Now reading...

[Brandon Burke]

[ghost of miles]

Hey, yes to Eric Ambler and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN.

The Dorsey bio's decent. It's amazing how many surviving musicians Levinson was able to interview for it. Definitely worth your time if you're a Dorsey fan at all.

I just finished Thomas Merton's THE SIGN OF JONAS (hello, Matthew! ) and am variously perusing a Nat King Cole biography and FREEDOM IS, FREEDOM AIN'T (book about jazz in the 1960s).

[ejp626]

Would agree on Motherless Brooklyn. I actually introduced a book club to it, and it went over really well. I've read many of Lethem's other books, but this is the one I like the most. The bit where his OCD turns on this woman he briefly dates is very funny and of course also very sad.

Lethem reminds me a bit of Madison Smartt Bell, who wrote some wonderful books in the 1990s. My favorite of all is Bell's Waiting for the End of the World, which I may try to reread this year. Doctor Sleep is also quite good.

Am currently working on book 6 in Anthony Powell's Dance series.

[ghost of miles]

Would agree on Motherless Brooklyn. I actually introduced a book club to it, and it went over really well. I've read many of Lethem's other books, but this is the one I like the most. The bit where his OCD turns on this woman he briefly dates is very funny and of course also very sad.

Lethem reminds me a bit of Madison Smartt Bell, who wrote some wonderful books in the 1990s. My favorite of all is Bell's Waiting for the End of the World, which I may try to reread this year. Doctor Sleep is also quite good.

Am currently working on book 6 in Anthony Powell's Dance series.

I'd like to read Lethem's FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE--the ending scene actually takes place in Bloomington, Indiana (at the Kinsey Institute).

My favorite M. Smartt Bell book is THE YEAR OF SILENCE. Haven't read any of his Haiti trilogy, but he's a writer I almost always seem to enjoy reading. Not as overlooked as he used to be... he caused quite a stink back in the mid-1980s with his attack on minimalism in Harper's.

[ejp626]

My favorite M. Smartt Bell book is THE YEAR OF SILENCE. Haven't read any of his Haiti trilogy, but he's a writer I almost always seem to enjoy reading. Not as overlooked as he used to be... he caused quite a stink back in the mid-1980s with his attack on minimalism in Harper's.

I thought Year of Silence was ok but not as good as Waiting or Doctor Sleep. The Washington Square Ensemble is ok as well. That one has some curious parallels with Motherless Brooklyn, though the situations the main characters get into (and choices they make) are bleaker than those in MB. I must admit the Haiti trilogy doesn't sound that promising to me, but I may read it some day. (I generally don't read historical fiction and think that Bell is writing so far outside of his own experience I don't see how he could keep it up for three books.) I would like to get around to reading his short stories. Lethem's short stories are often interesting.

[Brandon Burke]

I'd like to read Lethem's FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE--the ending scene actually takes place in Bloomington, Indiana (at the Kinsey Institute).

i finished Fortress of Solitude about a month or so ago, enjoyed it immensely. bought his The Dissapointment Artist over the weekend. (mostly because i found out there's an essay in there on Cassavetes...)

[Matthew]

I just finished Thomas Merton's THE SIGN OF JONAS (hello, Matthew! )

After I recommended The Sign of Jonas, I decided to read it myself and found that I was turned off by Merton's constant stream of camplaining -- it rubbed me the wrong way this time. I still find the section after his ordination interesting, with the "Fire Watch" being one of the better things he wrote. I'll have to get the Journals one of these days.

PS: Hi, I just took a break from the Big O for awhile.....

[ghost of miles]

I just finished Thomas Merton's THE SIGN OF JONAS (hello, Matthew! )

After I recommended The Sign of Jonas, I decided to read it myself and found that I was turned off by Merton's constant stream of camplaining -- it rubbed me the wrong way this time. I still find the section after his ordination interesting, with the "Fire Watch" being one of the better things he wrote. I'll have to get the Journals one of these days.

PS: Hi, I just took a break from the Big O for awhile.....

Hmm... I'm having other strange issues with Merton that I should PM you about! JONAS intrigues me because you witness the change that took place in him after SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN became a bestseller. Yeah, he does seem to complain more, and to become more self-absorbed. What a strange fate, though--to take up the life of a monk, and to then become a literary celebrity. Very odd... our station's music director retired this past summer and went to Gethsemani to become a monk, btw. Haven't talked to him since, but we saw a recent picture, and he looks really, really happy. An enormously talented pianist and singer, and they seem to be making good use of his gifts.

[rostasi]

[paul secor]

Penelope Lively: Making It Up - fictionalizing what one's life might have been had different choices been made and different paths been followed.

[jazzbo]

I've had to spend a lot of time in waiting rooms lately in another city and reread a lot of detective novels and this has me on a binge. . . Read a bit of A. A. Fair, Charles Willeford, Ross McDoanld, Rex Stout. . . .

Now on Rex Stout's "The Golden Spiders."

[Matthew]

Just starting to get into David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. Scary how the same mistakes are occuring now as in the past. Forward into the past I guess. Also saving two Eric Ambler's for my week vacation in April (waiting in airports and on airplanes): The Light of Day & Passage of Arms. I'm hooked on Ambler for some reason.

[md655321]

Just finished Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. Definitely and interesting read. Are all his books different? or does he maintain a similar style? I cant imagine he would.

For something completely different I am reading The Creation of the American Republic by Gordon Wood. Great book that absolutely made history change on its axis. Too bad a couple more people in power dont read it as well.

[BruceH]

I've been looking over a lot of my Allan Moore-written comics for some odd reason.... Quite a few of them hold up rather well.

[ejp626]

Just finished Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. Definitely and interesting read. Are all his books different? or does he maintain a similar style? I cant imagine he would.

His style does change (and mature) with each novel. The latest ones have not been comic at all. I would read Zuckerman Bound next after Portnoy.

[rostasi]

A wonderful book on the band Can

that's nearly 500 pages of great quality

analysis, statements, and interviews.

Instead of being presented as a biography,

it's a wonderful artistic reconstruction which

is what much of their music was about.

Physically, it's a well made book on good quality

paper that gives it an amazingly hefty weight

and sturdiness that is often found in higher priced

"art" books.

[Kalo]

I've been looking over a lot of my Allan Moore-written comics for some odd reason.... Quite a few of them hold up rather well.

I can't argue with that. I return to Moore every few years. Have you checked out his "prequel" to Top Ten, entitled Top Ten: The Forty-Niners"?

It was just released in paperback. Nicely written by Moore, with excellent art from Gene Ha.

[kinuta]

Just starting to get into David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. Scary how the same mistakes are occuring now as in the past. Forward into the past I guess. Also saving two Eric Ambler's for my week vacation in April (waiting in airports and on airplanes): The Light of Day & Passage of Arms. I'm hooked on Ambler for some reason.

'The Best And The Brightest ' is a true classic and a great work of historical importance. I've read it about three times. Needless to say it's lessons have been totally lost on this numbskull administration.

Currently rereading PD James ' Innocent Blood'.

[BruceH]

Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks.

[Brownian Motion]

Bluegrass: A History, by Neil V. Rosenburg.

Astonishingly, this book was the first serious study of bluegrass music; apparently, at the time of publication (1985) no commercial presses were interested in the manuscript, because it wound up being published by the University of Illinois Press. Rosenburg would have profited from closer editing, but, that said, he's a perceptive writer who has long been engaged by his subject.

[paul secor]

Robertson Davies: The Lyre of Orpheus

[jazzbo]

I've been rereading a lot of mystery stuff in clinic waiting rooms. . . .

Started rereading some Cornell Woolrich and forgot just how compelling his prose is! Right now, "I Married a Dead Man."

[ghost of miles]

Nelson Algren, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM.

[birdanddizzy]

Alain Tercinet - "West Coast Jazz" (Parenthèses) (in french)

[jazzbo]

Nelson Algren, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM.

"Somebody in Boots" scares me! (Just thought I'd throw that out; read that book when I first moved to Texas.)

Still reading Woolrich and marveling at his craft.