Lit Bits & A Bit about Mysteries

• No, I haven't decided that I'll simply post one poem a day for the whole month and remain silent otherwise. I realize that's how it might appear.  Intriguging content is being developed and manipulated and pulled from all corners of the globe as I type. It is incumbent upon you to stay tuned.
• John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry were at Dutton's last night to talk about their new book This Moment on Earth.  I don't think I'm saying anything new here by mentioning that he's a little stiff.  But he's so well-meaning, I really don't care. Interesting to see them in light of Kerry's recent vocal protests about Sam Fox - and then to wake up this morning to the news that Bushie appointed him anyway...when Congress was on a break.  Grrrrr. Wish I would have known last night, I'm sure that would have been an interesting question/response. Off point from their environmentalist message last night, but...still. Inquiring minds. I'm halfway through the book and will post more both here and at LAist when I'm finished.
• Recent reading wrap-ups (poetic, no?) will be up shortly.
• Still time to send in your poems.  I'll start posting those you've sent me next week.
• I'm now well into John McGahern's By the Lake.  Took me several chapters (and a complete re-read of the first bit) to get into it. He does this weird thing where the whole first section of the book is told in conversation. Huge passages are dialogue...but dialogue that provides history on all the other characters. I'm not sure how I feel about the technique.  It bugs me, yet I keep reading to see if he can make it work. More on this to come as I get further in and sort it all out.
• I've been thinking a bit about mysteries. I don't read them, as a point of...I'm not sure. Pride? Snobbery? Although I grew up devouring The Bobbsey Twins books and anything by Nancy Drew & Agatha Christie. I also (can't believe I'm admitting to this) read every Dirk Pitt adventure Clive Cussler has ever written. As an undergraduate, I even dabbled in Raymond Chandler. Meditated over In Cold Blood (too cold, too much blood). Yet now: after reading Dope, after reading The Zero, and after watching and re-watching Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I find I've got a new hankering for crime-solving mysteries. Of the both serious and snide and funny type. Do those exist?  I know they aren't "low-brow", I know they could teach me a lot about plot...but for some reason, mysteries (and the many bookstores and the whole industry that celebrates them) have always been off my radar.  Or, slightly off the center of focus, more on the periphary.  Perhaps there is also this gut-level guess I have that it would be easy to pick up the wrong mysteries and read nothing but drivel. Cat-solving sleuths and the like. (No offense, but I'm not into animal detectives, despite the fact that I have three dogs.) So, if I were to dabble in mystery reading of the very best kind -- where would I begin?  Do tell.