Curmudgeon finally buys two Ken Levine books online

Four years ago I did a post here about überblogger Ken Levine's then-new book, Where the Hell Am I? (Trips I Have Survived). I wanted to buy the book, I said, but I was afraid.

The problem was that the book was available only online. I'm hope I'm not open to a charge of being afraid of the Internet, not after blogging, albeit sporadically, for a decade. Nor was I afraid of Amazon in particular -- but I was (and am) afraid of the State of Illinois. (Have you seen our new billionaire governor?)

The State of Illinois did not impose sales tax on Amazon purchases; instead, it relied on Illinois-based Amazon shoppers to fork over the sales tax on all their Amazon purchases voluntarily, when they paid their state income tax.

See? I can be as funny as Ken Levine -- just by relating the actual facts.

I simply was not going to get into a beef with my home state over whether I did or did not remember every purchase and the absolute safest way to do that was to purchase nothing. Which I did.

This year, however, Amazon and Illinois have reached an accord -- Amazon is willing to open up some facility in Illinois and has consented, in return, to charge Illinois tax to Illinois residents on Amazon purchases. Plus, I needed new razor blades (which my son-in-law had heretofore purchased for me -- online -- and I'm sure he paid all taxes when due). The razor blades came to about $8, but I needed to spend $50 for free shipping.

Among the purchases I made to reach that threshold were two of Ken Levine's books, his current novel, Must Kill TV, and his book about the year he spent broadcasting for the Baltimore Orioles, It's Gone! ...No, Wait a Minute....

Well.

If you like your comedy black, you can't get much darker than Must Kill TV. It is wicked, knowing satire and many themes will be familiar to Ken Levine's blog readers. A thriller as well as a satire, the plot pivots dramatically from page to page. Some twists I liked better than others. One, near the end, literally did make me laugh out loud. (My fellow Blue Line commuters were alarmed by this.)

But... how can I say this? I liked the baseball book better. Not just because I like baseball -- as this is posted, my seasonal sidebar is in full baseball mode -- but because Must Kill TV can be, well, stressful. Maybe I take things too seriously. After all, I'm the guy who mourns when my village is destroyed in Clash of Clans. I take two blood pressure pills a day. I don't watch horror movies. (If I want to be frightened, I tell my kids, I look at my checkbook.) So I'm reading Must Kill TV on the train and watching poor Charles Muncie make still another poor choice and, in my mind, I'm yelling at him, don't do it! -- and then he does. And I had to put the book down for awhile. (I think I was only yelling in my mind -- but, come to think of it, my fellow Blue Line commuters seemed a little more nervous than usual that evening....)