current reading :
— Marcel Proust. À la recherche du temps perdu. [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade]. NRF Gallimard, [2019].
Ongoing project and a source of great pleasure. Am about a third of the way in.
recent reading :
— Julian Symons. The Blackheath Poisonings. A Victorian Murder Mystery. Harper & Row, [1978].
— —. The Kentish Manor Murders. Viking, [1988].
— M. John Harrison. English Heritage. Nightjar Press, [2021]. One of 300 signed copies.
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— David R. Godine. Godine at Fifty. A Retrospective of Five Decades in the Life of an Independent Publisher. Godine, [2021].
A gorgeous and fun book, a richly illustrated memoir of people and books and life, a remarkable story well told. I’ve known Godine for half of these years, and it was a delight to see a few familiar books and many titles I hadn’t seen before (it’s also a fabulous and eclectic list of books to read). Design by Sara Eisenman.
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— W. B. Mershon. The Passenger Pigeon. The Outing Publishing Company, 1907.
“The history of the buffalo is repeated in that of the wild pigeon, the extermination of which was inspired by the same motive: the greed of man and the pursuit of the almighty dollar . . . when one thinks of the burning of forest trees which took centuries to grow, merely to clear a piece of land to grow crops, it is not to be wondered at that the wild pigeon, insignificant, and not even classed as a game bird, so soon became extinct.”
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— Avram Davidson. Beer! Beer ! Beer ! [Or All the Seas with Oysters, 2021].
Reviewed here.
— Michael Swanwick. Solstice Veritas or The Christmas Cat and Other Memories. Dragonstairs Press, 2021.
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— Meghan R. Constantinou. The Daniel Press. Pioneer of the Private Press Movement. The Grolier Club, 2021.
— Paul Theroux. Facing Ka‘ena Point. Privately printed [by Jesse Marsolais], 2021. 100 copies, signed by the author.
Distributed by Bull’s Head Rare Books.
— Carl Williams Rare Books, Catalogue 3.1 & 3.2. Sex, Magick, Drugs, Revolution, Rock ’n’ Roll & Death, Selections from the Ludlow Santo Domingo Library. Carl Williams Rare Books, [November 2021].
Massive, two-volume illustrated catalogue of wild and fascinating stuff.
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— Gilbert K. Chesterton. The Man Who Knew Too Much. Harper & Brothers, 1922.
— Dangerous Visions and New Worlds. Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985. Edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre. PM, [2021].