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Reading Slothfully
I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.
Currently reading
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
The Spirit of the Border
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Delilah of the Snows
Mrs. Miniver
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
A Christmas Carol
The Way Some People Die
Envy of Angels
A Little Yellow Dog
This book is the one in the Easy Rawlins’ series that precedes Bad Boy Brawley Brown, the Moseley book I read first on vacation. It wasn’t available to me until half way through my second week beside the lake in Maine. Interestingly, it was written six years before its “sequel”. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get to read it first, it explains things we're already supposed to understand by the time we begin the sequel: stuff about Easy’s having taken a straight job as the head janitor at a school, his taking up with Bonnie Shay, and Mouse's being dead (or not?). Anyway, Easy heads into work early at the Sojurner Truth Junion High School. One of the teachers is already in. Not only that, but she has a little yellow dog, Pharoh, with her. No dogs allowed. Even worse, the little yellow dog takes an instant dislike to Easy. But the teacher convinces Easy that she's rescued Pharoh from her husband, who was going to kill Pharoh. So, helped along no doubt by a little hanky panky on a student desk, Easy agrees to shield the dog.
Later, Easy learns that the teacher had lied to him. Also, however, a man looking much like the teacher's husband, ends up dead on school grounds, in a garden. Then, when Easy goes to the teacher's house to return the little yellow dog, he finds the teacher's husband dead in an easy chair. Apparently, it was the guy's brother who expired in the school garden.
So, Easy takes Pharoh home. His young daughter, Feather, and Pharoh immediately become best friends. Feather renames Pharoh, Frenchie.
Naturally, the cops think Easy is likely implicated in the murders. Furthermore, they think he's implicated in some embezzlement going on at the various schools.
So, Easy, helped by his friend, Raymond Alexander, a.k.a. Mouse, eventually figure things out. But along the way, Mouse is shot. At the end of the book, he's in the ICU.
Oh, one other thing happens. Easy strikes up a friendship with one Bonny Shay. She's an airline stewardess who was at one time best buds with the sketchy teacher who got Easy into the mess with the little yellow dog.
Well, I'm afraid my recounting is rather incoherent. Perhaps I don't concentrate so well on vacation as I thought. I blame the loons on the lake and the chipmunk that runs back and forth in front of my seat along the shores of Parker Pond.
Anyway, like the other books in the Easy Rawlins series, this is worth one's time, a GoodRead indeed.
