I just realized that I had forgotten #34 before I jumped to #35.

Congratulations Cindi for winning #34. This is a delightful book that will have you chortling with laughter in some parts of it. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did. For those who didn’t win, but wants the book anyway, you can buy here.

Straight Man: A Novel
by Richard Russo
Paperback
Published in 1998

I bought this book from library sale last winter. I picked it up because I saw Empire Falls on DVD. It was a good, very good movie. Richard Russo wrote the book the movie is based on. I also like the back blurb of this book.

Last Friday, I went to the library and picked up the audio version of this book. So, I’m going to give away my copy of the book. The condition is very good.

Book blurb:
In this uproarious new novel, Richard Russo performs his characteristic high-wire walk between hilarity and heartbreak. Russo’s protagonist is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux’s reluctance is partly rooted in his character–he is a born anarchist– and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.

In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. in short, Straight Man is classic Russo–side-splitting and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down.

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