house, only one of her Playmobil characters has short sleeves, and so on. It is really cool, especially now that she is talking so much, to be able to hear these observations of hers.

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf is a very detailed look at one day in the life of an English village. Some locals are putting on a pageant and the book takes place just on that day. The way it is written just reminds me of Peanut's details. It wasn't a particularly interesting book from a plot standpoint but I can see why people who are good at literary stuff probably like it! And at least it was shorter than that last book! I have had a string here of a couple in a row that have not been my favorite. Let's hope The Big Sleep turns things around. It's a detective story!

Hey! I have heard of that guy!

The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni, was long. Really really long. And not the most interesting thing I ever read either. One bright spot was that St. Charles Borromeo showed up in kind of a peripheral way, which was nice. There is a local church here that is named for him.

I really didn't care about Renzo and Lucia, the betrothed characters who were kind of star crossed. The bright spot in the book for me was the religious conversion of the Unnamed bad guy. And what seemed like hundreds of pages about bread riots? Not for me.