Word: readerly
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...Harry Potter we meet in Phoenix is a darker, more volatile Harry, and it's not just adolescent petulance. Harry is showing the mental scars of having been hunted and harried for four straight years, and the rage and fear he feels will strike a chord with any reader, adult or child. "You don't know what it's like!" he shrieks at Ron and Hermione. "You--neither of you--you've never had to face him, have you?" No, they don't know what it's like...
...Some of our readers had their own approach to coping with the medical crisis caused by soaring malpractice-insurance premiums. A Massachusetts man offered this do-it-yourself solution: "Why can't patients purchase malpractice insurance when they walk into a hospital, just as people buy flight insurance before they take a flight? Maybe the sight of an insurance counter in the lobby of a hospital wouldn't be too reassuring, but neither is a doctor shortage." A Michigan reader echoed the idea: "I'm all for taking the lawyers out of the equation. In advance of nonemergency, non-life...
...Twenty pages into the novel, the reader cottons on to the fact that this is a darkly bizarre fantasy world that bears superficial resemblance to the real one but obeys few of its laws. The book's strangest quality is that it has only the faintest tint or scent of India. Except for proper names, the book's vernacular and cultural references are almost entirely American, and impressively authentic at that. The hard-boiled dialogue is straight out of classic Hollywood, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Anglo-American spy spoof. If Bond and Matt Helm outrageously flout social...
This is, of course, nuts, and at some level Paul knows that, but he gets to work anyway, making flash cards and constructing an oversize keyboard so Lorelei can type with her nose. Meanwhile Parkhurst intersperses Paul's quixotic efforts with his recollections (addressed to the reader in a chatty second person) of his romance with the moody, volatile Lexy and an intermittently engaging subplot about a secret cabal of researchers bent on endowing dogs with the power of speech using Gothically gruesome surgical techniques. This is totally implausible, but it helps reduce the novel's Q factor a little...
...tell that "Shrimpy and Paul" may not be for the Tom Clancy reader in your life? Well, it ought to be. "Shrimpy and Paul" works like a delightful palate refresher of nonsense that sharpens up taste buds long since dulled by greasy, unhealthy fare. Though it makes no conventional sense, "Shrimpy and Paul" is easy to read thanks to Marc Bell's sure hand at story structure. Each of the three main stories (along with the other one-page strips and ephemera that make up this collection) follow a narrative as solid as an Abbott and Costello picture. Shrimpy...