king dork

You must read this book, if you've ever read Catcher in the Rye in High School, hated hippies, or spent lots of time thinking of names for bands (and not practicing much music for your band).(my favorite band name I came up with was the Poor Materialists, by the way.) It's great. This poor dorky kid gets the crap beat out of him every day, has a sadistic assistant principal, a shameful nickname, and a pseudo-stepdad who reads "Vietnam" into every adolescent action of his social outcast stepson.

I'm also listening to War and Peace. It's gonna be a while. I'm just at the very beginning, where everyone is getting introduced and so far there are two interesting characters. I'm sure there will be a cast of thousands, but it's already quite good. A drunken prank involving a bear, 2 bottles of rum, and a third-story window has shocked society. And a countess who has had twelve children is receiving guests for her birthday celebration. Makes me tired just thinking of her. But she had a lot of serfs to take care of them, so it was merely the drain of 12 years of constant life-giving...shudder...