The Queue
Oh, right, I never got around to savaging The Foreigner. The novel 'tis one of those tiresome attempts to be both a literary novel and a crime novel, succeeding at neither ambition. Within the narrative there are large chunks of time that are simply absent. I understand that part of the tedium of real life is that we cannot simply skip to "the good bits," and one of the joys of fiction is the ability to avoid the mundane, but in The Foreigner, vital plot development happens during the missing time: information is conveyed and interactions take place, information and interactions that are then briefly breezed over in internal monologue (the book's in first person). And here we come to the worst of it; the book's in first person and yet the main character, Emerson Chang, is useless. Emerson's not merely feckless, no, no, it's much worse than that, he's uninteresting. He's passionless, but not in an intriguingly stoic way. He's lazy, but just when that might become interesting, when you start to think he's a mediation on inaction, he suddenly erupts into purposeless and preposterous frenzy. He contradicts himself constantly—on average about every other sentence—and he lacks completely the courage of his few professed convictions, but neither in an interesting manner. He's quite frankly the dullest character I can recall encountering in fiction. Emerson Chang just isn't worth hating.

And neither is Francie Lin, but for all that I'll never read another book of hers. The Foreigner was only her first novel and she might get better ('twould be hard not to improve), but I cannot justify giving her a second chance. There are simply too many books I'll never find the time to read to spend any more time giving her another opportunity to make a good impression. So, harkening back to the last installment of "The Queue," in the case of The Foreigner judging a book by its cover failed utterly. (It's not a good system and I never claimed otherwise, my point is that its no worse than any other sorting process.) The only way really to judge a book is to have read it. I've read Francie Lin's The Foreigner, and it's no good.

Recently
Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table
Francie Lin, The Foreigner
Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons

Currently
Karen E. Olson, The Missing Ink

Presently
Agatha Christie, Murder Is Easy
Agatha Christie, Witness For the Prosecution and Other Stories
Agatha Christie, Crooked House

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, "Summertime" from Are a Drag (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: A surf rock cover of the Gershwin classic, possibly influenced by Sublime's quotation of "Summertime"'s lyrics in their own "Doin' Time," but that's just a supposition.