Friday, February 16, 2007

"What is Robert Greer reading?"

Robert Greer is the author of, most recently, The Fourth Perspective.

I asked him what he has been reading. His reply:
I am six weeks away from finishing a novel that is due April 1, so I have not been reading as much as I usually do. Nonetheless, here is what I have read lately:

Staying Up Much Too Late, by Gordon Theisen. This book is a very interesting take on Edward Hopper's famous 1941 painting, Nighthawks, the war time work that seems to define the American psyche. It's just an image of a big city diner and four lonely people, but it is probably as American as any painting can get. The book's central theme is that the painting is as familiar an American icon as any around and that it is in fact a pessimistic take on the American way of life. Not sure I buy that, but the book is excellent, full of history and thoughtfully constructed.

I also just read a galley of Greg Bear's Quantico, a near future, (as are most of Bear's books) science/political thriller tale about would be terrorists in which the terrorists take on a role of strange twisted understandability as they try to make a statement with genetically engineered anthrax.

That's about it.

My new CJ Floyd novel The Mongoose Deception will come out in October, so that April 1 deadline is breathing down my neck. No additional serious reading until after that.
Read the results of the Page 69 Test for Robert's The Fourth Perspective.

Visit his official website.

--Marshal Zeringue