The Queue
In the span of a few days I've migrated from having the fanciful notion of reading Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and short stories to giving the idea very serious consideration to deciding that I am at least going to sample the books, in order of publication, beginning with Casino Royale and concluding (if I find the novels to be ripping good reads) with the short story collection Octopussy and the Living Daylights. However, given that there are twelve novels and two short story collections, and that once I start I should find it very hard to stop if I like Fleming's books half as much as I adore the EON film series, I've concluded I must defer this 007 project until some time in the future. The indefinite future is a good spot in which to place a book you never intend to get around to reading; so, this instance of "the future" must be more concrete. I shall commence Casino Royale no later than three months prior to the theatrical release of the next James Bond film, tentatively scheduled for sometime in 2011. Orbis non sufficit.

I abandoned Chinatown Beat when I realized that I felt nothing toward any of the characters except for a vague longing for the protagonist's head to be beaten in with a length of pipe; he doesn't merit being killed with a deliberate weapon, he only rates a stray piece of junk. For my next endeavour after Project TRITON, I am considering several tales with villains as protagonists—none of this post-modern anti-hero nonsense, proper villains—so, I am willing to accept a story with a less-than-heroic protagonist. But Detective 2nd Grade Jack Yu, N.Y.P.D., the protagonist of Chinatown Beat, is just a douchebag. His internal monologue reveals him to be just as racist towards whites, blacks, and Latinos as the book's white, black, and Latino characters are against Yu and his fellow Chinese-Americans and Chinese. And when a well-dressed, financially-successful distaff attorney who does pro bono work for illegal Chinese immigrants is not immediately and enthusiastically cooperative in response to Yu's abrasive investigative technique, he thinks to himself she must be "on the rag." I shut the book in disgust when I encountered that specific bit of misogyny for the second time in as many pages. What's your beef, Henry Chang? "On the rag" is a phrase you have a character use to signal to the audience that that character is a louse, a creep, a scumbag, one who would make the world a better place if he threw himself onto the subway tracks. "On the rag," oh my goodness gracious. I'm perfectly willing to concede that the world is an often ugly place and that there are too many sacks of garbage who regard women with that kind of dismissive disdain, and that perhaps it is narrow-minded of me to reject a book whose central character repulses me. But, there are too many wonderful books that I'll never find time to read for me to waste another moment on drek like Chinatown Beat.

Also, it's a compact disc, not a "compact disk," you Philistine. And the main character drives a "Dodge Fury," really? Plymouth manufactured and marketed the Fury, not Dodge. It would suffice for Yu to drive merely "a car;" if you're going to be specific you must also be accurate, otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time.

Bad books buoy my confidence in the eventual success of Projects TROIKA & TRITON, and their successors, for the simple reason that K. Steeze, the Professor, and I can do better than Chang's drivel in our sleep.

Recently
Rob Thomas, editor, Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars
Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table
Henry Chang, Chinatown Beat (abandoned)

Currently
Francie Lin, The Foreigner

Presently & Expansively
Agatha Christie, After the Funeral
Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons
Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage
Karen E. Olson, The Missing Ink
Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Saki, When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns
P. G. Wodehouse, Mike at Wrykyn & Mike and Psmith (published together as Mike)
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd be Cake
John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise
Ernest Shacketon, South
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
H. Haggard Rider, King Solomon's Mines
A. E. W. Mason, The Four Feathers
Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
Rudyard Kipling, Kim
David Schickler, Sweet and Vicious
Sheridan Hay, The Secret of Lost Things
Earl Derr Biggers, The House Without a Key
Saki, the rest of The Complete Saki
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games (a seven hundred-page monster)
Marjolijn Bijlefeld & Robert Burke, It Came From Outer Space: Everyday Products and Ideas From the Space Program
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
…
Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

Obamboozled
An excellent summation of and commentary on our charlatan president's oddly hostile attitude toward our friends the Israelis, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal: "Why Israel is Nervous."

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Reel Big Fish, "New York, New York" from Cheer Up! (T.L.A.M.)

Donnerstag, 30 July
Rudy Vallée, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Note, Donnerstag is German for "Thursday." I posted Friday's R.B.D.S.O.T.D. alongside yesterday's, but, oops, I inexplicably overlooked Thursday's. I believe this is the first time I've completely skipped a day. This seems an apropos moment for an excellent quote from Samuel Johnson, of which I am aware thanks to the seminal comic book series Starman, specifically the third paperback collected edition, Starman: A Wicked Inclination. Ahem, Dr. Johnson:

There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say,'His memory is going.'

I don't honestly think missing one R.B.D.S.O.T.D. is portentous of anything, I've just been waiting for an opportunity to break out the "wicked inclination" quote. Hooray for opportunity.