Bedside Manner: Soi Cowboy Mouth

What Brenner's reading in the nights of these days.

Nothing at all like a Gormenghastian tower
there on the bedside table.

No fear of it toppling as your reporter has:
Deep into the labyrinthine halls and histories
of Mervyn Peake's baroque fantasy masterwork.

I'm halfway into the second book now,
meeting the cabal of scholar-grotesques
who teach young Lord Titus Groan his three Rs;
wondering what's going to happen at the intimate soireé
to which the doctor's sister, Irma Prunesquallor,
has invited 17 of those scholars; and keeping one eye,
one watchful and very intrigued eye,
on too-cunning Steerpike's complex machinations
toward dominance in the castle.

But I'm also switching between Gormenghast & Bangkok,
intermittently lapping happily at the dish of
Thai police-procedural and Buddhist underpinnings that is Vulture Peak,
the fourth in the series of John Burdett's crime novels
featuring Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.

Will Our Beleaguered Hero Save The Day isn't so much the question,
but, rather, will he save the day for his chief Vikorn who might want to add organlegging
to his trove of corruption while seeking to become Governor,
or for himself as Sonchai goes semi-undercover, professionally and personally,
in the darker urban strata where kidneys & hearts & eyes are sold
like so many cheap Rolex knockoffs.

Waiting on deck, as they say –
and somewhere in our deep history of things
there must have been a deck, an actual deck,
possibly made of wood, that people waited on –
like it's a sports thing, a baseball thing, right? –
but, anyway, there's Craig Clevenger's The Contortionist's Handbook,
waiting for me to finish with dear old half-farang Sonchai,
waiting as I'll pause before diving into the third & final volume of Gormenghast,
waiting since it was loaned to me by Parallelogramophonograph's Kareem Badr
who recommended it so highly.

Just the back cover copy and the opening page and the blurbs from impressed others:
Pow! This is gonna be one weird sockdollager of a debut novel from a few years ago …

And of course there's a magazine, yes.
This one – totally out of frame, ha – is Frame,
a high-end publication featuring high-end design,
filled with as much high-end reflection regarding foundational matters of form and function
as it is with spotlights flashing on the likes of whatever Starck or Rashid or whoever
is currently wowing the crowds with.

This is the sort of thing you buy at Domy Books when you wander in
to browse that store's graphic marvels & your budget screams:

"Don't spend me all right here right now, fool!
Hold yourself back, tie yourself to the fucking mast if need be,
lest the papery sirens of Domy's diverse & seductive goodness
lure you to sobbing, tear-soaked financial ruin!"

A bigger budget is just dreams to come, friend.
And so to bed.