Books I have read this month, so far.

Elizabeth George (she's no Dorothy Sayers, but she entertains, and has an actual vocabulary)

• For the Sake of Elena
• In the Presence of the Enemy
• A Great Deliverance (Even though this is one of her earliest, I think that it is one of the best.)
• Missing Joseph (Also very good; has a lot of interesting stuff about marriage.)

Alice Hoffman (Becky really likes her, and introduced her to me. I got on a roll, because I had a bunch around the house and didn't have time to go to the library for anything else.)

• The River King
• Here on Earth
• Seventh Heaven
• Second Nature (I liked this one especially)

Some of the essays in The Best American Travel Writing 2001 ed. Paul Theroux. I enjoy the one on Charles Manson's hideout in the Panamint Mountains ("Desert Hideaway" by Ian Frazier), Scott Anderson's "As Long As We Were Together, Nothing Bad Could Happen to Us," and Brad Wetzler's "Is Just Like Amerika" on the "tramping" hobby in the Czech Republic.

I read Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing because it was in a bag of books my mom gave me and that I had in my car and I wanted something to read during a break at work. It was surprisingly not super-terrible. I liked the first parts better than the later parts.

I'm reading The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, because I have a weird desire to go here: New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur . Who knows why. Because it's cheap and nobody talks to you?

Oh, and I got some Dorothy Sayers, since I mentioned her. The Five Red Herrings and Murder Must Advertise. I'm reading that now.

I had a funny conversation today at the feed store with a woman who has two dogs: Hamlet and Portia. Hamlet eats Portia's shit, so I made the GEEKIEST JOKE EVER by saying "The quality of feces is not strained." I think that I was just so amazed that I remember anything about Shakespeare that I almost wet myself, and the joke was a kind of personal Depends garment to keep me dry. Or something.