Twisted and dark and sad. I didn’t LOVE it, but I liked it.

Sigh! Dennis Lehane is my new favorite. I saw this movie before I ever read a Dennis Lehane book. The movie was fairly well done, but this book sizzles. The thing I really like about Lehane is how he doesn’t work from a formula; each book he does is very unique.

The only downside about seeing the Gone, Baby, Gone movie before reading any Patrick Kenzie-Angela Gennaro book is that I tend to see Casey Affleck in my mind whenever I am reading one in the series. I’m not sure if that is good or bad.

I am quickly coming to the conclusion that I hate James Ellroy. If he is not writing books like this one full of sleaze and unpleasant characters, he is writing books like the The Cold Six Thousand filled with three-world sentences that make me feel like I am hiccuping my way through the damned thing.

I am surely going to try to finish both of these books, no matter to what huge extent they annoy me, but the fact that I have to stop in the middle to read one or six or ten Joanne Harris/Ed McBain/Kathy Reichs other books to give my mind a break from the irritation says a whole lot about where I stand with these two novels.

Sheesh. Not since War and Peace has reading for fun been so damned much work!

Reading the responses, commentaries, news coverage, comments on news coverage, etc. that have been generated in the wake of this debate is nearly as entertaining as the debate itself.

And, of course, let us not forget the brilliant, brilliant send-ups Tina Fey and the SNL cast have been doing, which can be viewed at http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/vp-debate-open-palin-biden/727421/ for everyone who missed them.

Overall, I would say this election year is much more lively and amusing that any I have previously been involved with. So, so sad that so much hangs on the outcome.

I have a confession to make: I love Lit’l Smokies. Maybe its a southern thing; maybe it’s a sad, sad product of my bad, bad diversions into the world of not-so-healthy food.

Maybe there’s just something plain funky and freudian going on.

Who knows? But you simply can’t escape growing up anywhere beneath the Maxon-Dixon line without consuming, at least once, some cocktail wieners marinated in barbecue sauce and served on toothpicks. And once you pass out of cocktail-wiener virginity, well, my child—you’re doomed.

What’s really funny is that I know very few people who don’t harbor a secret pash for lit’l smokies. Even PETA-devoted, vegan purists somewhere deep inside (if they grew up in the south) have a thing for these baby sausages.

Ah, Janet. Janet, Janet, Janet.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

I so enjoy the Stephanie Plum books. Are they great literature? Of course not! Will they bring about world peace, end hunger, and cure split ends? Absolutely, without a doubt – no. Are they even believable? Well, in a hard-core, suspended-belief kind of way, yes.

But they are my guilty pleasure. And they are hilarious. And I (as is much of Houston) am so in need of something to laugh about these days. And, up to now, Janet has always so faithfully delivered.

Until now. Until Twelve Sharp. Sigh. Flat, stale, and unprofitable. Quell déception!

It might have been enough to put me off of this series altogether—perhaps after eleven books, Evanovich simply ran out of steam and fresh ideas. Fortunately, I had Lean Mean Thirteen. Which is quite simply hilarious.

So perhaps Twelve Sharp is just Evanovich not at her sharpest. Irony has always been my weakest type of humor.

I had the perfect plan. Hurricane Ike is coming; I can see it on the news. And since electricity goes out around here with the merest breath of wind, I figured it would probably go out late Friday night or early Saturday morning, right? So what better time to read a story like this than in the dark of night with the rain pouring and the winds lashing around outside, setting up an infernal howl. Perfect atmosphere for creepy stories, right?

Only the electricity didn’t go off. Oh, it threatened to a couple of times, but at nearly 2 in the morning, I was still watching CNN and KHOU news. I’ll admit, I’m a news junkie and I just could not stop watching every freaking detail about the water spilling over the seawall in Galveston and the destruction already coming up from the gulf.

I finally turned off the TV and went to sleep exhausted. No power outage. No Dracula during the hurricane.

Although that’s probably just as well because my imagination is way too vivid and I would have scared the crap out of myself. Scaring the crap out of yourself is a lot less fun when you can’t turn the lights on and prove to yourself there is no monster creeping up on you in the dark.

I have been reading this less than 24 hours and I already learned one thing: Bram (as in “Stoker”), which is what my daughter would have been named had she been a son, is short for Abraham.

I thought I should get on with reading this, especially since I have already put it off for a year and a half. Vampires creep me out; they are so insidious. You just never know when they are going to sneak up on you and turn you into one of those pale, ominous creatures who lurk in the dark avoiding mirrors.

Come to think of it, that could almost be a description of my daughter, whom I haven’t seen in daylight (except for a week this summer) in a l-o-o-o-n-g time and who sneaked into my room last night and cornered me from sinister motivations, claiming she needed help with her biology homework. Some claim children suck the very life right out of you. And the child does have a suspect history—being almost named the same as the author of this book.

Less than 24 hours—and look at the turns my life is taking. Who says reading doesn’t change the world?

A seriously creepy story that borrows prolifically but rather inexactly from Dante’s Paradise Lost. You just gotta love a book that attempts to sell New York City as the gateway to Beelzebub’s domain.

The cover of my 1972 paperback says, “It’s New Year’s Eve. Your best friend died in September, you’ve been robbed twice, your girl friend is leaving you, you’ve just lost your job… and the only one left to talk to is a gay burglar you’ve got tied up in the kitchen. P.S. Your Cat is Dead.”

With a cover like that, how can this book be anything but hilarious? Author James Kirkwood had a classic scenario for snort-milk-out-your-nose-from-laughing comedy. He actually delivers in one place: when the main character Jim lobs fruit at his departing girl friend. That’s it. Read it several times because it is the only laugh you’re going to get out of this book. It does not feature the “bizarre humor” promised by its reviewers -or the zany, surprising, witty, fascinating riveting, or imaginative humor either. Quite frankly, it is barren of much humor at all of any kind. In fact, I found myself wincing a lot more than I found myself laughing, undoubtedly because the lead character/narrator is too petty-minded and mean-spirited to be entertaining.

The only explanation I can offer for the great reviews it got is that this book is a “coming out of the closet gee-I-never-knew-I-was-gay” novel and in the let-it-all-hang-out 60s and 70s, no one wanted to bash it lest they be branded as homophobic. I’m not homophobic, but I am definitely unhilarious-’hilarious’-books-phobic.