2009 Reading #24: The Manual of Detection
Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
21. Hmong and American: Stories of Transition to a Strange Land by Sue Murphy Mote.
22. Meet Me In the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich.
23. Children of Rondo: Transcriptions of Rondo Oral History Interviews edited by Kimberly K. Zielinski.
24. The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. First off--can I just say this? I am not a person who fetishizes books as objects all that much; that's not to say I don't enjoy the experience of holding and handling books, but that I usually don't much care what a book looks like, and a raggedy old paperback is as good as a clean and crisp first edition. (Maybe better than, even.) But there is something to be said for a book which is designed to add to the experience of reading it, and The Manual of Detection is like that--designed to look like its fictional namesake, an important part of the story, and gorgeously done. This really has no bearing on how good the book is, but luckily it is the sort of book that I might describe as delightful if I were the sort of person who used that word, which I am decidedly not. There is detection here, and a sinister carnival, and also clerking, and criminals so dastardly they can even manage to steal a day off the calendar. Tightly plotted strangeness, sort of like if Charlie Kaufman were to helm a season of "Monk" set in 1948.
Books 11-20.
21. Hmong and American: Stories of Transition to a Strange Land by Sue Murphy Mote.
22. Meet Me In the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich.
23. Children of Rondo: Transcriptions of Rondo Oral History Interviews edited by Kimberly K. Zielinski.
24. The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. First off--can I just say this? I am not a person who fetishizes books as objects all that much; that's not to say I don't enjoy the experience of holding and handling books, but that I usually don't much care what a book looks like, and a raggedy old paperback is as good as a clean and crisp first edition. (Maybe better than, even.) But there is something to be said for a book which is designed to add to the experience of reading it, and The Manual of Detection is like that--designed to look like its fictional namesake, an important part of the story, and gorgeously done. This really has no bearing on how good the book is, but luckily it is the sort of book that I might describe as delightful if I were the sort of person who used that word, which I am decidedly not. There is detection here, and a sinister carnival, and also clerking, and criminals so dastardly they can even manage to steal a day off the calendar. Tightly plotted strangeness, sort of like if Charlie Kaufman were to helm a season of "Monk" set in 1948.