About
a month ago, I started the Entertainment category on this blog in hopes
of forcing myself to read some good books after months spent reading
nothing but Dr. Seuss. Last night, I finished the first novel I’ve read
in about a year, Peter Carey’s Theft. Matt claims that this is the best book he’s read since Tim Winton’s Dirt Music and was really disappointed that it didn’t win the Booker Prize (although Dirt Music didn’t either!).

Although I can’t say I loved it as much as Matt, it was really a
phenomenal book and definitely worth reading. Carey’s ability to evoke
a character through dialog and minute physical description is one of
the things that made me love one of his other novels, Oscar & Lucinda and in Theft he is deft in his creation of Butcher Bones and his brother Hugh.

Butcher is a ruined artist, the son of a butcher (hence his
nickname), and a divorced man who has lost custody of his young son, so
the theft referenced in the title could apply to many things. However,
this book actually plays out a bit like a classic heist movie and
seemingly unrelated digressions from the main plot end up having
significance later in the story.

Tonight if the basketball isn’t keeping my attention, I intend to
start the next book in Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series. Yes,
it’s a youth fantasy novel, but it’s still a novel and I loved the
first few books in the series so I have high hopes for this one…In the
meantime, go check Theft out of the library and give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.