I got my hour of vacation time approved and registered for the virtual book club meeting. They only had 3 of their 20 slots filled when I registered, so I'm feeling less bad about taking a spot from a resident of the area.

I choose Binary Witness as my book for the meeting because I was pretty sure I wouldn't manage to finish anything in time. A reread seemed like the best option. And it's looking like I was right, because I'm only about halfway through my relisten. I may switch to my paper copy sometime tonight.

I made an error and dodged this book when it was first being promoted. I'd assumed that any humorous book in which the hero is a neuroatypical man would source its laughter at his expense. I should have had more faith. 

What Graeme Simsion has managed to achieve is a perfectly formed RomCom which works because the hero is neuroatypical. He, like any other romantic hero, has obstacles to overcome, some of which he creates for himself and some of which are created by the people around him, and we hold our breath to see if he can win through. We cheer for him for being himself. We want him to succeed without having to change anything essential about himself. 

Don Tillman, our hero a tenured associate professor of genetics at an Australian university. He understands that his brain is wired differently from most other people's and that, while this gives him many strengths that other people don't have, strong powers of concentration, an excellent memory, the ability to maintain a rational distance when solving problems and an aptitude for being disciplined and organised, his lack of social skills are likely to make it harder for him to find a life partner.

He decides to solve the problem by starting "The Wife Project", a questionnaire-based search for his perfect match. When he meets Rosie, a self-evidently poor match for his search criteria, he gets involved in "The Father Project", helping her to identify her biological father.

"The Father Project" leads Don into many activities he would not normally have considered, some of them illegal and all of them in Rosie's company.

The plot is beautifully structured as a RomCom quest. It has a number of surprising twists and while I wanted Don to succeed, I was kept guessing about if or how this would be possible.

The writing is light but deft. Seeing the world through Don Tillman's eyes is a revelation. While there are some very funny scenes, the main tone of the book is compassionate and hopeful.

I stayed up late because I had to know how things worked out. It was worth the loss of sleep.

I'm glad to see that there are more Don Tillman books. I need to spend more time in Don Tillman's company.

I recommend the audiobook version, brilliantly narrated by Dan O'Grady. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

I'm counting "The Rosie Project" as my Melbourne Cup Day Book Task

I received my box set of Little Black Classics about four years ago, in November, 2015, but hadn't really dipped into them. They survived the purging process from earlier this year, and have a place of honor in my bookshelves, taking up half of a book shelf. 

I finally decided that it was time to move them up onto the "reading" list. I'm going to read one or two of them a month, on Sundays. They are nice little bite-sized bits, around 50 pages long, that I can read in an hour or so. I'm thinking that I will go in order, but I'm not fully committed to that at this point.

The first one is by Boccaccio, and are 4 excerpts from the Decameron: Andreuccio da Perugia's Neapolitian Adventures, Ricciardio da Chinzica Loses his Wife, Miss Rosie and the Priest and Patient Griselda. The back matter says "Bawdy tales of pimps, cuckolds, lovers and clever women from the 14th century Florentine masterpiece the Decameron."

Bawdy is an understatement, you guys. Certainly the second and third tales are basically medieval pornography. Not to say that they are graphic, but Boccaccio is certainly the master of the allusion - we have patches being plowed (or not) and priests using their pestles to grind in the mortars of other men's wives. They are very funny.

Patient Griselda, though? Her husband was a straight up abusive jackass and she should've stabbed him in the throat.

Oh no! I subscribe to Rosie Claverton's newsletter, and she just notified readers that the small press that was publishing her Amy Lane books has gone under. She ends the newsletter with:

 

"As the series' future is uncertain, I will be pursuing other projects. I hope to return to Amy and Jason in the future and finish their story."

:-(

Of the three Amy Lane mysteries I've read, this is my least favorite. But let me be clear, it is not a bad book. There is a cliffhanger type ending, so be warned.

The development of the relationship between Amy and Jason felt very organic, its just that the development and purpose of one character don't quite work for me.

But still will be reading the others in the series. Amy is awesome!  The friendships that are at the heart of the book are the books best selling point, well that and the location of Wales.