Ms. Edmonds is currently reading Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem.
How can you not love a book that says,"Tell him next time he wants to talk to me, don't send a marsupial," and means it literally? Gun, With Occasional Music is a dystopian detective story and whether you're in for the dsytopia or in it for the detective story (I am in it for the detective story), it's a great read. Conrad Metcalf is a detective who's last client ends up dead, and it's up to him to find out what really happened. Featuring, as mentioned before, a kangaroo named Joey Castle, a beautiful blonde named Celeste Stanhope and a freely available drugs with names like Forgettol, Acceptol and Regrettol.
Goodreads says:
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.
Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.
Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
In If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, Tim O'Brien writes about his life as a U.S. combat soldier in Vietnam. The book shows how awful and mistaken the war was; how much suffering it caused the Vietnamese people, and how damaging it was for U.S. soldiers.
