The School of Speed-reading

I have become something of a fast summer reader. Either that or the books that I'm choosing have either:
A) Not enough plot.
B) Not enough pages.
C) Too much spacing in between lines.

Either way, I just finished two books in a period of three weeks. I finished Mark Haddon's book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, in two days (Maybe I have too much down time during the weekends?). It was a pretty good book, and it really got you into the mind of someone who has some special needs. Mr. Haddon has worked a lot with autistic children, and he was really able to give us some insight into the minds of kids who are socially challenged, but when alone, their capacity for memory and sheer brilliance for logistical thinking simply astounds. It starts off as a murder mystery, turns into a pseudo "coming of age" story, and ends up as an inspirational tale, all in about 240 pages. And it was a refreshing change of pace from my last book I read, Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which was Amy Tan meets melodramatic Chinese historic soap opera. That book was O.K., if only it didn't have such stilted dialog at times.

I did notice that both books quote praises from Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha, one of my favorite books that I have read. Yet he has technically written only one novel.

My next book is Winkie, by Clifford Chase. It looks interesting, as the premise of the book is that a stuffed teddy bear is indicted on charges of terrorism. Seems both absurd yet timely. Kinda like President Bush, except with out the "timely" part.

All this reading almost makes me want to try my hand at writing my own book. I usually have ideas for poems and plays and novels floating around in my head, but I never really do anything about them. Some other time maybe...