Despite the violence I love his books. He is a very good tale teller and his wonderful Thai Buddhist detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is terrific.

Picked up a battered Library first edition for ten bucks! About college girl Franny and her truly awful lunch date as she is sweating, passing out and possibly pregnant. Salinger is a direct Scott Fitzgerald descent but then he acknowledges it on Page 3 of Zooey, quoting from Gatsby “which was my Tom Sawyer when I was twelve”… that everybody suspects himself of having at least one of the Cardinal virtues.” Zooey is narrated by Buddy Glass and is much less good than I remembered.

I love Waugh. My favorite Waugh is the War Trilogy Sword of Honor. I don’t much care for Brideshead and though I picked up a first edition, I still don’t much care for this tale of the paranoia of an elderly writer on a sea voyage who hears voices.

Not quite getting him still….

An odd fish – hybrid of biography, art history and novel about the famous painting “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer” by Rembrandt. Heller is one of my favorite writers but this is not my favorite of his.

Nicely written interesting perspective of Death from the viewpoint of Death The Character.

Like all comedy novels, and shampoo itself, it starts well but then dries up.

Bought at Antiquarian Book Fair in Pasadena. A couple of lectures in New York about the British and the horrors of the recently ended 1914-18 war.

Everything I needed to know about Descartes: I drink therefore I am. Started last summer and picked up and finished.

About a book thief who like all thieves is in denial about theft. Not written well enough to be really good and she abandons the tale and pursuit of his thieving career before it is over or has come to some dramatic conclusion, in order to publish the book which is a pity as the story lacks a good end, and if you are doing journalism you must await the outcome. You can see this book prominently displayed at all Book Fairs as a burglar alarm in order to deter the thief himself.

His last posthumous novel and is as usual a closely reworked version of something that actually happened (in this case the Monte Carlo Saffire fire death) set now in Biarritz. As with parody often the elusive truth is easier achieved through fiction.

Best play ever. I love it. See it. Read it. He is our finest playwright.