After finishing The Monstrous Misses Mai, I resumed another novel.
This one is in a more contemporary setting in this century, but naturally picked me up in California for parts of the young poker-playing character Ray’s relocation journey on his way to Vegas.
When a book’s title IS a location, it makes planning a destination read very explicit. But just like buying tickets and booking a hotel somewhere, you often don’t know whether you’ll be in the suburbs or right in the thick of a city you associate with pictures of certain skylines and recognizable tourist sights. Paradise, Nevada incorporates both sides of Vegas, exploring the artifice of its themed attractions compared to the dusty daytime edges of the city where people really live and work.
I’ve just arrived here and am still in the first 10% of my reading trip. The author seems like a great guide with a big vocabulary to take you on an insightful fictionalized tour from an interesting young insider’s educated and lived perspective. I’m excited to stick around and see what kind of kooky over-the-top ride he’s going to take us on. I like that it seems somewhere in between TOO “seedy-underbelly” depressingly-real and totally-fake totally-superficial Vegas-trip-style escape reading.
Diofebi guides readers through many different vantage points. I’m at the point on this trip where I’ve only been introduced to a few of them, and there are many pages left (512 long – how many days should I plan for a trip like this?) . I love how books can condense years of living and observation into a trip that only takes a week by book, but you get the tired perspectives of people who’ve been there for months, years, and decades. Such an efficient way to travel deep into the heart (or soulless carpet) of a place.