Knowing When to Accept Defeat

Even the best of us (and yes, I'm obviously counting myself among the best) sometimes fail. As I have these past two weeks, during which I spent far more time watching movies—seriously Kira, The Princess and the Frog?—and eating potato chips than reading.

In fairness, I'm still halfway through Too Big To Fail and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (the third and thank Jesus last in the series), but since the entire goal of this project was to, you know, finish books, the fact that I've managed to toss back a few hundred random pages doesn't count. It just keeps me from feeling entirely brain dead.

So it's time to move on. I'm sure I'll eventually finish Too Big to Fail, hopefully in time for the next market crash, and I'll manage to work my way through the rest of Hornet's Nest. But I just need to accomplish something this week, other than dragging my vacation-loving self back to the office and away from the holiday leftovers (by which I mean food I allowed myself to buy while on vacation and continue to keep in the kitchen, where it beckons me with sugary/fatty goodness).

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known mostly for his short stories and graphic novels, who I discovered by chance a few years back. I read his 2006 book of short stories, The Nimrod Flipout, and remember finding it quirky, funny and entirely enjoyable. So this week I'm moving on, or I suppose back, to his 2004 collection, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God (& Other Stories). If for no other reason than the cover art.