The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs can be simply yet accurately described as an amusing book. It follows the misadventures of German Philology professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a self-involved yet affable character who is too much the stereotypical academic to be identifiable but enough to be somewhat believable. I particularly appreciate that while Igelfeld is shown as arrogant and bumbling, he’s also shown to be an actually respected scholar. His one and only book may be tedious and ultimately insignifcant, but it is well regarded by those few who’ve read it. The point being that Igelfeld is amusing without being a buffoon.
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs is the 2nd book in the Igelfeld trilogy, the first one is called Portuguese Irregular Verbs and tomorrow I’ll rush to get it out of the library. I have a feeling that its pure silliness is exactly what I need to pick me up when I’m feeling a bit down.
Finally, for some reason the humor of this book reminded me of Dom Camillo by Giovanni Guareshi, the humorous stories of a parish Priest in Italy and his arch-enemy the communist mayor. I hadn’t thought of that book in years, even though I named my last baby Camila, but now I’m set to read those ttories all over again.

My blog has become mostly a series of book reviews. Alas, I’m not doing much lately beyond going out with my girls or reading. And my memory has become so flitting, that if I don’t write about the books I read I’m afraid I’ll forget about them soon. Not that I’d mind forgetting about Out, a novel by Japanese writer Natsuo Kirino. With paper thin characters and an absolute lack of suspense, it was one of the most boring crime novels I’ve ever read.
The novel concerns four Japanese women who work at the night shift at the factory, and deal (or avoid dealing) with their own issues of loneliness and alienation from their families and society at large. When the husband of one of them turns abusive after gambling all the family savings away, the wife kills him in a fit of anger. For different reasons (including monetary) the other three women help the killer by dismembering the body.
We know who the women are, and soon we find out enough about them to make us feel we know them, so there is no “whodunit” aspect to the novel. The women are presented as shallow characters, burdened by difficult lives and perhaps depression, but without enough depth to make their involvement in the murder a psychological thriller. The same thing can be said about the couple of men, both former gangsters, who fortuitously get involved in the situation. They seem more like stock characters (alas, with a Japanese flair) than actual people. But what makes the novel really maddening is how every character seems to have an uncanny ability to figure out what everybody else has done and how they function psychologically. This takes away even the pleasure of seeing a character follow clues and slowly (or even through a moment of insight) figure out what�s going on. Everyone knows everything, everyone�s motives are shallow and base, and there is no payoff at the end.
Still, Kirino is a famous writer in Japan and this book was even nominated for an Edgar when published in English, so there may be something good about it. Perhaps you need to have a deeper understanding of Japanese culture to “get it”, whatever “it” be. Or perhaps you just need to look at the book from another angle than that of a mystery or thriller. In any case, it didn�t work for me.