Books, Cigars, War

I finished up the Barth, Nickel and Dimed, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Cigar Chic.

That last one's pretty fucking weird. The book is written as a women's guide to cigar smoking culture, from the point of view of a female cigar afficianado. It is written badly and unselfconsciously - points which combine to make it better (or at least more interesting) than much of what we read in Creative Writing.

As far as I can tell, every book is written with the author as the main character. Any protagonist within the novel is secondary.

I've started Middlesex, and I'm liking it so far. To make a big generalization, it reminds me of many recently written popular "great books". Keep in mind that my recent "great books" category only includes The Corrections, Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and Middlesex. [Don't you hate it when you're writing a series, and your second to last item in the series, right before the ", and z." part has an "and" in it? I always wonder if changing the series order would be cheating.] So, commonalities - wacky families, foreigners, growing up. Wide net, eh?

But I like Middlesex, even though most of my liking is based on the author talking about the old Ottoman empire, which was badass.

Listen to this.