The 3 options for book 3, following Vernon God Little, were as follows:

1,2 = East = Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize 2003

3,4 = South = The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, Booker Prize 2004

5,6 = West = J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize Winner 2003

I rolled a 2, so I will be reading Middlesex next after Vernon God Little. Sources tell me it is an excellent book.

Review for Vernon God Little is upcoming.

In between Life of Pi and Vernon God Little I read the following:

1) The Kings and Queens of England by Michael Wiliamson. I still have about ten books, some big and some small, all non-fiction, remaining from my quest to read all the books on my bookshelf. The order I’m reading these, interspersed with the Booklist, is also determined by a die roll. This is a very large but slim coffee-table book given to me by my old roommates in undergrad at McMaster University on a birthday. The inscription reads:

“You’re OLD.” – Bob

“and STINKY!” – Allan

“Not that old,” – Cole

“Very old.” – Brian

Love those guys. The actual book had a short description of every King and Queen of England along with visuals from the National Portrait Gallery. I have read a substantial amount about British History, but this particular account was very detailed in describing how the monarchs were born and how they died. It felt a bit pulpy in the author’s preoccupation with the personal details of each one, and there was a great deal of subjective judgment of the personality of each monarch. I liked it for that reason.

2) The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason by William A. Henry III. After finishing Kings and Queens, Vernon God Little still hadn’t come in at the library, so I continued through my bookshelf. Krista (my beautiful and intelligent wife) got me this book from a library clearance sale a long time ago. I always love reading about great Comedians and how they work, but this book seemed to dwell much more on the negatives of Gleason’s personality than his process. Whether this was the fault of the author or the subject is unclear. While reading this book I got Vernon God Little and was so excited about it I encouraged Krista to read it when she was looking for a book to read. I finished Gleason while she was reading VGL so I moved on to

3) Images of  Beckett, a book Krista picked up in Vermont last summer. Samuel Beckett is officially my favourite author since I was in Waiting for Godot when I was sixteen, but I haven’t read much about him or much of is work beyond Godot. I recently saw Happy Days for the first time at Theatre Passe Muraille and it was fantastic, which rekindled my interest in Beckett. After reading this insightful work I read Krapp’s Last Tape, which was amazing. I am afraid to experience Beckett through reading or watching because it has the potential to be so boring and lead to despair, but once the experience is done I find it magical to think about. I loved Krapp’s Last Tape and wish I’d seen it when I was at Stratford.

4) Ant Farm by Simon Rich. Simon Rich is a writer for Saturday Night Live who I took a workshop with about a month ago. It was a fantastic workshop which gave me a great deal of direction writingwise and businesswise as well. He sees himself as a “premise writer” and that is very apparent from his first book, a short book filled with lots of tiny chapters which are concise executions of simple premises, like “what would X-Files for dogs look like?” It is the type of book that you can read in a day and not think very much about, but it illustrated his idea of a premise beautifully.

After this I got tired of waiting for Krista to finish Vernon God Little and stole it back from her. She had forgotten that I got it from the library in the first place. She was reading another book by this time anyway, she had stopped reading Vernon God Little right at the climax. Women!