I’m re-reading this right now, and I find myself thinking, “How is it that I forgot how funny Edward and Bella are in the beginning of the book?” And not unintentionally funny, either. They are witty and sarcastic and make me wake up Mike by laughing out loud. How did I forget this?

The big gimmick with this book is that you can read it two ways. You can read it the normal way, which would be start at chapter 1 and read straight through. Or, you can read the hopscotch way. At the front of the book is the list of chapters in a different order that supposedly make a different story. As it turns out, you read the first 56 chapters in their regular order with these other “bonus” chapters interspersed.

The writing is a lot like Hemingway. Since it was written in the 1950s, that makes some sense. Also, it has been translated from the Spanish. Half of it takes place in Paris and half in Buenos Aires. There are lots of bits still in French or Spanish and I am too lazy to plug them into Babelfish to figure out what they said.

Okay, so the plot… There’s this guy – Horacio Oliveira. He is living in Paris with a woman he calls La Maga. He is part of some intellectual club made up of various artists and writers and whatnot living poor in Paris. They get together and drink and philosophize and poor La Maga can’t keep up.

Oliveira is not really a likable guy. He’s self-obsessed and over-occupied with navel gazing.

In the second half, he is in Buenos Aires, but he’s basically the same guy.

I am pretty positive I didn’t get all the little things I was supposed to pick up on in this book. I might read it again one day to see if I catch anything I missed.

I don’t even know where to begin describing this book. The main character is like Indiana Jones only better read and a dinosaur. Yes, you read that right, ladies and gentlemen. A dinosaur. On his adventures he meets some really good people, and some really, really bad people.

One of the best parts of this book is the illustrations! The author has illustrated his book with pen and ink drawings of monsters and bookhunters and books. They are so much fun.

The Orm was definitely flowing when he wrote this.