Fillet of Soul

Man, I've been reading my little geek ass off the past few days -- satisfied my curiosity about Sue Grafton by reading (well, listening to) A is for Alibi, her first book from 1981 or so. Eloquent, but pretty dull. Then finished off Robert B. Parker's latest, Shrink Rap -- of course, Parker's the greatest mystery writer working, and although this wasn't his best work, I'll take him over a weenie like Patricia Cornwell anyday. Today, I whipped through Alan Moore's From Hell, which I liked quite a bit, even though I thought his choice to make Jack the Ripper into a possible celestial creature was puzzling. And now I'm on Steve Martin's brief Shopgirl, and it's strange to see Martin being straight-faced in his fiction. Promising so far, apparently a tale of a mopey, depressed, lonely girl who forms a relationship with a fifty-something businessman, and they help each other out emotionally, I predict. Kind of an odd read, though, if for no other reason than as I'm reading, I'm envisioning Steve Martin as the older man, and Christina Ricci as the shopgirl. That's just weird.