What BOOK are you reading right now?

I see I was off base on that.. I feel like I saw it for about $50. at some point, must be wrong.


a2k's amazon link for Landscape and Memory

Also zipped through "Gold-dust and Gusmoke":



What a cheery, violent bunch those early Californians were! Makes Iraq look positively pacific!

Did you know that there was a full-on Tong war amongst the Chinese community in 1854? Because they couldn't use guns they relied on hatchets, spears and swords and iron armour the local blacksmith manufactured for them.

The local white population turned out for the 'show' and laid bets on the outcome. One of the spectators even emptied his pistol into one side to help 'get things going' - another spectator shot him dead and proceedings stopped for a while to sort out the disturbance, after which the war started!

Stilly, that book jacket comes out a little indistinct on my monitor screen. Could you supply the name of the author please? It sounds like something I'd be interested in reading.

I have just finished "The Devil's Peacemaker" by Lance Howard.

The novel ends with a classic showdown on the streets of El Dorado. I could literally taste the dust and feel the bullets singing by my ears.

The action is fast and furious. The villain, Vinton Stroud, is about as menacing a character as I have ever encountered in a novel.

Run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and pick up this masterpiece....

'Under the Bleachers' by I. Seymore Butts

Merry, I posted the A2k amazon link on Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory a few posts above.

Just started Good-bye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto. It's a only a couple hundred pages, so it shoulf be a quick read. It's from the pov of a college girl in Tokyo. It's my second Yoshimoto, and I have high hopes.

What I'd like to be reading is New Art City by Jed Perl,
review in the book section this week in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html

I'm in a between book state. Just finished article on graphic novels by New Yorker's Peter Schjedahl in the Oct. 17th issue.

..that after finishing the book, Gospel (a Harper & Iles mystery by Bill James, a police procedural writer I like).

Shazzer - that sounds interesting to me!

I whizzed through "The Wee Free Men" and will start "A Hat Full of Sky". I also started to get into the Roy Blount Jr book.

Stephen King's Dark Tower, book 4 Wizard and Glass.


Anybody know where I can get Upton Sincair's "Oil" and "King Coal"?

Upton Sinclair. I just heard him speak (a recording) very good. I'm also going to read him next. Every year in San Pedro CA. they hold the Upton Sinclair Awards. I have a friend reading 'The Jungle' by him about the Meat packing industry.

I read that book as a teen. Then I quit eating meat.

really? In San Pedro? tell me more, amigo..

I can't tell you much. I haven't gone but I always plan too. It's an award show for social,political and Ideological intellectuals. I've never heard of anything else of it's kind. I'm getting less and less interested in things as I get older. This sounds like fun. Seafood dinner at the wharf and an award show

Is it just me or are things looking more and more like 'Brave New World'. Maybe I'm just getting old.

I'm so much older I don't remember Brave New World, though I read it.

I ask because my ex works out of Torrance Cultural Arts center and puts on different performances, some of them pretty interesting over the time he has been involved in that.

It's gaining popularity. especially in this new era.

"The Uses of Literacy" by Richard Hoggart...............but I'm looking at that western novel Gus has publicised and think maybe I should resume "Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey.

That is supossed to be the best western ever written.

I'm definitely going back to it Amigo.