To Read Is to Fly
“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.”
― Alberto Manguel
You can also find me on Goodreads and LibraryThing.
This is pure fun. The premise is 90% of the book, which is a satire of hard-boiled detective fiction. In this case, the detective can't drive so is constantly hitching rides from people, including a college philosophy major who delivers flowers and ends up serving as the detective's sidekick. The detective is also prone to existential rumination, painfully aware at all times of how much he doesn't, and can never, know. Staples of hard-boiled detective fiction, including the beautiful widow whom the detective falls for, the difficult relations between the detective and the police, bad guys hiding in the shadows, and the deceased's attorneys who seem to know more than they are willing to share populate the story. In the end, the mystery isn't solved, but what else could we expect, given the limitations of human knowledge? :)
Currently reading
The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan
About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter
The Relic Master: A Novel
Limonov
Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe's Early Modern World (Material Texts)
Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present
Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul
In Light of Another's Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages
Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature
