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[sal]

"The Search for Modern China" by Jonathan Spence

[Jazzmoose]

To my surprise, they are putting out a supposedly complete run of Berke Breathed's Bloom County, which is very heavy on the early strips that have not been published before.

I thought the early paperbacks started from the beginning; am I wrong? Just wondering as I still have the first few.

[jostber]

Just finished Alain De Botton's "On Love". Now reading his "The Consolations of Philosophy".

[ejp626]

To my surprise, they are putting out a supposedly complete run of Berke Breathed's Bloom County, which is very heavy on the early strips that have not been published before.

I thought the early paperbacks started from the beginning; am I wrong? Just wondering as I still have the first few.

Well, sort of. The first paperback had a few of the pre-Bloom County strips, but also skipped around a bit. The first volume really goes into this pre-history and there are over 100 pages of strips that weren't included in the first paperback.

Also I actually clipped the strip for over a year when I was in high school and a handful never appeared in the middle volumes like Billy and the Boingers, Tales to Ticklish to Tell, etc.

So this is definitely the way to go if you are a completist, though it isn't clear about how far they will extend the series.

[BillF]

Still with Eric Ambler. Now reading Uncommon Danger.

[ghost of miles]

Mark Miller, HERBIE NICHOLS: A JAZZIST'S LIFE (can't seem to find a cover image yet online) + this hot-stove item:

[Nate Dorward]

Mark Miller, HERBIE NICHOLS: A JAZZIST'S LIFE (can't seem to find a cover image yet online)

Here ya go:

[Matthew]

Mary Baker Eddy by Gillian Gill. A really fascinating book about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Scientist Church. I just checked it out from the library on a lark to read on my recent business trip, and it was very engrossing with a lot of interesting insights into Mrs. Eddy, and the religious culture of the nineteenth century. Highly recommended for those who like to read about religious leaders.

[ejp626]

Jess Walter's The Zero is on-deck after that, and it also looks promising.

I wrapped this up the other day. It is probably the best novel about NYC post-9/11, though the bar is kind of low. (If I recall, O'Neill's Netherland is sort of about a parallel universe version of post-9/11, so that might be a contender as well.) Anyway, imagine a fusion of Langewiesche's American Ground and PDK's A Scanner Darkly with a few dashes of The Wire. The lead character is a NYC cop who is recruited into a shadowy agency that is tracking down the documents that were blown out of the Towers. A key plot device is that the lead character keeps slipping in and out of consciousness, and then will find himself in a completely new situation and will have to come with grips to find out what he is supposed to do. This happens every few pages. It does get a little wearing. There are certainly some strong passages, but I am unlikely to read it again.

I also read some more short stories. Self Help by Lorrie Moore, which kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and Self Storage and Other Stories by Mary Helen Stefaniak, which I liked much better.

So as 2009 comes to a close, I feel I did a pretty good job of going through books on my shelves that I wanted to read once before selling or giving them away. A couple threw me for a loop and I kept them (Yiddish Policemen's Union; My Present Age by Guy Vanderhaeghe). 2010 is going to be a time for more enduring fictions that I want to make sure I read (not that I am planning on checking out anytime soon). I actually had a plan like this almost 20 years ago and I stuck to it pretty well. I read one book a month by Barbara Pym, Saul Bellow, Graham Greene and got through their works.

My plan for 2010-11 will be first to read the two competing new translations of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (I've heard both editions are better and more faithful than the version I read).

Then one book a month by Nabokov (probably skipping several of his "Russian" novels), Narayan and Mahfouz. However, I would end with the Cairo Trilogy to read in one chunk. After this, Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. Rereading Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. John Fante's Bandini Quartet. And finally Proust. I think I'll probably be exhausted of high-brow lit for a while after that, but I'll have hit all the "best" books on my shelves and make sure I crack the spines at least.

[paul secor]

Charles Baxter's novel The Soul Thief

[7/4]

Just came today from Daedalus. "The Completely Mad Don Martin" - all his Mad magazine strips from 1956-1988. A hefty two volume set for cheap!

Highly intellectual fare!

Wow, I wouldn't mind having that!

[jazzbo]

Amazing deal at about 36 dollars including shipping at www.daedalusbooks.com.

[paul secor]

Reacquainting myself with Sherlock Holmes after too many years by reading "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of Four".

[ghost of miles]

Reacquainting myself with Sherlock Holmes after too many years by reading "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of Four".

Been thinking of doing that myself, in advance of the upcoming movie.

On vacation right now, so I've really been able to do a lot of reading...wonderful! Blew through David Halberstam's OCTOBER 1964 and Sam Stephenson's THE JAZZ LOFT PROJECT; just started Morris Dickstein's DANCING IN THE DARK: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION and am getting back into George Lewis' A POWER STRONGER THAN ITSELF. Also on deck: Henry Roth's CALL IT SLEEP, James Gavin's STORMY WEATHER, and DOWNBEAT: THE GREAT JAZZ INTERVIEWS, as well as a new collection that a friend of mine edited, THE JAZZ FICTION ANTHOLOGY.

Edited December 15, 2009 by ghost of miles

[BillF]

Just finished re-reading a 1972 novel by Margaret Atwood, Surfacing. Interesting to note its environmental concerns echoed in her latest book, The Year of the Flood.

Now back to spy fiction again. Now re-reading Len Deighton's The Ipcress File.

[Jazzmoose]

I found a Greg Bear novel I hadn't read before, Queen of Angels, and have been reading that. I don't know if anyone else has read Bear, but he's the writer that totally destroyed my dream of becoming an SF writer when I was younger. As long as I stuck to Heinlein, Asimov and the other old guard, I could delude myself into thinking I could do it, but once I read one of Greg Bear's epic novels, forget it. No way in hell.

[BillF]

Reacquainting myself with Sherlock Holmes after too many years by reading "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of Four".

Good idea! This year I've read The Adventures of SH, The Memoirs of SH, The Return of SH and A Study in Scarlet and I have just borrowed The Casebook of SH from my local library.

[king ubu]

...

Now back to spy fiction again. Now re-reading Len Deighton's The Ipcress File.

I guess you know the film? One of Michael Caine's finest early ones!

[BillF]

I saw the film on its release, so my memories of it are pretty vague now, but as I read I keep visualising the narrator as a Michael Caine character, so it's one of those books on which the subsequent film version has left an indelible mark. I feel much the same about Le Carré's George Smiley novels and the subsequent BBC TV versions with Alec Guinness, both of which I've recently read/watched.

[king ubu]

Being a late-comer, I only saw "The Ipcress File" about two or three years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's certainly one of the funniest parodies on its genre, and Caine with his silly goggles is great!

[ejp626]

My plan for 2010-11 will be first to read the two competing new translations of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (I've heard both editions are better and more faithful than the version I read).

So I got started on this a little early. The temptation of reading the dueling Bulgakovs at Christmas was too tempting to pass up (if you are familiar with it, it involves the devil (or his surrogate) coming to Moscow and finding the people easy pickings, interwoven with chapters of Jesus and Pontius Pilate). My feelings so far are that the Peavar-Volokhonsky translation is a bit better than Burgin-O'Connor, in part because they seem to have worked from the most complete version. I do think the notes from the Burgin-O'Connor just a bit better, however. To add to the confusion there is a mass paperback of the Peavar-Volokhonsky (that I've only ever seen in the UK) without any notes or footnotes. I would probably steer away from that as some notes are helpful. But either translation is fine. Heck, even the original one I read by M. Glenny is good. If you are at all interested in Russian (or particularly Soviet) literature, you should read this book.

[jazzbo]

Great book, I'm a fan of all his work. I haven't read any of the newer translations. . . maybe sometime this year.

Edited December 18, 2009 by jazzbo

[jlhoots]

Philip Caputo: The Voyage

[jazzbo]

[Brad]

Just started Pete Fornatele's Return to the Garden, about Woodstock.