The Weekend of the Book

I've finally freed up enough time to get back into free reading. This weekend, I finished Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins," Ayn Rand's "Anthem," and Peter Hernon's "A Terrible Thunder."

Walker Percy's book is a classic and I've now read my first Ayn Rand Book. The last one is from what James Lowen likes to call "the memory hole" (the disappearance of the recent past). It's very hard to find good histories of things that happened 20 years or so ago.

A Terrible Thunder is all about the Mark Essex shooting. I've heard a little bit it growing up, but always in muffled voices. It's one of those things, though, that people would rather forget. I've heard rumors that some bookstores refuse to carry the book.

Here's a video that includes some footage of the event (including NOPD shooting at a brick wall and hitting each other with the ricochets):

A lot of people (some veteran NOPD cops included) swear that the were 1 or 2 other snipers, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

The book itself does a nice job of sorting through the chaos. The whole incident is almost unreal.