The Coast of Akron

I gave up about half-way through The Coast Of Akron by Adrienne Miller. It started out really great, and Miller is clearly a talented writer, but I thought the book lacked cohesion. Lately it seems like all the books I'm reading have these huge casts - I can barely keep track of all the characters. It's like I'm reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez all the time. And NOBODY can read Marquez ALL THE TIME.

If you're interested, The Coast of Akron is about this woman, Merit, and her parents, both artists, and her father's boyfriend, Fergus. Fergus is rich and eccentric - his story line is all boozy and complain-y, it gets a bit boring, despite the long passages about his gothic mansion in Ohio.

Last night I started reading "The Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett. A good, old-fashioned, single-narrator tale. I love reading Hammett, especially the ones that take place in San Francisco. It's so hilarious how his characters refer to their apartment buildings by name. M. and I used to try to do that ourselves - like, we'd say to our friends, "Let's so back to the Warrington for a drink." And our friends would say, "What's the Warrington?" It's cool living in a building with a name. My mom always wanted to name her house - like "Tara" or "Graceland". I think her latest idea is something like "Twelve Oaks", although she needs to plant approximately twelve oak trees before it makes any sense. We used to live on Post Street in SF, apparently Hammett lived down the block!