Book News

I'm reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a book I'd never heard of until it was given to me as recuperation reading.

It's a kinda Secret History story with bourgeois kids at a private high school and mystery and stuff. But with a LOT more humour. It is very clever and funny. At times it is too clever and precious in a Juno-nobody-really-talks-like-that way, but it's easy enough to ignore that because it's fun to read.

The best character is the narrator's Dad who is this manly European small-school academic. He would be played by Max von Sydow if Max was 30 years younger (and still alive? Didn't he die? I can't remember.)

Sample: narrator and her Dad go to a University production of Our Town.
"...Dad found the carpe diem premise much too syrupy ("Wake me up if someone gets shot" he said as he nodded off.)"

You can hear Max von Sydow saying that, I think.