Greenwich Killing Time

Greenwich Killing Time - Kinky Friedman; 166


I liked this book a lot. Kinky does something in his books that I find really awesome. He takes himself, and then makes himself the main character of a the novel, but completely fictionalized. Which honestly I think is what most people do, they just change the character's name, which takes away the awesomeness. Instead of saying "I like detectives I will right a story about one name 'blah, blah, blah," it is like he said,"I would make an awesome detective, and this is what I'd do." The only other book I have read by him is Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, and that one involved three plots with Kinky trying to solve them all, whereas this one only had one plot. Now, I am trying to figure out what that means. Normally, I would guess it is assumed as someone becomes a better writer, they can integrate more plots and twist into the story and give it more depth, but I think at least with this style, that writing a full length novel around one story line is going to take more work and creativity. I don't know. If I ever see Kinky again I may just ask him. (That last part was intended as a joke, but thinking about it, I guess it isn't out of the question that I will see him again. I mean, just hanging out at the right cigar stores in Texas should really boost my chances.) Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, had a little bit more crassness in it, and a little bit more of Kinky's personal life in it, which I think comes with him just being more comfortable putting himself into the novel, but I give this one an A+, and I decided while reading it, there really is no way that I can say what my favorite book of the summer is at the end, because every time I have been reading a book (except for Alda's) I have been thinking "This is the best book yet!" so me judging wouldn't really work. I can say that I liked it more than Duma Key, which is currently in 3rd with Flow My Tears and this one tied for first.


And here I am with Kinky a couple of years ago.

2,774 pages in 26 days for an average of 106.69. (About 1 page per day behind schedule.)


1. Swine Not? - Jimmy Buffett; 256 
2. Moby Dick; or The Whale - Herman Melville; 870
3. The Stranger Beside Me - Ann Rule; 1,542 
4. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick; 1,773
5. Duma Key - Stephen King; 2,384
6. Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself - Alan Alda; 2,608 
7. Greenwich Killing Time - Kinky Friedman; 2,774
8. Murder in the White House - Margaret Truman; 3,009
9. Dexter in the Dark - Jeff Lindsay; 3,312
10. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky; 4,080 
11. The Taking - Dean Koontz; 4,544
12. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe; 4,753
13. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris; 5,025 
14. Middlemarch - George Eliot; 5,761
15. Beloved - Toni Morrison;6,036
16. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne; 6,228
17. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood - Howard Pyle; 6,368
18. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath; 6,612
19. Gadsby - Ernest Vincent Wright; 6,768
20. Pulp Fiction Selections - L. Ron Hubbard; 7,456
21. The Final Testament of the Holy Bible - James Frey; 7,856
22. Chili Dawgs Always Bark At Night -Lewis Grizzard; 8,125
23. The Greek - Pierre Rey; 8,573
24. The Pleasure of my Company - Steve Martin; 8,736
25. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Tom Robbins; 9,200 
26. Possible Side Effects - Augusten Burroughs; 9,504
27. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote; 9,847
28. The Daybreakers - Louis L'Amour; 10,000