Busy few days, but did manage to re-read A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. I was reminded that it was entirely appropriate to the season by a discussion on rec.arts.sf.written, and decided it would be a good book to take on the train, because it’s relatively small.
I would treasure this book if only for giving me the chance to utter the sentence, “The dog is a very low-key narrator.” (Well, he is.) But it’s also very well-constructed and quite entertaining. I almost think it would be best to read it for the first time without knowing what it was about, so that you get the fun of picking up all the clues in Snuff’s narration. (In fact, thinking about it, I’m not sure that you could successfully tell this story with any other narrator—including the same character but with a different style.)
October 12
Slow day. . . .
I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.
This is not a good audiobook, alas: Zelazny made almost no attempt to make characters’ voices distinct, and since most of the dialogue has no speech tags, it’s effectively unlistenable.
However, it’s still a great read.