So long friend.

posted by slickdpdx at 2:54 pm (EST) on Sep 1, 2008

Thought you might like Depravity's Rainbow, the title of this review: http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=3225

posted by slickdpdx at 12:53 pm (EST) on May 1, 2008

The Secret Integration is really incredible. Thanks so much for making sure I did not overlook these gems.

On a related note: Slothrop? http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/new...

posted by slickdpdx at 11:54 am (EST) on Apr 9, 2008

Really really liked Under The Rose! Ought to be expanded to book length. I thought it worked better than Entropy. Although Entropy has a lot of good stuff, the Aubade character/bird/jungle stuff didn't work for me. Pynchon's gifts include writing about music - hearing it, performing it, putting it in setting along with other critical elements of the landscape etc., using it as a literary device. I don't recall that facility with music showing up much in his novels. Am I failing to notice or remember it in the novels?

posted by slickdpdx at 6:17 pm (EST) on Mar 27, 2008

I really like checking out the connection news and seeing what others are picking up too! I read and loved Entropy, and should have gotten back to you about that. Makes you (or me at least) want to be a beatnik with a name like Hamburger. I am looking forward to reading the other stories.

Darconville is amazing, and an amazingly fast read for its type. I don't imagine The Recognitions is anywhere near as fluid, fancy or fun. Every time I look at Recognitions or JR at the bookstore I can't get excited enough about either one to purchase it. To many other books, more attractive (to me at least.)

Did you see I bought a second copy of Crying of Lot 49?! I was at the airport. Powell's (there are Powells' stores in the Portland OR airport!) was selling it cheap and I thought it would make a good back up in case The Impressionist (Darconville was too big for the plane) wasn't working for me. The Impressionist turned out to be a great book, so 98 (2nd 49?) will have to wait! I saw Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me there, didn't pick it up because I didn't have the scratch on me at the time, but it looks amazing. Its at the top of my buy list now. I see now that both you and ben waugh have the book. How have I missed it all these years?

posted by slickdpdx at 10:48 am (EST) on Feb 22, 2008

Thanks for listing Trailer Girl and Other Stories in your collection. I have a new book, a memoir about my uncle who committed suicide after leaving me tapes about his service as an MP in an American stockade in postwar Japan. It was right after Abu Ghraib. Mystery, intrigue, love and even a little play in the middle. You can see the video for it at blackglasseslikeclarkkent.com and excerpts are posted on Critical Mass, the National Book Critic Circle's blog.

Terese Svoboda

posted by svoboda at 3:19 pm (EST) on Jan 21, 2008

The book(s!) arrived this evening, thank you very much. The Pynchon will go on the night stand for immediate reading! I see you like Vollmann too. I found out about his forthcoming from perusing your library and I pre-ordered. I haven't read Poor People yet, and I will probably read the new one before I get around to PP; its got a more promising premise. Incidentally, You Bright and Risen Angels (which is just about my favorite book) owes a great debt to Lot 49, but I never see the two mentioned at the same time, until now...

posted by slickdpdx at 9:22 pm (EST) on Dec 28, 2007

i hope you enjoy the books! you've got a pretty swell library/taste so it was fun to pick stuff out...

posted by ateolf at 8:53 pm (EST) on Dec 27, 2007

Thanks for your friendship! I look forward to checking out your books and hope you enjoy mine.

posted by lisaunger at 10:39 am (EST) on Nov 14, 2007

Do you really own five or so copies of The Crying of Lot 49?

posted by slickdpdx at 2:44 pm (EST) on Oct 25, 2007

I just got Superstar in a Housedress about Jackie Curtis. It's done in the same oral history format as Edie. It's surprisingly pretty good, with a lot of excerpts from Jackie's plays. The extra cool bonus is a full length documentary DVD in the back. A $5 steal from the Boston MFA bookstore!!! Feel free to contribute more thoughts to my flagging Warholia group.

posted by GloriaWandrous at 9:45 am (EST) on Jun 25, 2007

Thanks for the kind comments. Ask me now how many of those books I've actually read! Especially the Gaddis doorstops - I may have to ease myself into those. It's always good to see someone interested in Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green is probably the best Vietnam novel I've yet to read. Oh, and the picture is actually a Lexus magazine ad for their airbag system - strangely alluring in its own way....

posted by eswnr at 7:24 pm (EST) on Jun 22, 2007

Recently published…

Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints – Joan Acocella
The Canon – Natalie Angier
The Savage Detectives – Roberto Bolano
Mars Needs Moms! – Berkeley Breathed
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon
The Pesthouse – Jim Crace
Varieties of Disturbances: Stories – Lydia Davis
Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s
The Ministry of Special Cases – Nathan Englander
5x7 – William Eggleston
Generation Loss – Elizabeth Hand
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
The Dangerous Book for Boys (US edition) – Conn & Hal Iggulden
The Atomic Bazaar – William Langewiesche
You Don’t Love Me Yet – Jonathan Lethem
Eeeee Eee Eeee – Tao Lin
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
The Gravedigger’s Daughter – Joyce Carol Oates
Glitter and Doom – Sabine Rewald
The Daughters of Juarez – Teresa Rodriguez
Typo – David Silverman
Throw Like a Girl: Stories – Jean Thompson

Forthcoming books:

June 15th:
Anarchy and Alchemy: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky – Ben Cobb (delayed?)

Aug. 7th:
Spook Country – William Gibson
Death of a Murderer – Rupert Thomson

Oct 4th:
Foreskin’s Lament – Shalom Auslander

Nov. 1st:
Touch and Go: A Memoir – Studs Terkel

Dec. 18th:
Godspeed – Will Christopher Baer

Jan 1st:
In Defense of Lost Causes – Slavoj Zizek

[no set U.S. release date:]

Kingdom Come – J.G. Ballard
Roller Derby – Catherine Mabe
Not Enough People Have Died – Seth Tobocman

posted by abductee at 10:58 pm (EST) on Jun 19, 2007

Ok…here’s my first draft of books published in 2007 that I plan on purchasing/reading – let me know if there is something I left out, as this is a continuing work in progress ;-)

Late 2006 releases:
The Ghost at the Table: A Novel – Suzanne Berne
Last Seen Leaving – Kelly Braffert
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction – Joan Didion
Julius Winsome: A Novel – Gerard Donovan
Paris: The Secret History – Andrew Hussey
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward – A New Approach
The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability – Laura Kipnis
Everybody Loves Somebody – Joanna Scott
The Aeneid – Virgil (trans. Robert Fagles)

Recently released (Jan. 2007):
Fires – Nick Antosca
The Teahouse Fire – Ellis Avery
Sacred Games: A Novel – Vikram Chandra
Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality – Pauline W. Chen
Inheritance – Natalie Danford
City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London – Vic Gatrell
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip & Dan Heath
Zoli: A Novel – Colum McCann
The Blade Itself – Marcus Sakey
Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” – Zak Smith

Coming soon…

Jan.16th
House of Meetings – Martin Amis

Jan. 18th
The Bastard of Istanbul – Elif Shafak

Jan. 23rd
Travels in the Scriptorium: A Novel – Paul Auster
Matters of Honor – Louis Begley
The Castle in the Forest: A Novel – Norman Mailer

Feb. 6th
Astrid & Veronika – Linda Olsson

Feb. 13th
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah

March 6th
Christine Falls: A Novel – Benjamin Black

April 2nd
Boomsday – Christopher Buckley

April 3rd
Notting Hell: A Novel – Rachel Johnson

March 1st
Poor People – William T. Vollmann

March 6th
Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders – James D. Scurlock

June 5th
Falling Man: A Novel – Don Delillo

?
Kingdom Come – J.G Ballard

posted by abductee at 12:03 am (EST) on Jan 11, 2007

Literacy . . . that's what I miss the most at work. Among 174 employees in my agency, only a dozen read . . . really read! I even e-mailed everyone a spreadsheet with books I would be willing to lend and there were only 6 takers. And 3 of them wanted Dan Brown.

posted by localpeanut at 3:20 pm (EST) on Jan 5, 2007

Most of my salary (since the house and car are paid for) goes to pet food and vet bills, books, and INSTANT OCEAN. The latter is what I use to maintain my coral reef tank. Not a whole lot of fish in it. (Because they nibble corals.) Some clown and neon gobys. I haven't seen the seahorses in days. They're actually easier to maintain than a regular saltwater tank. Just watch water quality and squirt some live brine shrimp here and there, in the general direction of the anemones and the tubeworms.

posted by localpeanut at 3:12 pm (EST) on Jan 5, 2007

Hullo!
Thanks for the comment. I figure if I limited my posts to 5 words in LT, my idiocy won't show. Hee. Some of the members' facility with words are downright frightening. I hope to be as articulate as yourself someday. I love this site. It feels like home.

posted by localpeanut at 9:06 pm (EST) on Jan 4, 2007

Thanks ever so much for the response, and the recommendations. I suggest Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon, a sort of Chandler's Big Sleep meets PKD via Dan Simmons Hyperion.

posted by jayqq1953 at 11:52 am (EST) on Dec 27, 2006