So many books, not enough time to nap
Bob: *hooks claws in book, tosses off dining table*
Minerva: *jumps aside* Hey, watch it, emo-boy! You almost nailed me with that.
Bob: Sorry. It’s just that I really feel like I wasted that entire nap. I could have slept on a book worth reading instead of that one.
Minerva: *studies title*An Eye at the Top of the World: The Terrifying Legacy of the Cold War’s Most Daring CIA Operation. Ooh! Spy stuff! That’s usually pretty good.
Bob: As if! They gave it that title so they’d have a chance of selling this thing someone who wasn’t fixated on mountain-climbing, because let’s face it, calling it something like How My Friends and I Tried to Climb Nanda Kot (Because the Indian Government Wouldn’t Let Us Climb Nanda Devi) and Almost Got Killed by Avalanches and Came Home and Decided it was Time to Grow up would never get the book into stores.
Minerva: But it has all the cool stuff that’s never been in print before about this CIA stuff, right?
Bob: Ha! That’s already been covered in other books. The guy who wrote this one just brings it in because he needed a way to sell the expedition to Nanda Kot to his backers and for his agent to attract a publisher.
Minerva: What a pity. Because Krakauer pretty much did the whole “struggling-to-survive-at-a-high-altitude-amid-massive-amounts-of-snow thing already.
Bob: No doubt. I don’t suppose you’re read anything worthwhile lately.
Minerva: Well, I started The Bone Palace but Jemmy pushed me off of it before I got too far. He’s been lying on it all day, the lout.
Bob: Was it any good?
Minerva: I spent several minutes trying to get him off of it so I could finish. There’s tufts of hair all over the bed.
Zaza: *enters sideways* *sees book on floor, pauses* What’s this?
Bob: Don’t even bother, Aunt Z. It was an immense waste of my time, and at your age, you can’t really afford to-
Zaza: My age? You little brat! I oughta come up there and-
Minerva: I think we can all agree life is too short to read bad books, no matter how old you happen to be at any time…
Zaza: *sits* I can agree with that in principle. I can even agree with that in a specific instance, because last week I wasted a perfectly good afternoon on The Intelligencer.
Minerva: That’s another one Fidelio got off the cheap table, isn’t it? You can always smell the adhesive from the mark-down tag, even after she pulls it off the cover.
Zaza: It’s a good thing she didn’t spend much on it. It’s like Dan Brown, but with Glamorous Lesbians and Implausible Elizabethans.
Bob: Implausible Elizabethans?
Zaza: Christopher Marlowe, spy.
Minerva: Oh, dear…
Jemmy: *wanders in, limping slightly* Hey, don’t tell me you’re dissing Ink and Steel!
Zaza: No, those were probably improbable because, you know, they were fantasy novels so you knew they couldn’t be real but they made sense. With this one, my eyes rolled so badly when I got to the point where Marlowe decides to follow someone by swimming across the Thames in London that I woke myself up.
Jemmy: Swims across the Thames?
Bob: No, seriously? Like that’s faster than walking, or something.
Minerva: Well, maybe if you’re Michael Phelps…
Zaza: The Thames at London is a freakin’ tidal estuary!
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: *crawls out from under table* What’s the ruckus, neighbors?
Jemmy: We’re talking about books and swimming across the Thames at London.
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Well, we wouldn’t do that. We’re cats, after all.
Bob: What’s a tidal estuary, anyway?
Zaza: It’s a place where the river runs into the sea.
Bob: Well, that’s downstream from London, surely, by a good bit.
Zaza: Have you ever been there?
Bob: Have you?
Zaza: *engages in Long Stare of Doom with Bob*
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Do we need to check this on Wikipedia, folks? I’m just sayin’…
Zaza: *casually grooms self*
Bob: *gazes at light fixture*
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: I think we can stipulate that the Thames is pretty darn wide at London and-aren’t there tides or something?
Zaza: Yes! You could look it up! *glares at Bob*
Bob: *Continues to study ceiling fixture*
Jemmy: So what’s the problem? Monkeys swim stuff all the time, even wide stuff, like the Hellespont and the English Channel.
Zaza: They do it to prove they can. Not to try and catch someone.
Minerva: Besides, don’t rivers have banks and things? If you’re down in the water swimming, how can you see up over the banks to find the person you’re following? And what if he was wearing a sword? Wouldn't that be a little awkward to swim with?
Zaza: You see why I woke up.
Jemmy: What’s this "Dan Brown with glamorous lesbians" bit anyway?
Zaza: Well, It’s as stupid as anything he ever wrote, and it has Glamorous Lesbians along with Famous Scholars and Powerful Financiers.
Bob: So, why is this a problem? I mean, since there probably are glamorous lesbians in the real world, and art can hold a mirror up to nature, and…
Zaza: They’re there for the sole purpose of being Glamorous Lesbians (in a pair) to intrigue men who like thinking about pairs of Glamorous Lesbians who exist to have threesomes with them.
Bob: Monkeys are just really strange about sex, aren’t they?
Jemmy: So how’d it turn out?
Zaza: I kicked it under the bed. When Fidelio finds it she can take it to Goodwill, assuming the Rage Monster doesn’t pee on it. Then I went and climbed on the bookshelf and dragged down Jade Man’s Skin and read that again.
Minerva: I loved that one. Is there another one?
Bob: You mean Dragon in Chains?
Minerva: No, a new one. Please tell me there’s a new one.
Jemmy: We can hope.
Zaza: Speaking of hope, some of us want to know if you’re done with The Bone Palace yet.
Jemmy: *stretching* Yes, and it was great.
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Say, have any of you all had any luck with The Joy of Cooking?
Minerva: Oh, yes, yes, yes!
Jemmy: They say it’s a classic, I say I want to know why we aren’t being regularly served things from its pages, if Fidelio is going to use it for bedtime reading.
Zaza: You’ll want to try it open, because you’ll get a bad crick in your spine otherwise.
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Is that the trick? I wondered, seeing as it’s so thick and all.
Bob: Look, is there any more decent nonfiction around here? I’m just not in the mood for novels right now, for some reason.
Minerva: Well, there‘s that copy of Richard and John: Kings at War over on the couch.
Jemmy: You mean the one that claims John had autistic qualities and blames that on Eleanor of Aquitaine?
Zaza: You notice how it’s always the mother’s fault? And is it possible that John was just a jerk who wasn’t lucky enough to be as charming as the rest of his family? Who were, if you had to deal with them here and now, mostly jerks too?
Jemmy: "Richard Sic et Non!"
Zaza: Bertrand de Born was a jerk, too.
Bob: Hey, is that the same as the one Dante finds in Hell?
Zaza: yes, but when did you read the Inferno? Or have you been playing video games?
Bob: There’s a copy of the Ciardi translation in the book case in the back room. I found it when I was hiding after I got my claws clipped.
Minerva: Ah! She got me the other day!
Bob: They’re never catching me again for that. Ever.
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Fidelio grabbed me day before yesterday--I swear, it's like having Melvin Purvis after you. Look, have any of you seen that copy of Pirates of the Levant that was here just the other day?
Minerva: Get with the times, public enemy! Fidelio took that back to the library weeks ago, along with Acacia and .
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Well, I'll be! I kept meaning to get to that one and--well, maybe we can get her to buy a copy. And the one that came before the pirates, because I don't think we've had that one on hand at all.
Jemmy: I can't say that I remember it, and I'm usually really on top of things.
Minerva: Yeah, right up until you fall off of them and tear your leg up.
Jemmy: That was completely un-called for, wide-load. Just you wait until I get over there, you ill-bred specimen of torbitude!
Mr. C. A. (Pretty Boy) Floyd: Now calm down, neighbor. I think we can agree that Sister Min was a little out of line but that's no reason to raise your paw to a lady!
Jemmy: A lady! Don't make me laugh!
Bob: Hey, Jemmy--how did you like Acacia?
Jemmy: *is visibly distracted* Huh? What was that?
Zaza: Did you, Mr. So-au-courant, get around to that one before it went back?
Jemmy: Oh, the book...Yes. It was an above-average heroic save-the-kingdom fantasy. The invading barbarians had some neat details that were sort of different. There was a beautiful, self-absorbed, idiotic princess, though.
Zaza: It's like there's this law, and it says if you get too original anywhere you have to make up for it somewhere else, like there's this basic volume of tropes you have to drag in so people don't get too nervous. Man, I'm glad I don't write books.
Bob: I'm going to go and lie down on that copy of Pears' Cyclopædia. At least it'll be educational.
Minerva: There's a copy of The Fall of the Roman Empire under it.
Jemmy: Gibbon?
Minerva: Heather.
Bob: It'll be a good long sleep, then. *yawns vastly*