Monday, February 23, 2009

Thanks to Edit for turning me onto Charlie Huston's Henry Thompson trilogy: Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things and A Dangerous Man. I've read the first two, and have really enjoyed them. "Hank" was a burned out former athlete bartending in NYC, when his neighbor asks him to watch his cat. Next thing, Hank has been beat to within an inch of his life by 2 tough guys, and his life unravels from there.

The writing style is noir - fast paced and witty, and even as Hank gets dragged into doing many, many bad things, you can't help but like and root for him.
Other weekend highlights include: knitting myself a hat, working on my sweater (which fits really well now that I removed the five extra inches of fabric from the back), and visiting a local nursery.

I bought three new plants, all attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds, and planted them around the house. The nursery is always filled with Monarch butterflies, and I hope to attract a few to my neck of the woods. I do have some concern that the 50 birds that live around my house may eat all the caterpillars before they ever get a chance to cocoon, but such is the cycle of life.

I came home Friday night to find a dead mouse in my kitchen, so apparently, some of the poison is getting to where it needs to be. I also came in to my kitchen on Saturday night to find a mouse eating the dog's food out of her bowl. My favorite though is when I can hear the mice bickering with each other.

Didn't watch the Oscars, but I'm glad Heath Ledger won. I'm so behind on movie watching that Dark Knight was the only film relevant to the Oscars that I've seen.

7 Comments:

Blogger EditThis said...

Glad you like the books! I like Hank and love Bud the cat. I'm not surprised to see the writer is also a screenwriter, and I wonder how soon it will be before we see Hank on the silver screen.

3:22 PM  
Blogger Auburn Kat said...

Mice really are such a pain in the butt! A mouse came down through my dad's chimney and through the fire place and my three cats when nuts! Of course I was going nuts too!

6:12 PM  
Blogger sage said...

You're getting the upper hand on the mice!

Ed (whose comment in my blog you referred to) published a review of Troost's book on China a few weeks ago.

6:39 PM  
Blogger Tiffany Norris said...

The mouse was eating the dog's food?! Wow.
I'm behind on the Oscars, too. They're all on the Q...just so far down that it'll take them until next year to get here. :)

5:58 AM  
Blogger Chris Wilson said...

I'm looking for something witty and fast paced. I've plowed through all of Elmore Leonard and Carl Haissen so this looks promising.

1:20 PM  
Blogger Prunella Jones said...

That hat is really cute, I bet it looks adorable on you.

I could care less about the oscars. I did watch a bit of the pre show but got distracted by the horror that is Lisa Rhinna's lips flapping up and down. Damn, why would anyone do that to themselves?

5:34 PM  
Blogger maggie moran said...

The triology sounds so good! I've never read noir. Would I recognize it as dark and different, hum?

2:25 PM  

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