Delicious prose, I have not had this much fun engaged in the exercise of reading in quite some time.

“I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.”

Sometime earlier this year, the internal decision was made to revisit some of the old friends lost in the shelves - books that I read years and years ago that I either remembered too little or too much and I wanted to hold again, visit with an old friend, laugh, or cry or just listen, whatever they wanted to do with our time. With the "To Read Pile" gathering height, I would limit this re-read or re-visit only once a year, and I knew exactly which book to begin with.

Robbins' "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" (the title of the novel comes from Arthur Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell," in which he daydreams about becoming one of "ces féroces infirmes retour des pays chauds") crossed my path just after college, the turn of the century, the turn of the millennium. Life and youth have a way of squandering one's valued time, books fell by the wayside. Once life had settled, the itch to read, the familiar habit came back stronger than ever. Where to start? Where to begin?

I remember the public library, standing there in the dull lighting, walking up and down the aisles, searching for something to read. My eyes and fingertips flowed over the spines until they found this book, "FIHFHC." I read Robbins in my youth (high school) and enjoyed him. The humor appealed to me and his view of the world. It was meeting an old friend on the street after all the years. Let's go talk. Have a read.

Returning to the book, I held it and tried to summon what memories I could. I liked the book, liked it enough to want it to be the first book revisited. I remember when and where I read the book, and there memories of reading the book but could only recall about a quarter of the book. Mostly, just the beginning. I forgot the middle (the journey to the convent) and I thought I remembered the end but as I arrived there, the ending I thought I remembered was not the ending that occurred. I was eager to start but as the narrative continued the zest faded.

Perhaps the book did not age well with me or vice versa, I aged, and the book did not. Robbins voice is steady and familiar, funny but not as biting or as intelligent as memory would have me believe. There a lot of problems with the book that 20 years later nag at me, that apparently in my youth I didn't care for: Switters pedophilia, numerous plot points that are either dropped (Maestra's legal problems) or handled poorly (after everything with Domino, Suzy is still on his mind; and the 'resolution of the curse) and the book seems to peter out after 400 pages its purpose and clarity lost and doesn't really know what to do but end. Eh? Having met this old friend, talked, and read, I don't think I'll visit this one again. The narrative doesn't lack, it was, in the end, the book I remembered. The book hadn't changed. I had.

“Peeple of zee wurl, relax”

I'm 62 now, and I remember really liking other Tom Robbins books when I was in high school so I was looking forward to enjoying this one as well. As always, his characters speak in really clever metaphors--very colorful and humorous, but after a while I got tired of this repartee--it became over the top and it seemed like he was just trying to use a lot of big words., I also didn't like the pedophilia/sexism angle of the plot--I don't think a woman would have created a character like that. Anyway, I got about a third of the way through and abandoned it.

Some of Tom Robbins's more recent novels are just too bizarre to enjoy as a whole, but he always makes statements that ring true about certain parts of society. Often he says things no one else has the guts to say. This book was no exception in that regard, although I didn't like the plot or main characters.

"It is tough to say who's a greater thread to the world--an ambitious CEO with a big ad budget, or a crafty cleric with an obsolete Bible verse."

The Bible: "The honey that's dipped from that busy hive can be sweet and nourishing, or it can be hallucinogenic and deadly. All too frequently, the latter is confused with the former. Dip with caution. Reader beware!"