Good, New

Not the best 'summer' read, but a pretty good book nonetheless:

Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $20.80) -- Make a Paul Auster-Gabriel Garcia Marquez sandwich. Chew it slowly, acknowledging how pure, how perfect, how strange it tastes, and funny too. Such a sandwich could only be washed down with a little Miguel Syjuco, the newest literary face to come out of The Philippines. And his newest is great. Marked by its wildly expansive, ever-epic family narrative, giddy recasting of authorship (very reminiscent of 2666), romping unreliable narration and so on, it's a lot of fun if not occasionally a bit of work as well. Good work though. Great stuff.

In other news: The Long List for the Man Booker was released today (13 names was it?), and I jut found out that everybody's favorite science writer, Mary Roach, is speaking at the UW on August 18 (check this hilarious video of her explaining orgasms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jx0dTYUO5E). She's pretty damn cute. Back soon,

xoxo