Two Books

Books, books books, I gotta lotta books for Christmas, better get on it...

What I've been reading lately is Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge, basically a historical fiction, semi-detective story about"Silicon Alley" in New York, in the era between the dotcom crash and 9-11. I'm not so sure I like it: it started out slow, then got really good towards the middle, but it's now winding down and it doesn't seem to be coming to any conclusion -- or maybe climax/revelation/resolution would be a better way to say it, unless "life goes on" is the conclusion to the book, and the ending just peters out to the new post-911 normal.

It kind or reminds me of his latest before this one, Inherent Vice, which was also historical fiction (the 60's), and a detective story, and was so -- can I even say this blasphemy? -- boring that I didn't even finish it. I promised myself I'd finish Bleeding Edge, and if it seems worthwhile after that, I might even go back to Inherent Vice. We'll see. I often think he alternates between good and mediocre books, odd=good/even=meh, but this is now two in a row. I still love him, and maybe this is a deliberate branching out, into a better art that I can't appreciate, but this isn't (as far as I can tell) the Pynchon of Gravity's Rainbow.