A rather fine and highly readable thriller by a young man from Portland.   Cleverly intertwining the story of two heists, he has absorbed the many who have preceded him in this form to create a very fine debut. It’s destined to be a best seller and a movie. I have an autographed copy from Book Soup. Very good yarn for a holiday read.

I re-read this in case I see the movie. A beautiful First edition from 1925, with a facsimile slip cover. There is something wonderful about re-reading a favourite book in its original edition. It’s as fine and lovely and epic and poetic as ever. Like a Greek tragedy with its inevitable bloody end. No one is at Gatsby’s funeral. All the people who came to his parties despised him. He causes the death of Tom Buchanan’s mistress and the alienation of his wife, and pays for it, when Buchanan betrays him to the grief stricken Wilson. The book is about wealth, the rich are different. Daisy (who actually causes the accident that kills) disappears back into her wealth. Buchanan feels justified. Gatsby himself is extinguished in his great house looking out towards the green light on Daisy’s dock at East Egg, in the end a metaphor for the gap that these Westerners cannot bridge in their new lives in the East. Carroway hates the Buchanan set more than the pretentions of Gatsby, and is at the end, with him alone in his death.

Perhaps the hardest thing to do in the world is write a comic novel. This absolutely rocks it in a tale of the drug induced, sexually indulgent world of young people in the Seventies. Laugh out loud story-telling, this goes off like a rocket, and even ends darkly, and not sentimentally, which is the downfall of most comic novels. I found a nice 1975 first edition to read and I loved it.  Darker and funnier than even his Dad.

I might indeed have read this before as it was previously published under another title, but I cannot find any trace of it. About two hoodlums and low rent guys in Detroit who aspire to be more successful. Ten rules for getting away with armed robbery. A very enjoyable read.

A delightful book. One of the best of his most recent works. The tale is dark and engaging, and the secret services and political world have become once again the dark places of corruption and intrigue which he first explored in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Quite a complex tale and one I regretted interrupting several times as I travelled, and one I intend re-reading at a sitting, as its yarn demands.

This is a wonderful book, from its hilarious title to its touching and movingly honest ending. It is a terrific tale, the magnificently hilarious story of Jeannette Winterson herself growing up in Accrington, adopted into the home of the freakily wonderful mad comic personage of Mrs Winterson, a creature so fabulously funny that, if you didn’t have to live with her, you might assume she was made up, by someone like Dickens. The now-successful author observes this comic monster in hindsight with precision, and even forgiveness,  and makes of her an all-time unforgettable character. Not since George Melly have I so enjoyed the honest tale of a Northern upbringing.  Strongly recommended for all readers. I picked it up in Seattle airport and could hardly put it down.

An unexpectedly delightful little novel that I picked up as a First Edition at Earthling in Walla Walla. He really is a delightful writer. This 1951 novel about a snowstorm at the opening of a small hotel in Pennsylvania is charming and surprising by turn. The characters swiftly and deftly sketched, and the drama unfolds with great humour. He really is a wonderful discovery. I intend to hunt him down in old bookshops.

I must have picked this curio up at Mr B’s in Bath. It’s the story of a family on holiday and dad’s involvement with an enchanting donkey called Caroline. He’ll do anything for a nice piece of ass. No, sorry. It’s not like that at all.

1947 First Edition picked up at Earthling.  Started with two of the  most hilarious chapters and then settled down into a story of snobbery, about the man pursuing the family myth that they might be descended from Kings, only to find in reality they are descended from a full negro. This is a good gag, but the time in which it is written is more revealing about America’s long crawl out of its racist journey, than how you might tackle such a story today. Mercifully the full horror of the context has evolved a little.

Two really excellent novellas and a third about lycanthropy which I found less compelling. In the first an abandoned daughter learns to come to terms with her murderous revenge instincts towards a cruel rapist and her acceptance of the possibility of love and in the second Brown Dog a native American hiding in Toronto with his adopted daughter, escapes back to America with a rock and roll show. Both of these are tremendously well written, and powerful and great fun.

Described as an Anglo-American tragedy, Waugh’s satirical novella is set in Hollywood, and is about an Englishman who has fallen out of the movies and now works at a pet cemetery. After the literal fall, by suicide of his house mate he becomes acquainted with the world of Whispering Glades, and studies the funeral business for humans, falling in love with the unfortunate Aimee, who is torn between Mr Joyboy, who makes up dead faces into smiles for her, and Dennis who gives her classic poems from the English poets which he pretends are his. Genuinely funny and revealing of a lost world of the English abroad in the Studio System of Hollywood. Nice UK 1948 First editio.

Re-ordered this in Paperback but had the feeling I’d read it already. Indeed in 2002. And even more recently Fire In The Hole (this January) the short story that starts the series Justified. Interestingly I’m working on an old novel from 2002 where I wrote this: You know the feeling? You’re half way through an Elmore Leonard and you think wait, I know exactly what’s going to happen now, I must have read this already. No disrespect to Elmore, whom I adore, but sometimes publishers change the titles: The Big Heist previously published as Detroit Snatch. It can be very confusing.

I loved this exquisite novel with it’s complicated way of telling a story, skipping from one character to another so we finally piece together what is happening from several different viewpoints. First the pregnant Lena, then Byron Brown, and then the early days of Joe then Burden for a while until he murders his landlady lover and is hunted down. The crazy old Grandfather and his wife determined to thwart him. All in the most beautiful prose. A beautiful Modern Library Edition from 1952. I think this is one of the most impressive books I have ever read.

Still pursuing this. I decided I only really like the Anna scenes, and find that the Levin scenes are a bit of a waste of time….

Darker than some of his books. The crime when finally revealed is nauseating, but this tale somehow failed to connect for me. He tends to build up situation and narrative through various protagonists, almost always cops, but here I kept forgetting what was going on. His lack of skill or my lack of concentration. Still many memorable things. The incomparably sad life of the policeman. I like his books though and will continue exploring him.

Improbably, utterly and against all expectation I totally loved this book. At first sight I disliked it, discarded it but constantly came back to it until I could not put it down. It is a book like no other. No character, no plot, no description. It is more like a commonplace book. It consists of hundreds of quotations, and references and facts about writers, painters and artists. It is hypnotic like poetry, and fascinating like philosophy. As he himself describes it: – Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. David Markson, Postmodern Experimental Novelist. Is Dead at 82 June 7, 2010 – Mr. Markson's wry, elliptical novels were almost always surprisingly engaging and underappreciated.

Found a nice 1981 first edition, with an autographed envelope from the author. Great read. Thrilling and exciting. About the rich murderer who does it for kicks. I’m not giving anything away, that’s up front.

I couldn’t get into this. My fault probably. New barbaric Britain is so depressing. Autographed though so I must have picked it up in Hatchards.

Defender of the Realm  1940 - 1965 Thrilled to discover that the classic biography by William Manchester has been finished by another hand. This is the third and final volume. It’s utterly compelling. The first is the best, the second you can skip as he is out of power and mainly stays home frustrated, but this ought to be taught in schools. No one remembers WW2 anymore, which is a pity as it was the most disruptive, disgusting world event in history, and millions were killed and enslaved and Britain survived only by the will of Churchill, and by pawning the British Empire to America for second hand boats… until finally the Japanese struck and made up Roosevelt’s mind for him. I also downloaded this onto my mini-pad as it is a wrist-breaking monster of a book. I recommend that way of reading this admirable book.

Nice lady at Book Soup recommended this. Actually most of his books, but I chose this one for a plane journey. He writes well. An odd area for crime novels, set in 1941 Berlin under Hitler, a non-Nazi detective pursues a case.  Interesting and excellent travel read. One of the things I love most about reading is the occasional felicitous synchronicity, for example here while reading the assassination of Heydrich in Prague in fiction, it also cropped up in historical reality in the Churchill biography. (cf)

A nice reprint edition from Book Soup. The biter bit is often the subtitle of his plots. Loved it of course.

His final novel. I found a nice 1^st edition from 1999 at Iliad. I love Heller. This book is about an elderly iconic comic novelist struggling to write a final classic novel. He rejects several false starts before settling on writing a final comic novel about an iconic novelist trying to write his final comic novel. It’s great fun. And very revealing of the optimistic bravery of Heller at the end of his life, and the insane urge to continue writing, despite the knowledge that almost all great novelists commit suicide or end in despair. Black humor to the end.

Dominick was a very agreeable guy and in his writing he is agreeable company, but in the end his obsession with the very wealthy is cloying. Reading this book from the early 90’s with the benefit of hindsight, the rich with their snobbish ways are almost all dead, and only the murderers remain alive. He is better at the terrifying Kashoggi than pandering to Princess Thurm und Taxis. Rich old men, young beautiful women, nothing changes…

I am now officially in love with Steinbeck. I can’t believe I never read him before. But I am thrilled I didn’t because I have a lot to look forward to. This delightful 1942 first edition I picked up is an elegant tale about invasion, war, and what happens to people who wage it. He is so simple and so precise, so sparse and yet paints characters so well.

I picked up a signed first edition at the Santa Monica Book Fair. Not cheaply, but happily, for this is a wonderful novel. I had a lot to say about it, but forgot to write it down. Ah, memory. Anyway I highly recommend it.