Now reading...

[steve(thelil)]

Kurt Vonnegut - Bluebeard (my favourite Vonnegut)

I think that's mine as well.

Finishing:

Just out of curiosity, have you read Veeck as in Wreck? A fun book.

I haven't but I want to. Thanks for reminding me!

[jazzbo]

AND

[jlhoots]

Craig Johnson: Serpent's Tooth (new Walt Longmire novel)

[paul secor]

Penelope Lively: Pack of Cards

[porcy62]

Ian Rankin's crime novels, not bad at all.

[BillF]

Found this very readable. Chose it after reading an article on "Cli-fi".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cli_fi

[ejp626]

Just hit the halfway mark in Anna Karenina. It's a pretty good read, some interesting philosophizing (even if I disagree with Tolstoy's conclusions) mixed in with a good handle on human nature. But I really have to wonder at the pacing. Levin and Kitty's story is at a reasonable denouement and Karenin has decided to divorce Anna. I'd really prefer that the pace accelerates and this gets wrapped up in 100-150 pages, not another 400. (If for no other reason that 250+ pages on the theme of the ruined woman will be a bit tedious.) But I guess things happened slower then...

I'm reminded of the case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce that has been going on for years and drags on through almost the entirety of Dickens' Bleak House, but most of the action in the novel is quite separate from the legal proceedings.

Edited June 27, 2013 by ejp626

[paul secor]

James Laughlin: The Way It Wasn't

A posthumous scrapbook collected from the writings, photographs,letters, etc. of James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions Books. Interesting and sometimes fascinating stuff.

Edited June 27, 2013 by paul secor

[jazzbo]

Decided to re-read these Judge Dee mysteries; I love them!

[BillF]

[alankin]

Decided to re-read these Judge Dee mysteries; I love them!

Enjoyable books. I read a batch of the a couple years ago. I think I have a few I haven't read yet. I think I'll pull a couple out for Summer reading.

By the way, did you notice that the cover you posted is off by over 1000 years? The stories supposedly take place around 660-680 A.D.

[jazzbo]

Didn't notice. Really don't pay attention to covers. Quality control is bad on this edition!

Edited June 27, 2013 by jazzbo

[John Litweiler]

James Laughlin: The Way It Wasn't

A posthumous scrapbook collected from the writings, photographs,letters, etc. of James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions Books. Interesting and sometimes fascinating stuff.

Yes, fascinating for what it reveals of Laughlin (not enough - he must have been quite a character himself) and his experiences with all the amazing authors he published. Too bad he didn't write an autobiography and too bad someone else didn't write a long, detailed biography, full of footnotes, of Laughlin.

[A Lark Ascending]

[BillF]

[B. Goren.]

[Head Man]

Zen and the art of walking.......

[Larry Kart]

James Laughlin: The Way It Wasn't

A posthumous scrapbook collected from the writings, photographs,letters, etc. of James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions Books. Interesting and sometimes fascinating stuff.

Yes, fascinating for what it reveals of Laughlin (not enough - he must have been quite a character himself) and his experiences with all the amazing authors he published. Too bad he didn't write an autobiography and too bad someone else didn't write a long, detailed biography, full of footnotes, of Laughlin.

There is a Laughlin memoir:

http://www.amazon.com/Byways-Memoir-James-Laughlin/dp/B005Q7SD1A/ref=sr_1_19?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372861551&sr=1-19&keywords=james+laughlin

Haven't read it but did enjoy "The Way It Wasn't." Among many other things, great pictures of some of the women that the lusty Laughlin pursued and bedded over the years.

[Jerry_L]

Clapton: The Autobiography [Hardcover]

Eric Clapton (Author)

[Larry Kart]

Just re-read Peter Rabe's "Murder Me For Nickels," a noir classic set in a unnamed medium-sized midwestern city in the late 1950s. Narrator Jack St. Louis is second in command to Walter Lippit, who controls the juke boxes in town. Neither Lippit nor St. Louis is a gangster -- their business is legit -- but gangster-connected folks may want to try to take it over. Humorous at times, the book has a unique, off-the-wall flavor -- in a way it's about the non-sexual but arguably romantic bond between St. Louis and Lippit, which is complicated in part because St. Louis digs Lippit's girlfriend, while she is fond of both of them.

St. Louis is a Mitchum-type perhaps, a man who doesn't want to take orders, doesn't want to be tied down, prefers to follow his own nose, spend his money as it comes in, etc. And yet he's drawn to Lippert, is tied to him practically and emotionally (but how much?), and because Lippit's outfit is doing well, St. Louis has more money in his pockets than he can get rid of as he used to, which leads him to start a small record label on the side to suit his own tastes (he likes jazz, has a good ear for it). One nice typical scene comes in Chapter 8, when St. Louis visits a bar where some semi-thugs from one arm of Lippert's outfit have been waiting to see if trouble arrives from the group that may be trying to muscle in.

"I went to the bar on Liberty and Alder where Folsom [a somewhat dubious, in St. Louis's view, Lippit associate] had one of the goon squads waiting. I didn't see them at first because the place was so dark. There was a long bar, with one morning drinker and the bartender was doing a crossword puzzle. And there was a grey cat. She sat on top of the jukebox and her eyes were closed. Suddenly she gave a screech like a woman and flew off the machine. Somebody laughed. They were sitting behind the jukebox at a round table, playing cards. But without much interest, One of them was laughing.

The bartender came over with the cat on his arm. The cat was clawed into his shoulder and if she were afraid of the height.

'Listen,' said the bartender. 'Who done that?'

The cat smelled a bit of burnt fur and the bartender knew very well who had done that. But he was short and thin and the one who was laughing was big and fat.

'Phew,' he said, 'what a stinker,' and threw his cigarette on the floor.

It hit me on the shoe and I stepped back a little. Then I stepped on the cigarette and rubbed it out.

'They been bothering you?' I said to the bartender.

'It's just the cat here, Mr. St. Louis. They keep bothering the cat.'

'We're here to see nothing happens to jukeboxes,' said the big one, 'and cats sitting on top of jukeboxes is not allowed. Right, fellers?'....

'Not allowed,' said the big one.

'Put the cat back up there,' I told the bartender.

'So you're the feller with the name,' he said. 'New Orleans, wasn't it?'

I didn't have to answer because he filled the space right after that crack with a long, phlegmy laugh. After a while it even sounded stupid to him and he let it die down. Then he talked as if had never laughed before in his life.

'Folsom's been telling me about you, New Orleans.'

'St. Louis. And now I'm going to tell you about me.' I came just a little closer to make it more personal. 'Folsom is running you and the rest of the apes, but the orders come from me. You sit down and hold still. You wait till you hear from Folsom before practicing your art and in the meantime no extracurricular activities. And leave this cat alone.'

He looked at me and then at his buddies and I think he didn't answer anything right away because he wasn't sure of all the words I had used.

Then he said, 'You come all he way down here to tell me about that cat?'

He hit the ridiculous part of the conversation right on the head and I didn't feel very impressive. Which is no trick anyway. I'm just built about average and he wasn't. I felt I should talk about something else."

Etc.

I particularly like "After a while it even sounded stupid to him" and "before practicing your art" and St. Louis's apt internal follow-up -- "I think he didn't answer anything right away because he wasn't sure of all the words I had used." And the air of tension -- one senses that this scene could lead to violence or even death or dissipate into semi-nothingness. Further, the tension, even the potential menace, and yet so little in one sense is or should be at stake; they all "work for the same outfit," right?

[ejp626]

St. Louis is a Mitchum-type perhaps, a man who doesn't want to take orders, doesn't want to be tied down, prefers to follow his own nose, spend his money as it comes in, etc. And yet he's drawn to Lippert, is tied to him practically and emotionally (but how much?), and because Lippit's outfit is doing well, St. Louis has more money in his pockets than he can get rid of as he used to, which leads him to start a small record label on the side to suit his own tastes (he likes jazz, has a good ear for it). One nice typical scene comes in Chapter 8, when St. Louis visits a bar where some semi-thugs from one arm of Lippert's outfit have been waiting to see if trouble arrives from the group that may be trying to muscle in.

Interesting, though the guy doesn't sound quite like a Mitchum-type, who would be far more threatening and get his way with the lower-level thugs without sounding a bit ridiculous.

The relationship in the book doesn't sound completely dissimilar to that between the Alan Ladd & Paul Donlevy characters in The Glass Key, which I just watched a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, just 100 pages more to go in Anna Karenina, which I hope to wrap up tonight. It's definitely an ok story and doesn't drag that much, but I think contemporary readers, such as myself, just are not that interested in Levin and his doings/musings, which do pad the book to some extent.

After this, I need to finish reading Things Fall Apart. I'm about 25% into it. While I know it's a stone-cold classic of African literature, I don't care that much for the main character and his deeply misognistic worldview, so I don't think I'll be reading this again. Fortunately, I've found it to be a fairly fast read.

[paul secor]

William Saroyan: Fresno Stories

[John Litweiler]

This is surely Ballard's wildest satire. Must have been written in the 1970s, since robot Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, etc. are among the characters (to use the word loosely) but not Reagan. The story is about an expedition from living Europe to dead America, a desert in the east and a jungle in the west, and the characters are all Ballardian obsessives - not quite archetypes, because they're all uniquely insane. Was Ballard just having fun here? Or does this foretell the anger to come in his later novels? He always seems to have envisioned America as a madhouse. Absolutely deadpan style, lots of explosions, never a smile in the story. Yet every few pages his razorblade-cuts leave me gasping or laughing.

Re "Murder Me for Nickels," this is my favorite Rabe though he wrote some other goodies. Even in hackwork like "Mission for Vengeance," which he must have written before supper one day, his ongoing atmosphere of menace keeps the reader awake.

[jazzbo]

[paul secor]

Ross Macdonald: Sleeping Beauty