Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house.

-Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter*

A girl disappears in small-town Mississippi. Suspicion falls, unsurprisingly, on the last person known to have seen her, but there's not enough evidence to try a case. The years go by--decades, even--and the trail runs cold. Then there's another disappearance.

What are the odds, someone notes, of the two cases being unrelated? With no other leads, the police are suspicious of Larry Ott, the town loner--and the chief person of interest in the older case. Things get more complicated when Larry is rushed to the hospital, the victim of a gunshot wound. With Larry in a coma, it's difficult to tell if the wound was self-inflicted or not. While Larry lingers in unconsciousness, the police are forced to wait.

One officer's wait is particularly grueling. His name is Silas Jones, and, once upon a time, he and Larry Ott were friends. It's not a fact he advertises, considering the low regard in which Larry is held in town, but it does color his feelings about the case. He wrestles with his feelings as he waits awkwardly at Larry's bedside.

The reader waits as well, but there's plenty to keep you occupied until you finally learn the particulars of Larry's shooting. The narrative shifts between past and present, between Larry and Silas, and slowly we work out how things turned out as they did. While it's not hard to figure out the perpetrator of the present-day crime, it's still interesting to see the details filled in--and the cold case draws the reader in quite well. All in all, it's pretty riveting, and I admire the way Franklin was able to tie things up.

It's impressive to me that the most striking part of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is the characterization. Both Larry and Silas are well-realized and believable, sympathetic and flawed. While I was undoubtedly absorbed in the book because I wanted to know the resolution to the cases, I also became more and more deeply invested in Larry and Silas as the story went on. I would definitely be interested in reading more by Tom Franklin.

Up next: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

*I was totally unaware that this mnemonic device was regional. I don't normally think of myself as Southern in any way, but I've long enjoyed this trick for spelling Mississippi.

Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America by Leslie Knope

The historical portions of this book were largely written from memory by The Author, then fact-checked by both Bill Haggerty of the Pawnee Historical Society and a team of researchers from Pawnee Community College, who proclaimed them to be "shockingly accurate." There's really no reason for The Author to include that fact here, except The Author is feeling a little braggy and she wants everyone to know that she basically typed this from memory.

-Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America 

So, here's the thing: I love Parks and Recreation. It's one of the best shows currently on the air, after all. Because the show is so funny, and because I'm a TV nerd, I was psyched to read Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America, which actually featured in the third season of the show.

But I read it very quickly about a month ago, so I must admit that the details have already faded from my memory.  It was certainly funny, and very much captured the voice of Leslie Knope (unsurprisingly, since it was helmed by Parks and Rec writers). It has a lot of information that is sure to appeal to anyone who appreciates the show's humor (a list of town mottoes over the years, a history of Newport family, etc.) If you're the sort of person who's inclined to pick up a book like this, I imagine that you'd like it.

Other than that, not much else to add, I'm afraid. I think I must press on if I'm ever to have any chance of catching up on posts.

Up next: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Bren and I befriended each other early on, became inseparable through a shared sense of humor, a trove of nonsensical private jokes, and had the same enemies within the Drama Department. We clung to each other with blind loyalty, like Lord Voldemort and his snake, Nagini. I, of course, was Nagini. If you messed with one of us, you knew you messed with both of us, and Voldemort was going to cast a murder spell on you, or Nagini was going to chomp on your jugular. It was such a good, dramatic time.

-Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? 

Oh, dear. I am disastrously, disastrously behind here. Things have been fun & busy here in real life, which has left me with slightly less time to ruminate about books. Still, I hate to abandon things, so I'll try to scrape together some--probably abbreviated--posts.

I wanted to come up with some cute intro for Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, something to explain how much I like Mindy Kaling or how much I'd been looking forward to reading her book. Unfortunately, all I seem to be able to come up with are cliches and anecdotes about cupcakes, which I'm going to skip in the interest in keeping things moving.

I read this book quite quickly--I think I read the first chapter before going to bed one night, then finished the rest the next day. It's light and (unsurprisingly) funny, the tone conversational and very engaging. Kaling writes about her childhood, her college life, and her struggle to make it in New York post-graduation. She has the killer combination of being both extremely funny and extremely dedicated, so (spoiler alert!) even given the difficulty of the industry, it's easy to see why she's been as successful as she has. If she didn't seem so awesome, I'd have to be a little jealous. Instead I'll just content myself by enjoying her Twitter feed and looking forward to her new fall pilot. I could definitely see rereading this one in the future, especially if I were in need of a pick-me-up.

Up next: Got on a little comedy kick and went with Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America.