Lay of the Land

I finished "Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford last week and I would give it 4.5 USGs. I have to say that I love Ford's style of writing. Nothing romance novelly about his writing. He's wry, dry, sly, funny and never gets schlocky. Makes you often laugh out loud. And is never, that I can remember, trite except when it is tongue-in-cheek. All good things in my opinion.

For those of you who do not know, this is the third book involving Frank Bascom the main character of "The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day" (Pulitzer Prize winner, 1996). Bascom is what I would consider a decent, average, ordinary guy in many ways. Nothing striking about him but his ordinariness is transcendent if that's possible and Ford's writing style makes the reading about this guy's fairly ordinary life compelling. I'm not doing a great job of explaining or describing this (I've had 6 hours sleep in the last 3 days) but, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it made me want to go back and reread TS and ID.

I highly recommend it but, if you haven't, you should read TS and ID first. That way you get to enjoy three very good books.

I'm currently reading "The History of Love" as recommended by Tree and written by Nicole Krauss and am enjoying it very much so far as well. Thank you, Tree. I'll let y'all know when I finish.