Dave's Fiction Warehouse

W ell, mark me down as one of those who thought Mad Men kind of sucked this season. The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley catches a large ration of shit from commenters for suggesting as much, but she’s right: Stories you expect to be linear, like literature, have become circular, like soap opera. Plots are being recycled, and the only thing that keeps the show remarkable is its authentic backdrop of history and fashion. Especially fashion. My eyes are still red from that glimpse of Peggy’s pantsuit at the end of the episode. Still, even at its most mundane, Mad Men is better than another damned reality show, or cop show or dumb ABC laugh-track sitcom. At this point I don’t much care about Don Draper’s personal demons, but I am curious whether he’ll grow a Peter Max mustache and start listening to Three Dog Night. Everybody else did. One thing about the world in 1968: everything was about to get worse. Maybe that’s rubbing off on the writers. Oh well. They could transform Mad Men into...

I 've kept my own counsel on this Edward Snowden case. I didn’t want to judge him too quickly. My first impulse was to dismiss him as a self-aggrandizing little twit, who surely can’t really believe that the security apparatus of his own country is more pernicious than those maintained by his new friends in China, Russia, Cuba and Ecuador. But now I have sufficient facts to render a judgment. And my judgment is this: Edward Snowden is a self-aggrandizing little twit. I hope he has a hard time ahead of him, because I think he richly deserves it. Yeah, it’s terrible that the NSA is collecting almost as much personal data as Facebook. But what kind of a horse’s ass complains about intrusive surveillance and then accepts the generosity of Beijing? What kind of idiot whines about the erosion of privacy and then heads straight to Moscow, where full-court domestic surveillance was invented? Next stop, apparently, is Havana. Then on to Quito, where Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa Delgado...

I watch Game of Thrones, but I’m never quite sure if I like it. I felt the same way about the five (so far) weighty books in the series. It’s too much. The whole thing is a vast, often plodding yarn that has way too many characters — not all of whom are very interesting. There are so many people wandering around in medieval garb that you really need a program to tell who’s who. At least Jaime Lannister now stands out: he’s the one with the missing hand. Goes downhill from here For a fantasy series, this is about as gratuitously brutal and bloody and dark as it can get. Think Lord of the Rings as written by Cormac McCarthy: Frodo plans a trip to Mordor, but he’s tortured and beheaded before getting out of the Shire. Game of Thrones is like that. Any major character can die unpleasantly at any time, and when you find yourself wanting something to happen, that’s when the opposite will occur. In George R.R. Martin’s world, no good deed goes unpunished. The most recent episode is a case in ...

I 'm pretty happy with this FitBit so far. In the couple of weeks I’ve had it, I’ve only missed my 10,000-step goal once: that was the day we drove the 500 miles back from the North Carolina beach. Most days, I’m well over 10,000. The subtle nature of the FitBit — that it quietly remembers every freaking step — has a tendency to gamify the act of walking. You want to better your high score, even if the reward is no more than a silly badge appearing on your phone. And you definitely don’t want to see the sad-face that appears when you’ve fallen short. Too bad it doesn’t also administer a mild electric shock. Not that I’m experiencing dramatic weight loss. It is just walking after all, not the Tour de France. I’ll never attain the physique of Lance Armstrong this way, but I suppose I’ll never have his pharmaceutical bills either. Anyway, just an update. I like it so much I ordered one for the wife. The good: It’s tiny and completely unobtrusive, easy to forget you have it clipped on....

I t’s been a slow week. So let’s go to the mailbag: Dear Dave : So, what have you been reading lately? A : I just finished Beautiful Ruins , by Jess Walter. Excellent book, about a struggling Greek innkeeper and his encounter with an American actress in 1962, when the movie Cleopatra was being filmed. Richard Burton makes an appearance. I can say no more than that, because I don’t want to spoil it for you. But it’s a lovely book. Dave Bob, the idiot savant who inhabits a renovated supply closet here at the Warehouse, gives it four stars. Jess Walter wrote the highly regarded Citizen Vince in 2005. My brother Mike recommended Beautiful Ruins, and because he reads nothing but crime fiction, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this is not a mystery at all. Not a serial killer in sight. It’s just a very good, funny, and insightful book. Check it out. Note to Jess Walter: I’m available to do back-cover blurbs on spec. Dear Dave : What’s it like living in the Springfield neighborhood...