My reading journal - February 2008

Winter Tale - Mark Helprin - An excellent work of fiction, with the author's command of language and the imagination to see glimpses of the fantastic and glimpses of a restored Kingdom peeking through cracks in a contemporary cityscape. This is the first Helprin book I've read, and I'm hooked.

My Name is Russell Fink - Michael Snyder - Very funny and creative character-driven fiction. I hate using the word "quirky" to describe his characters, so I won't use it. I'll call them extra-human; they are flawed but goodness shines through in unexpected places. I couldn't classify this under a genre such as chick-lit, lad-lit, dog-lit, or chicken-soup-for-whatever-group-lit. I mean, how many books besides this one have a murder mystery, a clairvoyant dog and a family named "Fink"?