I wrote last week that I was reading two books, a new P.D. James mystery featuring: Inspector Adam Daghleish and a biography of Samuel Adams (not John Adams) by biographer Stacy Schiff.

The other books were I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, by Lorrie Moore, and Swamp Story by Florida Columnist Dave Barry.

I thought, in fairness, I ought to alert people that I believe Lorrie Moore’s book is brilliant, her writing amazing. Swamp Story, on the other hand, is a hot and silly mess, dumb and off track from the first page to the last. I also wanted to mention that Florida just isn’t funny anymore or cute, as the book I was reading suggests, and why I passed up on a new book that promises me heat will kill me first and thoroughly.

I can get depressed for free just by looking at the news on my Iphone.

Moore is the real deal. I loved her book. To give you a taste of the way Moore writes (she is a favorite writer of mine, this is her first book in 14 years, and I am glad she is back.)

A sample paragraph from I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home:

“At home at his desk, he surfed the web with a dusty board whose circuits often stalled. He refused all cookies. He deleted Melvin H. from Ohio. Continually he had to verify online that he was not a robot. He was required to identify traffic lights, taxis, storefronts, crosswalks. Confirm your humanity was the request. Demonstrate your discernment, your disenchantment, the differential equations of your personhood, the mysterious coordinates of your agitated soul. Why does the hard drive in your chest pound so wonkily? Why are you still here starting? Hashtag; Fixijesus. Hashtag Takethewheel. Give us your key, and we will let you in. He changed all his passwords to Lily 1 with a dozen y’s — strong with a long bar of green. Memory. Passage. Nothing in the world was ever truly over.”

If any single paragraph captures life in modern-day America, it is that one.

I won’t bother with a quote from Swamp Story. The word that keeps coming to mind as I try to wade through this silly swamp is dumb; the characters are dumb, the storyline is dumb, and the New York Times manipulated and misled me into buying and trying to read this book. I regret it; I won’t even put it into our Little Free Library out front of the farmhouse.

I appreciated the author Carl Hiassen’s witty and entertaining notion of Florida as an asylum for crazy people; Barry is trying to follow in Hiassen’s footsteps but fails. Everyone in his book is a lunatic differently, and at some point,  including the very dumb candidate for president.

The fictionalizing of Florida’s idiosyncracies stops being funny and starts being creepy from the beginning of this run-off-the-rails book..

The hero Jesse, an unfortunate but beautiful young woman with awful taste in men, is pursued throughout the book by two murderous creeps who call her  “bitch” about a thousand-time and threaten to rape or cut her to pieces every time they see her.

Barry uses the word “bitch” as a cheap substitution for character development. None of the people in this book have much character. They are all too dumb, even the good guys. To show you are evil, you just say “bitch” whenever you open your mouth.

By the time the creeps actually try to kill and rape Jesse (they try many times but never get farther than beating her up and threatening her baby), we don’t care and know they are too dumb to pull it off.

They mess up every time. There is no suspense in this alleged Florida adventure story, complete with the inevitable alligators and pythons, losers, and prostitutes.

Jesse’s handsome but brainless husband and an alcoholic former reporter who wears a bizarre hat on his head also appear in the book. If it can be called that, the plot evolves around an absurd scheme to make a video that will go big on YouTube and Twitter.

Two even dumber hustlers in the Everglades (of course) give up scanning tourists and succeed and end up with nearly a billion views on TikTok and hordes of people coming to buy the T-shirts they are selling (it’s a fake monster story. complete with a fake  YouTube video)

Meanwhile, back at the swamp, Jesse stumbles across some gold bars hidden in the sand, presumably by pirates who buried them years ago. The two thugs live nearby and know she has found the gold and started pursuing her. They are beyond inept and can’t stop calling her a bitch and threatening to molest her before killing her.

They are the Marx brothers of rapists; they couldn’t possibly capture a frog. People get shot, riots erupt, police are never called, events are never explained.

These diverse plots and characters all get tangled up in one another, and not only couldn’t I follow it, but I couldn’t think of any reason to try. Agatha Christie is weeping from heaven.

This book is not funny and seems out of sync with the new Florida of Ron DeSantis. Perhaps what turned me off is that Florida is no longer a charming state full of free-living spirits but the nation’s leading hate state, in a close race with Texas for the most hateful political leaders in the country.

It’s hard for me to laugh about the kinkiness of Florida when they are persecuting so many people, including women, teachers, “woke” people, and helpless trans children. Maybe it’s me, but I felt bound to share my disappointment with this book and my love and appreciation for Moore.

I wondered why I would read a dumbass book like this when I have a  used and never read (by me) P.D. James Adam Dalgleish mystery and a Tracy Shiff biography of Adams sitting by my table. I’m not into book burning, but I can’t see giving this book to anyone I know or like, or dumping it on our poor local library.

I am also increasingly frustrated by the New York Times, which is steering one bad book after another to me in its now virtual book review. It used to be a bible for me, but now I trust the Amazon reader reviews more.

This week, the Times book review let off with yet another coming climate change catastrophe book by Jeff Goodell, one of the country’s leading and darkest environmental prophets of doom.

I read his last book on how Florida will soon be floating off into the Pacific, and it felt a bit like reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask Of Amontillado.”

This week, the Times review in the premier spot is Goddell’s new book The Heat Will Kill  You First: Life and Death On A Scorched Planet. The book says the reviewer is terrifying; from what I read, this is very true.

Two books I don’t want to read or shouldn’t be reading all at once. Time to re-think my book ideas.

Isn’t there an easier way to say this than to urge me to spend $29 to read about my horrible and imminent death? Won’t my heart take me first? Can’t we laugh about it, even for a precious moment?

The editors admitted on their site that the book might be too gloomy to read, so they offered Barry’s book in its place. I was puzzled about why anyone should read either of these books and retreated to P.D. James.

Goodell went to some length to assure us that as the planet heats up, we will all die, along with all the other living things on the earth. I can’t imagine why I didn’t want to spend the weekend reading about my impending and inevitable death.

This book is almost undoubtedly true, and I am sure it will tickle climate activists – cotton candy for them – tired of warning idiot leaders to pay attention.

(Writer’s note. Jeff Goodell was once my best friend; he lived up here for a while and first suggested I buy a cabin in upstate New York and move here. We lost touch on the best of terms: Jeff simply moved away without telling me, and I’ve never heard from him again. No hard feelings.  I am forever grateful to him for getting me off my ass and up here.

Jeff is an accomplished journalist and successful author. Although I have not spoken with or heard from him in decades, he has carved out a smart and important niche for himself: the world is falling apart, and we better read about it while there is time.)

I wish him every success in the world, but I have no desire to read this book or the one the Times recommended if we wanted something lighter: The Florida Book. I’m not making two mistakes in one sitting.

I wish the Times critics figured out that stupid isn’t light, it’s just ridiculous, and I’m sad that Amazon reviewers are more in touch with the world and with good books than New York Times editors and reviewers. I can’t say this is a shock.

Don’t we all know that the end of the earth happening, that it is probably too late to stop it? And that our so-called leaders are too corrupt, greedy, and brain-damaged to try?  Don’t we all know our politicians and corporate hogs will never give up one dollar to save the earth?

I don’t need to know precisely how I will die now; I will be 76 in a few weeks, and many options await me. I’m betting I’ll be long gone when the heat kills the rest of us.  How about fires and drought and floods and tornadoes and ferocious storms? And I do believe in miracles. Some future Einstein or Oppenheimer might well devise machines that soak up carbon in the sky and turn it into drinkable water. I’m not betting on it, but it is possible.

And while I accept every single alarm about climate change, including Goodell’s,  I’m not ready to be assured that heat will kill me first and soon. A bit of hope never hurts. I don’t really want to spend the weekend reading about it.

It just seems a bit too far, too soon. I’m not quite ready for the Apocalypse, and scaring the shit out of readers is not a good marketing idea for me, as I suspect Goodell’s publisher will discover soon enough.

Insulting our intelligence with stupid copycat books isn’t too uplifting, either.

I hope to read a balanced and enlightening book one day on how Florida went from becoming the most exciting one of the most interesting states  in the country to the cruelest and most disturbing (sorry, Texas, you’re just not as interesting, you’ve been hateful for generations.)

So I’m onto my other books, bloody but unbowed; I love books and reading. I’ll share the experience. God bless P.D. James.