Corwood, you hifalutin' cocksucker...love you lots, don't ever change. Even if you leave me feeling like a hoople that commuted to a state college(just because I am one is no damn excuse) Second JZ's O'Connor love and not because she's one of ours, but that was a Big Deal to me when I found out about it. Pelecanos, because "Hard Revolution" changed my life by showing me that mystery writing could be about Real things. Which, if I'd read back into the history of the form, I'd know, but I'd started on cozies and "The Cat Who..." whatever, not Chandler or Hammett or some of the social heavy hitters. And I'm totally jealous of his record collection, too.
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
What JZ said about Helprin. Winter's Tale is one of my favorite books, ever, and one of the ones I tend to re-read on a regular basis.
Someone loaned me a bookseller's advance copy of Marylinne Robinson's new novel 'Shadowcatcher' - I'm only 10 pages in. It's great. I liked Housekeeping as well.
Someone loaned me a bookseller's advance copy of Marylinne Robinson's new novel 'Shadowcatcher' - I'm only 10 pages in. It's great. I liked Housekeeping as well.
I call dibs! (can I do that on books that aren't yours?) I loved Gilead.
It's about a writer in LA who has a novel about Edward Curtis, the photographer. So there are two stories. But the first few pages invoke this birds' eye view thing and it is gorgeous. Helps her navigate the reader around LA too.
Sparky - if you can't call dibs (this person, I need to ask permission), then you can borrow my hardcopy. And/or you'll find one under your pillow. If it bears out.
do you want to borrow Housekeeping?
Oh, I loved Housekeeping but I've never thought to look for anything else by her. Must make a note of that.
Oh, I loved Housekeeping but I've never thought to look for anything else by her. Must make a note of that.
Well Gilead, which came out last year? year before last? was only her second novel.
Didn't know she had a new one coming out! She's one of my favorite writers of all time!
In fact, I was reading Laura Lippman's latest What the Dead Know" late last night " and it was kind of freaking me out (it's very good so far) so I tried to think about Gilead to calm myself down. I should have turned on the light and read a bit of it. That would have worked more quickly.
I didn't even know about Gilead.
I'd better tidy up under the rock beore I venture out too far.
Gilead is better than Housekeeping, I think, although I love them both. I had a problem with the disconnect between everything we know about the narrator of Housekeeping and florid syntax of the narration, but the narrator of Gilead posed no such problems. I'm excited about reading another Robinson book, though, because she's 2/2.