We put this month's choice in your hands, you nominated and voted, and a significant portion of you chose Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly as June's Wrapped Up In Books selection for discussion and dissection. So you've been reading along with us, right? You'll be ready to go when we start chatting about it next Monday, right? (Here's a hint: We will be devoting a day to talking about how the book and movie versions compare. But just watching the movie and trying to do your book report based on that is cheating, and we will totally be able to tell, and you'll get a 0.)
Just in case you didn't mark this on your calendar and aren't ready and waiting to book-club it up, here's the book's killer first paragraph to get you started. How could you not want to go on from here?
Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.
For those who need further convincing: It's a dark, only-slightly-science-fictiony novel about the relationship between drug sellers, drug users, and anti-drug task forces, and the difficulties of an undercover agent straddling both worlds, seeing the inherent flaws in both sides of a system, and trying to determine his own identity. It isn't nearly as fable-esque as that first paragraph might imply, but the dark, almost creepy humor of that opening carries through. We hope you'll join us on Monday, June 28 in talking about the book's take on drugs, criminals, cops, identity, and much more. See you in a week!