I have been reading a lot of these novels lately. They're having a very curious fun-house mirror effect, because he uses a lot of the same characters and weird parenthetical not-plots over again, back stories shrouded in context, but they change from book to book so it's as those you're given a new something to flesh out the universe only to find that this new bit conflicts with an older known thing and explodes and reshapes the universe with its placement.

i just finished "America The Beautiful" by Moon Unit Zappa. it was fun and silly. the day i finished it i started reading and shortly thereafter finished "Shop Girl" by Steve Martin, which was gorgeous, absolutely mesmerizing. now i'm reading "All Families Are Psychotic" by Douglas Coupland, but i'm only a few chapters in and it's taking me a while to forget all his other books so that i can enjoy this one. i also have "Fury" by Salman Rushdie sitting on my coffee table. i bought the last three books all on the same day but i'm saving the best for last. i've never read anything by peter straub.

I just went ot one of those big book clearance places and picked up a Bukowski reader, Portrait of the artist as an old man by joseph Heller, and a new book by that guy who did, um, . . . those illustrated books where it's all about this correspondence between these two people, I know the name but can't produce it, help me out here... Mavis would know.

fred?

I just read "If on a winters night a traveller" by Italo Calvino and I'm in the middle of "Quantum Psychology" by Robert Anton Wilson. This is technically called a "mind fuck."

I read "The Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino several months ago. Right now I'm reading "Dune" and analyzing "King Lear" for my senior literary thesis.

i just finished a lame book by maya angelou. before that, i read "widow for one year" by john irving, and i'm starting "postville: a clash of cultures in heartland america" tonight. sem, are you talking about nick bantock? "griffin and sabine" and all that stuff?

i just read 100 ways for a cat to train its human, and reviewed it. shallow graves by jeffery deaver and reviewed it nip n tuck by kathy lette (funny) and reviewed it and finally for my own pleasure (heh she said pleasure) i'm reading lawrence block's a long line of dead men.

just rediscovered slaughterhouse five by kurt vonnegut. Its got really poignant resonances following the excellent tv series band of brothers. read it and laugh. read it and weep. but weep mostly. so it goes..............

"Baron" rocks. I haven't re-read that in a few years. Every now and then I get on a "read everything by Calvino again" kick, and I think I'm on it again now. Calvino inspires me. I read "Invisible Cities" about every year, and it's always new, always fresh.

Did anybody ever read AND finish the Isle of the Day Before? I fucking cranked through name of the rose and read Foucault's Pendulum with such attention to detail and intense love that I believe I added to text to the codex of my deoxyriblahblahblah. Who is that guy who did the Alienist? Caleb Carr? Is that the name? Them were some good eating. You know what else is good? A series about a young woman police officer named Mallory By Carroll O'Connell. Moonit, you are a reviewer of the books? Why don't I know more about Moonit. I blame dave.

I've had Isle of the Day Before sitting on the bookshelf waiting to be read for over a year now. Loved Name of the Rose & Pendulum. Just picked up a book because of its cover & title: "A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius". (Gotta be good with a title like that) Yeah, Alienist was good, also have his other, Angel of Darkness sitting on shelf waiting to read.

Antigone, I read "If On a Winter's Night a Traveller" a few years ago. I got lost in the middle of it. I've begun reading G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" while trying to finish Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" (I've been working on that for months...I find it very hard-going). I'm preparing to read Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," for real, this time. Wish me luck.

i plan one day to go out and buy a book that spider might find interesting: Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin. There was a review of it in the New Yorker in which it was called it "among the most beautiful, exalting, and original achievments of a century's worth of fiction and para-fiction." it's supposed to be sort of a dream novel where the author interweaves his life with dostoevsky's.

in which it was called it?

I skipped right over that it Droop, if you hadn't of pointed it out I wouldnt of noticed. Yup I review books for the paper I work for. I had this book last week or the week before and it had quotes from kiwis on the back with how great it was etc etc, and I thought it was shite. So I bagged it. Whoops.

Para-fiction? That sounds cool, droopy. Let me know what you think of it.

i have a theory that para-fiction means autobiographical fiction and stuff like that. i know, moonit. it's just that i'm trying to write something for a guy in florresville, texas and i'm trying consciously to be less careless with my sentences and shit. it's hard to do without coffee.

Island of the Day Before was long, and mostly tedious, but yes, I did finish it. I'm reading "The Salterton Trilogy," by Roberston Davies (he's my all time favourite author right now). I also just re-read "Watership Down," and remembered why I like it so much.