Now reading...

[etherbored]

Anyway, Murakami is probably my favorite contemporary novelist too.

salute,

-e-

[Uncle Skid]

The Origins of the Urban Crisis : Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit - Thomas Sugrue. An eye-opener, to say the least.

That's on my reading list--what do you think?

Excellent. Highly recommended. "Academic", yet very readable; a thorough but not overwhelming discussion of the historical events that contributed to the "urban crisis". What sticks with me the most is the sometimes very subtle ways in which discrimination created (and still creates) situations that made it very difficult for huge numbers of people to find work, decent housing, etc. The complex interaction of seemingly unrelated events was especially illuminating.

On a personal note, I was raised in Detroit, and (as a kid, anyway) witnessed many of the events described in the book. The "white flight" of the 1970's was something that has always puzzled me, and the book does a very good job of explaining what led up to the exodus of so many people to the suburbs.

***

Just finished The Catcher in the Rye. I've been re-reading that one every 5 years or so for about 25 years now, and I get more out of it each time. This time especially...

[MartyJazz]

David Foster Wallace: "Consider the Lobster". Entertaining and informative book of essays by a challenging writer.

[paul secor]

Just finished Radio Activity by Bill Fitzhugh. FM rock radio jock turns detective - pure entertainment, nothing more, nothing less.

Edited August 24, 2006 by paul secor

[ghost of miles]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

[Van Basten II]

Decided that it's to read the classics, right now i'm reading Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

[Kalo]

Just finished A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Times of Bernard Herrmann by Steven C. Smith (University of California Press)

Very good book. Smith writes well, is judicious in his critical evaluations, and wisely quotes Herrmann's own eloquent published writing and letters at length.

[montg]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Ghost, you and I appear to have similar reading interests. I've been reading a ton of Hammet, Raymond Chandler etc this summer. I can hardly get enough of it! Lately, I've been reading Ross MacDonald (the Lew Archer stuff). I just finished the Galton Case.

Have you read Paul Elie's biography of Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor? Really enjoyable and interesting to see the intersections among those great lives.

[ejp626]

Just finished Anthony Powell's Temporary Kings, the 11th book in A Dance to the Music of Time. One more to go. I think the first half didn't work quite as well as the second. Sometimes Powell seems to dwell too much on some legend and then show how it illuminates contemporary events. It's also a little strange how most of the non-artistic characters are fading out, so that the only ones who interact with the main character are novelists, editors, painters and musicians (and Widmerpool of course). Maybe this is somewhat overstated, and maybe it simply reflects how upper class people from that era were educated -- heavy exposure to the arts.

[medjuck]

"This is Your Brain On Music". Great book.

[medjuck]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Is this a new book? I thought I had all of Hammett. (Includng a book of comic strips he wrote.)

[ghost of miles]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Ghost, you and I appear to have similar reading interests. I've been reading a ton of Hammet, Raymond Chandler etc this summer. I can hardly get enough of it! Lately, I've been reading Ross MacDonald (the Lew Archer stuff). I just finished the Galton Case.

Have you read Paul Elie's biography of Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor? Really enjoyable and interesting to see the intersections among those great lives.

No, I haven't, but that sounds really good--I'll take a look for it when I go down to Caveat Emptor today, coincidentally enough to look for some Ross MacDonald! This a.m. I was reading Lorrie Moore's review of a new Eudora Welty bio in the new NY Review of Books... she mentioned Welty's liking for MacDonald (real name Ken Millar), which got me interested in reading him again. I have two paperbacks, THE DROWNING POOL and FIND A VICTIM--neither of which I've read yet--but the other day I'd come across a quote from a 1953 novel of MacDonald's... so I'm going to go downtown and see if I can find it. In the meantime, Moore's review drove me to start reading Welty's THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER--more of a novella than a novel, so I think I might be able to get through all of it today.

Edited September 11, 2006 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Is this a new book? I thought I had all of Hammett. (Includng a book of comic strips he wrote.)

Yes--I have that SECRET AGENT X-9 book as well. LOST STORIES came out just last year; I stumbled across it at our local Borders last week. It's not "complete," as far as I can tell; it doesn't contain the very last Continental Op story, "Death and Company" (which I've been searching for for some time), or several early 1930s stories I still can't find ("On the Way," "Albert Pastor at Home," and "His Brother's Keeper"). It does have "Night Shade" and "This Little Pig," plus a # of 1920s stories I've never read, so I bought it. The book is rather padded with biographical commentary.

[Kalo]

Welty was right: Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) was the man. I read all of his novels over the course of a year about a decade ago and have returned to several of them a few times since.

Other big Macdonald fans were hard-boiled singer/songwriter Warren Zevon and one of my favorite living writers, Thomas Berger (Little Big Man, Killing Time, Neighbors, The Feud etc.).

The Galton Case is one of Macdonald's best, a watershed for him, but all of the Archer novels are worthwhile. Anything from the '60s is highly recommended, especially The Wycherly Woman, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Chill, The Far Side of the Dollar, and The Goodbye Look.

[ghost of miles]

Thanks for the recs. I started THE DROWNING POOL this afternoon; it's an earlier Archer, I take it (1950?) and seems a bit under the spell of Marlowe/Chandler at times, but I'm still really enjoying it.

[Kalo]

Thanks for the recs. I started THE DROWNING POOL this afternoon; it's an earlier Archer, I take it (1950?) and seems a bit under the spell of Marlowe/Chandler at times, but I'm still really enjoying it.

The Drowning Pool was the second Archer, sort of a holding pattern after the very good The Moving Target. The early Archers are indeed, as you noticed, under the spell of Chandler (Chandler himself was a bit pissed off at the time). But even though the early Macdonalds were derivative, they were derivative at a very high level. He started out good and got better and better. As he went on he evolved a style that elevated the Chandlerian similes, in Chandler confined to clever wisecracks, to a level of thematic resonance that has rarely been matched since.

[Matthew]

Dashiell Hammett, LOST STORIES. Also rereading parts of Michael Mott's THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON.

Ghost, you and I appear to have similar reading interests. I've been reading a ton of Hammet, Raymond Chandler etc this summer. I can hardly get enough of it! Lately, I've been reading Ross MacDonald (the Lew Archer stuff). I just finished the Galton Case.

Have you read Paul Elie's biography of Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor? Really enjoyable and interesting to see the intersections among those great lives.

The real story of Dorothy Day has yet to be written -- much to dangerous in today's religious climate. She'd pop people's minds and assumptions like a ballon. She also seems to have met, and influenced, with every important catholic thinker of the 20th century.

Edited September 11, 2006 by Matthew

[BruceH]

Just finished A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Times of Bernard Herrmann by Steven C. Smith (University of California Press)

Very good book. Smith writes well, is judicious in his critical evaluations, and wisely quotes Herrmann's own eloquent published writing and letters at length.

This sounds good. Herrmann is probably my favorite film composer; certainly in the top 2 or 3.

[jlhoots]

Tomas Eloy Martinez: The Tango Singer

[BruceH]

The Galton Case is one of Macdonald's best, a watershed for him, but all of the Archer novels are worthwhile. Anything from the '60s is highly recommended, especially The Wycherly Woman, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Chill, The Far Side of the Dollar, and The Goodbye Look.

"I believe I just got the goodbye look..."

[Niko]

when i had my "Hammett then Chandler then McDonald" Summer three years ago I finished it with Ross Thomas "Missionary Stew". Somehow it's a political criminal novel in the tradition of "the glass key" (or, if you want a step, away from usual criminal novels into the direction of eric ambler) but what it keeps from the Marlowe/Archer world is the lonesome guy driving through southern california (iirc)... highly recommended... didn't check out any further Ross Thomas back then - the summer was over - should do that some time

[BruceH]

"Mr. Midshipman Hornblower"

When I read the Hornblower series some years ago, I skipped the first couple of books. Now I'm rectifying that.

[Kalo]

Just finished A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Times of Bernard Herrmann by Steven C. Smith (University of California Press)

Very good book. Smith writes well, is judicious in his critical evaluations, and wisely quotes Herrmann's own eloquent published writing and letters at length.

This sounds good. Herrmann is probably my favorite film composer; certainly in the top 2 or 3.

Don't Hesitate, BruceH. Since you're a classical music fan and a film aficionado, I think you'd get a lot out of this. Herrmann was a lot more of a force in the world of "serious" music than I had realized, though I did know that he was an early and lifelong booster of Charles Ives, from having read Jan Swafford's Ives biography (which I would recommend very highly as well).

[Kalo]

when i had my "Hammett then Chandler then McDonald" Summer three years ago I finished it with Ross Thomas "Missionary Stew". Somehow it's a political criminal novel in the tradition of "the glass key" (or, if you want a step, away from usual criminal novels into the direction of eric ambler) but what it keeps from the Marlowe/Archer world is the lonesome guy driving through southern california (iirc)... highly recommended... didn't check out any further Ross Thomas back then - the summer was over - should do that some time

I've heard very good things about Ross Thomas, Niko.

Thanks for the reminder.

[B. Goren.]