Veronica Mars

I previous related how the movie Borrego brought back memories but I failed to report that I actually was prepared for such memories by a silly, somewhat enjoyable, television series: Veronica Mars. For background, I had heard about Veronica Mars and was intrigued but not enough to pursue it. Then, a few years back I watched the Veronica Mars movie and not really knowing that there was several years of television leading up to the movie, I wasn’t impressed.

Then I discovered Veronica Mars on a subscription service, started watching, realized it was staged as representing the San Diego area I grew up in, and my satisfaction level went up with every scene I could identify from my youth. When Veronica graduated and moved on to college, she went to San Diego State (now University) where half my High School graduating class went, as did my G. I. Bill father and my much younger brother.

So a close personal attachment to the story made a silly clichéd television series from a second-tier network sufficiently enjoyable so as to power through four years of hardly believable youthful antics and manufactured intrigue. Enjoyable … not necessarily good.

I wonder if Veronica Mars had been based in Fresno I would have watched beyond the first episode?

But enough navel gazing. Here is my suggested reading list for July.

1. Ending Up — Kingsley Amis
2. The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book — Timothy Beal
3. The Terranauts: A Novel — T. C. Boyle
4. Sons — Pearl S. Buck
5. Babel Tower — A. S. Byatt
6. The Ox-Bow Incident – Walter Van Tilburg Clark
7. The Red Rover: A Tale — James Fenimore Cooper
8. The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution — Richard Dawkins
9. The Titan — Theodore Dreiser
10. Freedom — Jonathan Franzen
11. “H” Is for Homicide — Sue Grafton
12. Pigeons on the Grass — Wolfgang Koeppen
13. Breathe: A Novel — Joyce Carol Oates
14. The Red-Headed Woman — Orhan Pamuk
15. Swann’s Way — Marcel Proust
16. A Loyal Character Dancer — Qiu Xiaolong
17. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke — Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo
18. The Lincoln Highway: A Novel — Amor Towels
19. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant — Anne Tyler
20. The Doloriad — Missouri Williams