Proper Fish Wrap

When I was a kid there were a number of occasions where my father set me straight on just how things ought to be. One day he brought home an Irish Setter and when he presented him to the family, he said, "Now that's the way a dog ought to look." Another time he took my brother and I along on a fishing trip to Lake Mille Lacs or somewhere and when he caught a walleye (my brother and I never caught anything) he said, "That's the way a fish ought to look."

Yesterday I wrote about Robert Charles Wilson's Blind Lake and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind yet. Not just the book itself, but what it made me feel while I was reading it. It's one of those books that makes you sad as you flip through the pages, watching that stack on the right side shrink slowly but steadily away. And when the thing accelerates into its climax and you can't put it down, it makes you think about how wonderfully entertaining a book can be. Blind Lake is the way a book ought to be. I can't say it any better than that.