Now reading...

[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.

[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.

[jlhoots]

Virginia Swift: Hello, Stranger

[Dave James]

Just finished "Praying for Gil Hodges", the focus of which is the Dodgers World Series victory in 1955, but is as much, a story about growing up in the Borough of Brooklyn in the '50's.

Just started "An Instance of the Fingerpost", a medieval mystery supposably along the lines of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose." If it's half as good as "Name", I'll be very pleased.

One I read awhile back that I'd highly recommend is "Father Joe, the Man Who Saved My Soul" by Tony Hendra. It's the story of the author's life long relatioship with a Benedictine monk, Father Joseph Warrilow. Some of you may recall Mr. Hendra as one of the original editors of The National Lampoon or as the writer of the Broadway play, "Lemmings" with Chevy Chase and John Belushi. He was also in the movie "Spinal Tap." If you need a lift, look no futher than this book.

Up over and out.

Edited April 8, 2006 by Dave James

[kinuta]

[jlhoots]

Kevin Baker: Strivers Row

[ghost of miles]

William McBrien's Cole Porter biography.

[HolyStitt]

'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'.

Great book! I read it last Fall and had the same reaction. Have either of you folks read the LOA set Reporting Vietnam?

Just finished Our Way or the Highway: Inside the Minnehaha Free State by Mary Losure.

Now, I am starting The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman

[jazzbo]

Re-read the two K. W. Jeter "Blade Runner" books: The Edge of Human, and Replicant's Night.

I'm of a divided mind about these. Some great parts. . . some parts that I just don't think fit. Writing is definitely not PhilDickian to me, but what do I know!

Now breezing through the Ashley Kahn book on A Love Supreme. I like it more than its sister book about Kind of Blue. . . .

[jlhoots]

T. Cooper: Lipshitz 6 or Two Angry Blondes

[Matthew]

Eric Ambler: Cause for Alarm. Must say I was rather disappointed with this one; Ambler put together the elements for a great crime novel here: good characters, challenging situation, pre-WWII, but then does nothing with them, they just kind of hang around until the end. Mark this one as a great book missed because Ambler didn't take any chances here, just played it safe.

[Matthew]

Any Samuel Beckettfans here? Anyone have Samuel Beckett: Grove Centenary Edition, it's a four volume set that has Beckett's works and I'm wondering if I should take the plunge or not.

Edited May 5, 2006 by Matthew

[paul secor]

I, Wabenzi by Rafi Zabor - Pretty much a waste of my time.

[kinuta]

Feeling gloomy so something easy to read

Harlan Coben - The Final Detail

[ejp626]

Finished Soldier's Art book 8 of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. Overall it is a really interesting read, though occasionally Powell is a bit too proud of the structure/plotting of the books. This comes up in book 8 when two people are killed in the London Blitz. One who went to a party and one who stayed home. It is just a bit too much like the joke about the man who bumps into death in Bagdad and tries to outrun death, only to have death catch up with him in Samarra.

The overplotting is even stronger in The Kindly Ones where one section ends with Nick's childhood figuratively coming to an end with the announcement of WWI, and the book ending with the beginning of WWI and Nick's decision to become a soldier at a relatively advanced age. Still, I like the series as a whole and should wrap it up in another couple of months.

I just started a really interesting novel about life in Occupied France called Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. It's quite a work of art, somewhat overshadowed by the back-story that only 2 parts were completed before the author was taken away to the Nazi internment camps where she died. The book was saved by her young daughter who thought it was simply a diary and didn't have the heart to read it until 10 years or so ago.

[brownie]

Jean Echenoz's 'Ravel' a short, obsessive and intense novelization of Maurice Ravel's final years from the date he traveled to the United States in 1928. Ravel died ten years later.

Great work of fiction by one of the current French literary masters.

Echenoz is also a jazz connaisseur and has been inspired by the music in previous books. I also like the fact that he has remained true to the venerable Editions de Minuit literary house which have their covers look like Blue Note labels: