Reconsiderations.

I'm changing my mind about A Fraction of the Whole. It's starting to become, as the Wall Street Journal review on the front cover would have it, "riotously funny." One of two things is happening. Either the book is actually getting much better or I'm paying better mind to it and being a more consistent attentive reader. Either way, it's been very enjoyable lately. Here's an excerpt:

Let's not mince words: the interior of the Sydney casino looks as if Vegas had an illegitimate child with Liberace's underpants, and that child fell down a staircase and hit its head on the edge of a spade. At blackjack tables and sitting in front of poker machines were tense and desperate men and women looking like droids, who didn't seem to be gambling for pleasure. As I watched them, I remembered the casino was famous for having its patrons lock their children in their cars while they gambled. I had read a news story about it, and I hoped all those sad, desperate people rolled the windows down a little while they put their rent money in the pockets of the state government, which rakes in huge profits and then puts half a percent of it back into the community for counseling services for gamblers.

There are numerous gems like the first sentence of this excerpt, one liners that are truly hilarious and odd juxtapositions of images.

Let's see how it goes.