Tag: fiction

Tourist Season, by Carl Hiaasen

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Cover ImageFinished on 1-13-08, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 1986

This comedy was published in 1987, but it is based on a modern day premise of over-development.  Popular Miami journalist Skip Wiley has formed his own band of terrorists to take back South Florida from the rich developers and Yankee tourists.  He has an elderly Native American, an ex-pro football player, and a Cuban revolutionary with faulty bomb making skills to help him fight his cause.  There is no one safe from their special brand of terror.  

Brian Keyes is a journalist turned private detective who has been asked to find Skip before he kills anyone else.  Brian has a few well placed allies and is able to locate Skip, if not stop him.  Skip and his band of  misfits leads Brian and the rest of Miami on a twisted ride toward chaos. 

 This all sounds so very serious, but told with Hiaasen’s light touch and slick humor it turns into a page turning caper that even a high body count cannot stall.   I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I was a little surprised at the relationship between 32 year-old Keyes and a 19 year old beauty queen.  I guess the unexpected is what keeps me reading 🙂

In 1997 at a Barnes & Noble manager’s conference Hiaasen came to speak and sign books for us.  I still have the personalized signed copy of Lucky You on my shelf.  I think I’ll have to finally read it!

The Painted Veil, W.Somerset Maugham

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Cover ImageFinished the audio on 1-8-08, rating 3.5/5, fiction, pub. 1925

I really enjoyed this book.  It is set in the 1920’s and is the story of pampered Kitty who marries a man to please her mother.  Kitty was beautiful and spoiled and Walter loved her.  She agreed to marry the bacteriologist and they were off to Shanghai where Kitty began an affair with the ambitious and married Charles.

  When Walter finds out he is heartbroken and forces Kitty to face an uncertain future in a cholera infested Chinese village.  There Kitty must face her own worth and take stock of her life.  Walter dies before true restoration can be made in their realtionship.  Kitty must travel back to Shanghai a pregnant widow.   

She must face Charles again and I was really rooting for her to show her spunk.  She did show her spunk, but she also showed her vulnerabilty.  The pages after she gave in to Charles once again were the most moving to me.  It was a heartwrenching look into a flawed woman who was desparately trying to overcome her faults.  She travels home to the one parent she has left and is met by a distant father who is facing his own freedom just as Kitty is facing the end of hers. 

 This was a wonderful novel.  I thought the reader. Kate Reading, was excellent and I am looking forward to checking out the latest movie version of this book.  I think Naomi Watts will make a great Kitty.