I finished The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson. It’s the first book I have read by Thompson. Thompson has been mentioned to me by Jeremy before. Finally he ordered a couple titles and had them sent to me. It’s sort of a noir novella. Published in 1952, It is told in the first person by the killer, Lou Ford. Ford is a deputy sheriff in a small town in Texas. His personality gradually emerges into a full blown mad man. In the first chapter we watch over his shoulder as he spouts clichés to annoy people on purpose. “Striking at people that way is almost as good as the other, the real way.”

It’s a tightly plotted period piece and was fun to read. I have that other title by him that Jeremy gave me and have interlibrary requested a third.

I haven’t heard from the Buildings and Grounds guy from Grace. I didn’t think about the fact that I was texting him on Thanksgiving weekend. But it’s possible I’m already on his persona non grata list along with most of Holland. I’ll give it a couple of days then contact Jen Adams and see if she has any ideas about who could move my harpsichord and marimba.

A friend of ours asked around at church yesterday about someone to repair our window. I haven’t done anything on this yet. But I’m sort of marking time until I have some good recommendations.

I have been meaning to get back to Thomas A. Sebeok’s I Think I Am A Verb: More contributions to the doctrine of signs. Wikipedia describes Sebeok as “a Hungarian-born American polymath, semiotician, and linguist. As one of the founders of the biosemiotics field, he studied non-human and cross-species signaling and communication.” He died in 2001. I’m pretty sure I picked this up at a used book store or sale. I have always been fascinated by the title and have read in it before. But today I started at the beginning again. My reading technique is improving constantly and it’s worth starting over since I comprehend so much more the way I approach the written word these days.

Speaking of, here’s a great quote from Sebeok: “There appear to be two antipodal sorts of bookmen. There are those who derive endless delight from their solitary pleasure, which they pursue like self-stimulating laboratory rats, with electrodes implanted in their anterior hypothalamus, unceasingly bar-pressing in preference to any other activity. Then there are those of us whose bar-pressing habit is rewarded solely by a change in the level of illumination—in a word, novelty.”

I think I’m both of these.

New maps spark debate over major-minority districts

This is an AP article that mentions some Michigan stuff that was on the local paper’s web site (which is the only way I read it).