I first discovered Michael Chabon a few years ago when I
read a copy of The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay. It’s one of those books I picked up pretty much on a
whim. I saw someone read it on the bus. It was a trade paperback version with
the shiny Pulitzer Prize for Fiction sticker on it. I must have seen the novel
displayed at a bookstore because I ended up with buying and reading it. I love
it so much I read it twice in the same month. Then I loaned it to a friend and
never got it back. Luckily I found an identical edition at my local used
bookstore and I own it once again. It’s one of my all-time favourite books.
There are many things to love about it and there a parts of it that stick in my
mind, even to this day, years after I originally read it.
During that same trip where I bought a new (but old) copy
of The Amazing Kavalier & Clay I
also bought a few other books by Chabon. I’ve wanted to read more of his work
but for years I kept forgetting about it when stepping into a book store. Being
in the middle of at least half a dozen other books right now, I was fighting
the urge to dive into one of my new Chabon acquisitions. I wanted to finish a
few of my other books first. Needless to say I settled down with A Model World and Other Stories last
Sunday and I’ve been having moving and enthralling lunch hours these last few
days.
