The Hanged Man’s Song

Counting the days till John Sandford‘s next novel (Kidd, not Lucas Davenport), due in November (for which I am thankful). From Amazon:

“In The Hanged Man’s Song, a super-hacker friend of Kidd’s named Bobby suddenly disappears from cyberspace, and Kidd knows that isn’t a good sign. Going over to his house, he finds him dead on the floor, his head bashed in and his laptop missing  and Kidd knows that really isn’t a good sign. The secrets on that laptop are potent enough to hang Kidd and everybody else in Bobby’s circle  just to start with  so there’s no question that Kidd and LuEllen have to try to track it down, not to mention that Kidd would dearly love to get his hands on the man who killed Bobby. “

Me Laugh Hard.

Don’t know why I’ve never heard of David Sedaris but I caught a short segment on today’s This American Life and he is one funny guy. From an Amazon review: “He thwarts his North Carolina speech therapist (“for whom the word pen had two syllables”) by cleverly avoiding all words with s sounds, which reveal the lisp she sought to correct. His midget guitar teacher, Mister Mancini, is unaware that Sedaris doesn’t share his obsession with breasts, and sings “Light My Fire” all wrong–“as if he were a Webelo scout demanding a match.” As a remarkably unqualified teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sedaris had his class watch soap operas and assign “guessays” on what would happen in the next day’s episode.” I’ll read one of his books and report back.

War & Peace

“Peace is best. You should make every sacrifice to secure peace. When you absolutely must go to war, however, you must try to kill all the enemy you can as quickly as you can, holding nothing back, until they have surrendered or you have been defeated utterly. It is a great fraud to think otherwise and it prolongs the agony. It would be better if people said, if we fight, we are going to boil babies in their own fat and blast the skin off nice old ladies, so they die slowly in great pain, and we are happy to do this, because what we fight for is so important. And if they conclude that it is not as important as that, then they should fight no more.”

— Robert K. Tanenbaum, Act of Revenge