Iron Men

Day (of coincidii) 183 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and David is reading Iron Council, by China Mieville, because:

1) his brother recommended it on a cross-country road trip,

2) I found it for him, slightly out of alphabetical order at Babbitt's, and

3) he likes cool, dystopian stuff.

David is one of the SOBs, a men's book group, currently reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, though now I have recommended to them The Wishbones, by Tom Perrotta. The non-SOBs (not our real name, as we don't have one), a women's book group, has already read both.

Today I handled Iron Joe Bob, by Joe Bob Briggs, a pseudonym, a book dedicated to Bobby Bly, a comic answer to the poet Robert Bly's Iron Man movement. Many years ago, visiting Seattle, I purchased Iron John, by Robert Bly, at the Elliott Bay bookstore, for a fellow who was showing me around the city when I was there to look at the papers of the poet Michele Murray, who died young of breast cancer. He was a troubled man, the brother of a close friend, and I was glad to know what to give him, when he expressed intense interest in the book.

Yesterday, watching Shutter Island with my daughter so she wouldn't get too scared, I saw a preview for Iron Man II. And that's all the manly coincidii I can stand in one day.