Hot Diggity-Dog! or Mommy's Book Club

I am not as up on pop culture as I used to be. And since I get my books from the library and I cherry pick cable TV with a DVR, I seemed to have missed two exciting, recent devolopments.

Jeff Lindsey's second Dexter novel: Dearly Devoted Dexter.

And the Showtime original series Dexter, inspired by his work, starring Six Feet Under alum Micheal C. Hall, which premieres this Sunday.

I am almost wetting my pants with anticipation.

I was introduced to Lindsay's Dexter Morgan quite by accident, when my stepfather-in-law donated his usual stack of readers club cast offs last spring. On the top of the stack, sat Darkly Dreaming Dexter. I actually shifted it to the bottom, because I am not much of a serial murder kinda gal. I read Sue Grafton's Q is for Quarry first; another book that introduced me to yet another fantastic character, along with many future hours of enjoyment as I vowed to work my way backwards through the alphabet. After wading through another mystery which paled in comparison to Grafton's work, and the poignant fiction of Ayelet Waldman's My Daughter's Keeper, I came back to Dex.

By the end of the first page, I was hooked. I spent the next two days immersed in the introduction of solid foods to my then 8 month old daughter, and brutal serial murder.

I simply love how my accidental, circumstantially delayed gratification affords me these lovely opportunities (I believe it might be termed Serendipity; coinkidinkally the first book I ever read --at six years old-- until it literally fell apart).

So now, a new book and a new series in which to sink my choppers. It reminds me of the day I finished Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, only to discover that though the book itself was published in the mid-90s, I only had to wait three weeks for the sequel, Son of a Witch, to go on sale. I was only too tickled that very same week to find a used copy of the original Broadway cast recording of Wicked: The Musical, which remained the soundtrack of my life for months. If hard-pressed, I could likely sing 80% of the libretto by heart, without accompaniment.

These are the brightly colored threads weaving a brilliant tapestry within the otherwise gray landscape of a cultural wasteland.

On a far less overly-dramatic Sarah Bernhardt note....

I found a new way to cure a crabby toddler.

Hmm. My Mom used to call me Sarah Burnhardt (which, I have come to understand, was a common practice among mothers of her generation). Somehow, I don't think she knew Ms. Burnhardt, arguably the most famous actress of the 19th century, was also a hooker with a wooden leg.