Beginning 'The Monster'

I just started The Monster of Florence, and I think it's going to be a good one. So good, I might consider live blogging it. Can you live blog a novel? Probably, but it would probably get pretty obnoxious; not that it stops reporters from live blogging lesser events than this novel that is being made into a movie! Starring George Clooney! (Ugh, I should've stopped while I was ahead.)

Anyway, some magazine called Men's Vogue, since gone belly up, claims TMOF is on par with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is one of the top five in the Haugen Book of World Records Book.

So far, TMOF is off to a good start, maybe a little to gory for my tastes, but then again I just finished supper. If you didn't know, this is a nonfiction novel.

On page 16, journalist Mario Spezi walks into the medical examiner's lab and asks whose body is on the table. The ME responds hilariously:

"This one? A brilliant scholar, a distinguished professor in the Accademia della Crusca no less. But, as you can see, tonight yet another disappointment has laid me low; I have just opened the head and what do I find inside? Where is all the wisdom? Boh! Inside it looks just like the Albanian hooker I opened yesterday. Maybe the professor thinks he's better than her! But when I open them up, I find that they're equal! And they both have achieved the same destiny: my zinc gurney. Why, then, did he tire himself out poring over so many books?Boh! Take my advice, journalist: eat, drink, and enjoy yourself."