recent reading – The Endless Bookshelf

recent reading : late july

recent reading :

— Ian Penman. Erik Satie Three Piece Suite. Semiotext(e), [2025].
Fascinating ! Formally innovative or even bonkers, and what a delight to read !

— Miranda Seymour. l used to live here once. The haunted life of Jean Rhys. W. W. Norton, [2022].

— Joe Brainard. Bolinas Journal 1971. Big Sky, 1971.
— —. Selected Writings. Kulchur Foundation, [1971].

— On the Mesa. An Anthology of Bolinas Writings. Edited by Joel Weishaus. City Lights Books, [1971]. Cover photograph by Steven Lazar.
Work by Robert Creeley, Joanne Kyger, Tom Clark, Bill Bergson, John Thorpe, Lewis Warsh, and others. Drawings by Gordon Baldwin and Arthur Okamura.

— The World of Donald Evans. Text by Willy Eisenhart. Another Harlin Quist Book, [1980].

— Patricia Highsmith. Those Who Walk Away [1967]. Atlantic Monthly Press, [1988].

Bolinas Reads : Jon Brunner

BOLINAS READS

Jon Brunner interviewed by Jane Silvia

Portrait by Van Waring

[Reprinted, with permission, from the Bolinas Hearsay News for Friday 10 May 2019.]

portrait of John Brunner by Van Waring

My name is Jon. I came to Bolinas in ’72. Many people know me as Bru. I grew up in upstate NY where my family had a truck farm. I had 24 ducks and they all knew their names.

What are you reading now? What’s in your pile of books ? Do you read one book at a time or

I’m always reading a few books at once, usually a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. I read widely, depending on how I feel. Right now l am reading the following books :

Mama’s Last Hug : Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (F. B. M. de Waal)

Words in Air : The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (Elizabeth Bishop)

Pasta for Nightingales : A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore (Giovanni Pietro Olina et al.)

Cooking in Iran : Regional Recipes & Kitchen Secrets (Najmieh Batmanglij)

For fiction, I’m reading The White Book (Han Kang)

I’m also reading a collection of new young queer fiction. I want to know how kids are dealing with it today and to pay attention to what’s going on. I’m currently reading We the Animals (Justin Torres) a fabulous coming of age book. Also, a collection called Lot : Stories (Bryan Washington) which I found out about after reading a story that was published in the New Yorker. That’s how I got interested in it.

Do you like to read paper or ebooks ? Audio books ?

Paper, I exclusively read paper. Why ? It’s a book ! I love and adore books, always have and always will. Once on a plane, the steward came up and said, omg, you read books, most people have devices.

Are you a browser in the library or do you know in advance what you are looking for ? If so, how do you find out about them ?

I mostly know what I am looking for and I read reviews in the New York Times, New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. When I am in the library I like to browse the new non-fiction and the 7-day books.

Do you have a favorite genre or any genres you never read ?

I could spend the rest of my life reading cookbooks and have a large collection at home.

I also like reading travel books. One of the best ones I have read is Sliced Iguana : Travels in Mexico by Isabella Tree.

Genres I never read : science fiction and fantasy.

What was your reading experience like as a child ? Did you grow up with a lot of books? Do you remember any favorites ?

I liked books by W. H. Hudson. But what really impressed me at an early age was a cookbook for children which I can’t remember the name of. But, both of my parents loved to cook. I made a recipe from the book called shrimp wiggle, sort of like a lobster newburg. That got me started reading and cooking as well and I still like to cook.

I never liked comic books, actually, I hated them. But I read everything else, even the back of cereal boxes.

Did you go to the library as a child ?

We always went once a week on Saturdays. I grew up in the country in upstate New York on a farm. The library was four miles away in the nearest town, attached to the town hall in the main square. The librarian has always been my friend and would often suggest books that I might like. It would really get me reading more.

Were there any books that made a big impression on you earlier in your life ?

Two books that were influential for me were The Blue Nile and The White Nile (Alan Moorehead) about the discovery of the Nile. In 1964 I went to Ethiopia and it prompted me to read more about travel adventure, plant discovery, and where water comes from.

What books might we be surprised to find on your shelf ?

Keep the River on Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum. He lived in the jungle with tribe of headhunters and studied queer primitive cultures.

The Bible, one of the world’s wonderful books.

Do you have a collection of books? Are there any favorites that you go back to?

I always recommend to everyone Verlyn Klinkenborg, a naturalist, gardener, and author of The Rural Life.

Another book I like to recommend that is a favorite is Green Thoughts : a Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi. Very snarky, truly wonderful.

David Fairchild is another author I always go back to. He traveled the world for the U.S.D.A. (Department of Agriculture) in the ’30s and ’40s looking for fruits and vegetable that could flourish here. Some of his books are : The World Grows round my Door, The World was My Garden, and Exploring for Plants.

My grandfather’s organic gardening book by J. I. Rodale, How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method.

And of course, the cookbook collection.

What’s the last book you recommended ?

Green Thoughts by E. Perenyi.

Is there a famous author that you ever wanted to meet ? If you could invite some authors to a dinner party who would you chose?

I would like to have a dinner party with Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bishop. It would be really interesting to hear them converse after a few glasses of wine. Both Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bishop are wonderful writers. In particular, most people don’t get Jean Rhys. I’m not sure how widely read she is but she was both inspiring and tragic.

What do you plan to read next ?

On Trails : An Exploration by Robert Moore.

Is there any book that you have always meant to read but still haven’t ? Any highly rated books that you thought were over rated ?

I should have read Proust ; everybody’s bugaboo.

Do you ever re-read ? Books you return to ?

I always go back to reading Beckett. Love Beckett. And of course, Elizabeth Bishop

Are there characters in fiction that draw you in as a reader ?

I’m not thinking of specific characters but the writers who create them and draw me in. Colm Toibin is one of them.

When and where do you like to read ? Describe you ideal reading experience.

Always and all over. I have several comfy reading spots in the house but my favorite one is sitting up in bed with a beer, Birdy, the parrot on my shoulder ; ideally reading a good recommended book.

I like a book that talks to you: Jungian literature on the puer, (eternal boy) as a way of trying to understand myself. Getting older gives me more time to look back and allows me to remember more than I thought l could.

Why read

Why not ? Reading is the best, it nourishes the mind, body, creativity, and spirituality and of course, knowledge.

recent reading : early july 2026

recent reading :

‘I know the sadness but the cause know not’
— Hopkins, Gerard Manley. A Vision of the Mermaids. A prize poem dated Christmas 1862 [. . .] and now for the first time printed in full. [Oxford: Oxford University Press], 1929. Decorated boards, one of 250 copies. [Gift of MLM].
Finely printed facsimile of Hopkins’ manuscript.
/ file under : what song the sirens sang

‘Art has the tendency to materialize metaphors’ — Bruno Schulz
— Jerzy Ficowski. Regions of the Great Heresy. Bruno Schulz. A Biographical Portrait. Translated and edited by Theodosia Robinson. W. W. Norton, [2002].
“No metamorphosis appears as a deus ex machina, as an abrupt and inexplicable decree of some unknown power as in the case of Kafka’s student, Gregor Samsa. In Schulz’s fiction every change is a consequence of some inner tension that has reached its culmination. At that point, a new quality emerges and new dynamics are revealed.”

— W. Somerset Maugham. Cakes and Ale or the Skeleton in the Cupboard. William Heinemann, [1930].
His most malicious and, also, his funniest book, memorable for the portraits of Driffield, grand old man of letters (Thomas Hardy), and the rising writer-on-the-make Alroy Kear (Hugh Walpole). Maugham wrote, “The book I like best is Cakes and Ale. It was an amusing book to write”.
In The Book Blinders, John Clute notes that the dust jacket flap copy identifies the narrator of the novel as Ashenden, evocative of Maugham’s key spy novel Ashenden (1928), although only on page 81 does the narrator identify himself, with a hint at autobiographical elements. “Master Willie” articulates a profound distaste for Victorian hypocrisies, which also seems to signal roots in autobiography.

— Tana French. The Keeper. Viking, [2026].

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Howard A. Rodman is author of two novels , Destiny Express (1990) and The Great Eastern (2019), a distinguished screenwriter, and an old friend whom I have known since his first book appeared. The novels have been released in paperback by Rare Bird Books of Los Angeles. Howard came to New York City for a conversation with Robert Polito on Wednesday evening 8 July, at the Coffee House Club in the Salmagundi. The room was packed, the conversation was witty and candid, and it was a delight to find other friends in the audience.

— — —

This year marked the centenary of Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. I regret that I will not be attending Readercon this year, where this afternoon (10 July) a panel discussed the work : 100 Years of Lud-in-the-Mist , with Casella Brookins, Graham Sleight, Greer Gilman, Lila Garrott (moderator), Sonya Taaffe, and The joey Zone.

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Your correspondent will be away next week, offline in a pleasant place, doing some work on the work-in-progress, and perhaps going for a walk in the woods.

[updated 16 July : from an undisclosed location]

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news & notes, late May & early June

news & notes

the view from the hammock

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— Michael Swanwick. Basil, Pepper, Salt, and Garlic Greens : A Year in a Witch’s Kitchen. Dragonstairs Press, 2026. Edition of 80.
A cheery mediaeval fantasy of “Auld Agnes” (twice a widow and not yet thirty) and celebration of the seasonal bounty of the land, a novel in miniature that swiftly turns very dark.
——. Twenty-Three Reasons to Attend ICFA. Dragonstairs Press, 2026. Edition of 40.
A brief history of the convivial gathering that is the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, issued to mark the 47th iteration.

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IX XI. A documentary by Sean Wilsey.

I caught one of the screenings of IX XI in its premiere at the Tribeca film festival. I was impressed by the collage of small moments to tell a big story ; the events of 11 September 2001 in New York City are one of the defining events in my lifetime. The film is built upon interviews with a dozen people “from all walks of life”, including some fabulous cameos, and good archival moments. I especially dug the footage of skateboarding the plaza, and the art on the beach segments from earliest days of the World Trade Center. Director Sean Wilsey is a good listener. Roz Chast is every bit as compelling in her tales of parental anxiety as in her cartoons. The TV cameraman communicated his impulse to get right down there and interview people on the spot : the dread and the excitement are equally palpable. And his memory of waking the next day with concrete tears in the corners of his eyes was moving. There were even some laughs. In the Q&A after the film, Wilsey noted that his own account of his experiences on the day was the first to be cut. The interviews are recorded (without any prompts or questions) in a set that alludes to Yamazaki’s soaring façades and to rippling waters of memory and memorial pools. The film is limited to the days before and the day itself, no politics or exploration of aftermaths, an intention, and a choice, I can respect.

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current reading :

— M. John Harrison. Climbers [1989]. W&N Essentials, [2022, 7th printing].
Somehow I had never read this wonderful book. If one of the characters appears to suffer from “a kind of nostalgia, but for a place you’ve never been”, Harrison’s tricky prose reads like a memoir of events that never happened and it is no less true for that.

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— R. B. Russell. The Sanctuary and Other Strange Stories. Tartarus Press, [2026]. Pictorial boards, dust jacket, from a painting by the author.
Collection of 28 stories, written over a period of some two decades.
Am really looking forward to reading this.

— — —

recent reading :

‘an inventory of silent nothings’
— (LAWRENCE, T. E.) Colin Sackett. The . A Concordance. Uniformbooks, 2026. [Gift of MV].
Bibliographical concordance to the expurgations in the published edition of The Mint, A day-book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922 with later notes by 352087 A/c Ross (1955). T. E. Lawrence wrote an account of his time in the R.AF. and in March 1928 “he sent a clean copy of the revised text to Edward Garnett [who] had copies typed which were circulated to a small circle, among them Air Marshal Trenchard. Trenchard’s concerned response led Lawrenceto guarantee that it would not be published at least until 1950.” When Lawrence died following a motorcycle crash, his brother made arrangements with Doubleday, Doran, American publishers of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, to produce 50 copies of a copyright edition of The Mint in 1936 (O’Brien A166), ten copies of which were nominally for sale at the prohibitive price of $500,000 per copy. When The Mint was published in 1955, the censored content (“all objectionable words”) was not “conventionally redacted — by substituting asterisks, or emphatic black overprinting — but rather, made absent” : as blank spaces. The vocabulary is rather limited and predictable : in his editorial note, Sackett helpfully provides an inventory. (In 1973 a definitive edition, edited with a preface by J. M. Wilson, and including the objectionable words and names as they appeared in the manuscript, was published by Cape).

— — —

— Richard K. Morgan. No Man’s Land. Del Rey, [2026].
Violent collision of notions of Faerie with the dislocations in the aftermath of the first world war : memories of trench warfare, sexy witchcraft, and the Forest resurgent and threatening, in a hard-boiled detective mode, with mockery of the political and intelligence establishment (and the Order of the Golden Dawn). Relations between humans and “the Huldu” are largely gladiatorial in nature and the encounters are deftly choreographed. While Dunsany is named from the first page, and one of the book’s sectional epigrams cites Raymond Chandler (“It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in.”), the narrative tone is much more Mike Hammer or Carroll John Daly than Hammett or Chandler. An intense book.

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— Charles E. Gould, J, Jnr. The Toad at Harrow. P. G. Wodehouse in Perspective. London: [Printed by the John Roberts Press for James H. Heineman], 1982.

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— An Englishman in New York. A Selection from the Library of Stephen C. Massey. Illustrated. 112 pp. (220 items). Peter Harrington, 2026.
An interesting and wide-ranging catalogue with numerous dedication copies and interesting rarities, such as Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) in rose muslin over boards (right at the dawn of modern cloth bookbinding), and a beautiful pair of Norwich textile sample books from the same period. As an auctioneer with Christie’s Mr. Massey sold a Gutenberg Bible in 1978 and the Codex Hammer of Leonardo da Vinci in 1994 (now known as the Codex Leicester).

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— Madly Singing in the Mountains. An Appreciation and Anthology of Arthur Waley. Edited with a preface by Ivan Morris. George Allen & Unwin, [1970]. Recollections of the great translator and poet Arthur Waley, whose A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918) is one of the great texts of English modernist poetry ; he also translated Japanese poetry, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The Tale of Genji, The Poetry and Career of Li Po, and Monkey. With a miscellany of extracts from his other works.

If there is but a seed
On the face of the rock
A pine will grow ;
And shall not love worth calling love
Find always a way to meet ?

— — —

— John Blackburn. The Blue Octavo. Jonathan Cape, [1963].

— Colin Dexter. The Way through the Woods. Crown Publishers, [1992].

— Bernard J. Farmer. Death of a Bookseller [1956]. Poisoned Pen [in association with the British Library, 2023].

— Henry Wade. The Hanging Captain. Constable, [1932].

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nineteen years of the Endless Bookshelf

Friends,

today marks nineteen years of the Endless Bookshelf website. It was sunny and bitterly cold outside (the rhododendron leaves were tightly rolled) : a good day to be indoors with a book. I looked into Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (sixth ed., 1672), and dug around in the chapters on the basilisk, bears, mermaids, dolphins, wolves, the phoenix (some of these I can see as touchstones for Avram Davidson). A pleasure to taste again Browne’s leisurely examination of delusions and sloppy thinking.

I have never been what they call a numbers driven person, so I don’t know what sort of “traffic” the ’shelf attracts (the newsletter list hovers around six hundred, and some recipients anyway may read theirs). But I do see occasional remarks or notes from readers, and on this occasion I reprint one which arrived by post last week :

I saw your post “Very Few Letters” and figured that was a good prompt for me to write you this short note.
There is no other site or place on ye olde internet that has provided me with as much continued enjoyment as the Endless Bookshelf. I continually return to the archives to discover new books or authors, and to read your good words.
My TBR pile/list always grows and I always somehow feel better after a visit. Weird, I know, but thought that a letter expressing my thanks might be welcomed.

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Comments arrive at the Endless Bookshelf in many forms : a reader from California has just sent more than two dozen Seville oranges (pronounced in Shakespeare’s day as “civil as an orange” as Much Ado about Nothing reminds us). These will soon be transmuted into marmalade.

I will be in San Francisco at the end of February for the California International Antiquarian Book Fair, 27 February through 1 March at the Cruise Terminal building on the Embarcadero. I will be in booth 117 (Cummins). Say hello if you are there, and write if you would like a pass.

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‘Lolly Willowes’ at 100

I wrote a centenary celebration of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman for Wormwoodiana (published earlier this week) :

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2026/01/sylvia-townsend-warners-lolly-willowes.html

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recent reading

— Howard Waldrop. Masters of Science Fiction. Introduction by Paul Di Filippo. 1048 pp. Centipede Press, [2026]. Edition of 500 copies signed by Paul Di Filippo. Just began reading this giant compendium of stories from 1972 to 2005 : many familiar tales and some I haven’t seen before.

— [Charlotte Adams]. Jean Grolier [1884]. [Grolier Club, 2025]. Re-issue of an essay on collector Jean Grolier (1476-1565) from the earliest days of the club, designed by Jerry Kelly and the first use of his new Grolier typeface, based on the earliest roman and italic type cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldus Manutius. The colophon serves as a type specimen (though it does not show the tiny flourishes or extenders which also echo the early type forms).

— Tom La Farge. The Crimson Bears. Part One. A Hundred Doors. Part Two. Tough Poets Press, [2025]. I pulled the new edition from the shelf, started reading, and just kept going on from there. (I re-read the original edition last summer.) What a playful, sophisticated book.

— Ngaio Marsh. Artists in Crime [1938]. Penguin Books, [1957].

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Thank you to all the readers. As always, send me your news or tell me about books I have overlooked.

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ROUND-UP OF BOOKS FROM 2025 WORTH LOOKING FOR

— Charlotte Brontë. A Book of Ryhmes. [Introduction by Patti Smith.] Brontë Parsonage Museum / Tartarus Press, [2025].
Photographs and transcription of the small book of poems written by Charlotte Bronte October to December 1829. Samantha Ellis in the TLS : “it is amazing to read a young writer loudly, exultingly, exploring her ideas on the page.” [Also includes “Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Blue Profound’” by Barbara Heritage, and my essay, Travelling with Charlotte.]

— Brendan C. Byrne. Another World Isn’t Possible. Stories. [Melbourne :] Wanton Sun, [2025].
Dark, tricky, and often formally innovative stories from the hybrid digital interface of present and future, including “a Stone and a Cloud”, about two perilously immersive video games ; the oh so deftly choreographed bar room encounter of “There Is No Comte de St. Germain for I Am He” ; “reviews” of nonexistent stories ; tales of artists making art in media that may someday exist ; and the surprisingly touching arc of “The Ideal and the Actual”.
“Ruthlessly hip, transreal surreal. Worth your time.” — Rudy Rucker
Available in U.SA. from Barnes & Noble or bookshop.org.

— Tom La Farge. THE CRIMSON BEARS [and] A HUNDRED DOORS. [Introduction by Wendy Walker.] Tough Poets Press, [2025].
This is delightful news ! This two-part novel of talking animals of all kinds (only the human animal is irrelevant and absent) was first published by Sun & Moon in 1993 and 1995. Its cult readership included your correspondent and Austin mage Don Webb who each discovered the work independent of the other.
Tom La Farge was a very tricky writer whose erudition was never ostentatious. Wendy Walker knew the book from its origins as bedtime story and illustrated letters for Tom’s son Paul La Farge, who grew up to be a novelist ; her introduction is deeply personal and touching and also charts the many layers on which Tom was playing with words. Glimpses of the earliest manuscript adorn the inside of the covers.
READ THIS BOOK, you won‘t regret it.

— 100 Years 100 Voices. The Chapin Library. [Edited by Anne Peale. Photography by Nicole Neenan]. Williams College, [2025]. A beautiful and richly illustrated celebratory catalogue, presenting selected items from the Chapin Library at Williams College, established with gifts from Alfred C. Chapin in 1923. This is an important publication, a concise and compelling testimony about why books and libraries are central to education.

— Patti Smith. Bread of Angels. Random House, [2025]. Excellent and touching memoir of a rock ’n’ roll heroine, a great artist, uncompromising in matters of language ; and what a reader.

— Mark Valentine. Borderlands and Otherworlds. Tartarus Press, [2025].
Collection of 32 essays on books and reading, with an emphasis on the fantastic and supernatural in the interwar years and into the 1950s. The hardcover edition sold out, but it is now available in paperback.
— —. The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things. Tartarus Press, [2025].
New edition, expanded from the 2018 Zagava printing, with nine additional stories and vignettes. Includes “Vain Shadows Flee”, which was included in Best British Short Stories 2016.

— Michael Zinman. The Critical Mess. 2025. [Distributed by Temporary Culture].
I was involved in its production, yes, but it is really one of the most original books to appear this year.

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commonplace book : december 2025

far fetch :

— Mark Tewfik. Two Weeks in Ecuador and the Galapagos [drop title]. [8] pp. Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands : Lanterne Rouge Press, 2025. Printed self wrapper with ornamental headpiece.
Fun travelogue with a truly exotic imprint, even for this peripatetic press.

and at the foot of the last page, the imprint, below :

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farewell to an old friend :

— Raymond Chandler. Killer in the Rain. With an introduction by Philip Durham. [1964]. Ballantine Books, [1972].
This book collects eight early pulp stories Chandler which had refused to reprint in his lifetime, because he had “cannibalized” them and transformed the raw material into the substance of three novels : The Big Sleep ; Farewell, My Lovely ; and The Lady in the Lake. Reading it was an education and single dose corrective to prose excesses rooted in obsessive teenage readings of H. P. Lovecraft. This copy, bought for 50 cents at the State Street Book Mart, a paperback exchange shop in New Orleans, has stuck with me for many years.

After re-reading parts of MacShane’s Life of Chandler, I pulled down Killer in the Rain to look at some of the stories, and it will not survive this reading. I will save the browned flyleaf and title page for a bookmark in a copy of the original Houghton Mifflin printing I bought last month : so I still have a copy of Killer in the Rain ; and I will wait for a stormy day to say farewell to Killer in the Rain in the rain ; but the small gap on the paperback shelf will stay open for a time.

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from the Epigrammata of Martialis (Epigrams of Martial)

Lucanus
Sint quidam qui me dicunt non esse poetam :
Sed qui me vendit bibliopola putat.

Lucan
[Some say I am no poet : but the bibliopole* sells me as one]

* – bookseller, for you moderns, sez Old ’Pole

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Sonnet 151 with initial L by Edward Johnston, in the Doves Press edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1909.

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‘Pardon this intrusion’

The first words the monster speaks, in vol. II of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Philadelphia : Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1833.

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recent reading :

— J. I. M. Stewart. Myself and Michael Innes. A Memoir. W. W. Norton, [1988].

— Charles Willeford. Everybody’s Metamorphosis. Dennis McMillan, 1988. Edition of 426 copies signed by the author.

— Dorothy L. Sayers. Whose Body ? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel [1923]. Harper & Row, [n.d., ca. mid-1950s]. Dust jacket design by Shirley Smith.

— Hilary Spurling. Invitation to the Dance. A Guide to Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Little, Brown, [1977].

— Margery Allingham. The Case of the Late Pig [1937]. Penguin Books, [1957].

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Cat and Girl in Oz

Dorothy Gambrell’s Cat and Girl are somewhere in Oz. They started on the yellow brick road here :

https://catandgirl.com/were-off-to-see-the-boss-class/

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read this

Erin Kissane’s remarkable essay on the geophyics of the 1964 tsunami at Valdez, Alaska, and her extrapolations to articulate a brilliant, useful metaphor for the post-information age :

https://www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-ghost-story/

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“Two sculptural titans are thus now fittingly face-to-face, Rodin the culminating figure of an ancient representational tradition that was revived during the Renaissance and Calder the initiating figure of a modernist reconception that took the medium off its pedestal.”

— Martin Filler, from his review of the Calder Foundation gardens in Philadelphia, in the New York Review of Books .

[what a sentence ! 2,500 years of art history in a single swoop]

— — —

Andromeda
Now Time’s Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty’s equal or
Her injury’s, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon’s food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes ; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes ? —
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts ; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon’s gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

from : Gerard Manley Hopkins. Poems (Oxford, 1918).

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recent reading : mid- and late november 2025

recent reading :

Mélissa Bonin, Un jardin après la mousson, 2011

journey into metaphor
— Mélissa Bonin. Lorsque les Bayous Parlent. When Bayous Speak. Poésies et Peintures. [2023]. Bilingual illustrated collection of evocative « voyages» into the bayou as “métaphore de la vie et du féminin”.

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— Thomas Pynchon. Shadow Ticket. Penguin Press, 2025.

‘an outward and visible expression of paths not taken, personal and historical’

The first hundred so pages are dazzling paranoid fun set in end of Prohibition Milwaukee, with zany incidents and songs and gross-out confections and drinks. After Hicks McTaggart is encouraged to leave town for New York City and then fed a Mickey Finn and loaded aboard a transatlantic steamer, the pyrotechnics continue. The transition from Tangier to a Budapest-bound train is abrupt and, a bit cheesy at times, the book wobbles for a few a pages before returning to the deftly choreographed espionage play of language and fashion and color along the Danube. Plus a Moto Guzzi with a side-car, vacuum tubes, a theremin sextet, paranormal incidents, philately, Versailles-compliant golems, atrocious acronyms, and more.

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— Frank Macshane. The Life of Raymond Chandler [1976]. Hamish Hamilton, [1986].
Excellent and sympathetic chronicle of Chandler and his struggle to get his novels written to his satisfaction. Plucked off the shelf to look up a date, gripped immediately and anew by the way MacShane allows Chandler’s own words (letters, essays, etc.) to tell the story. Chandler on style is not that far removed from Ruskin.

— John Ruskin. Letters on Art and Literature. Edited by T. J. Wise. Privately printed, 1894.
To J. J. Laing, 1854 : “If you are to do anything that is really glorious, and for which men will for ever wonder at you, you will do it as a duck quacks — because it is your nature to quack — when it rains.”

— Suave Mechanicals. Essays on the History of Bookbinding. Volume 9. Julia Miller, editor. Legacy Press, 2025.

— Patti Smith. Bread of Angels. Random House, [2025].

— Ellen Datlow, editor. Night. Dreadful Dark : Tales of Nighttime Horror [bound dos à dos with] Day. Merciless Sun : Tales of Daylight Horror. Saga Press, [2025].

— Paul Muldoon. Rising to the Rising. Gallery Books, [2016].

Now the world’s been brought low. The wind’s heavy with soot.
Alexander and Caesar. All their retinue.
We’ve seen Tara buried in grass, Troy trampled underfoot.
The English ? Their days are numbered, too.

— — —

— Margery Allingham. The Beckoning Lady [1955]. Penguin Books, [1961].

— Edmund Crispin. Buried for Pleasure [1948]. Penguin Books, [ca. 1980].
——. Love Lies Bleeding [1948]. Penguin Books, [1954].

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commonplace book :

from The Deep Blue Good-By (1964) by John D. MacDonald, a list poem, with attitude (line breaks added) :

And I do not function too well on emotional motivations. I am wary of them. And I am wary of a lot of other things, such as

plastic credit cards,
payroll deductions,
insurance programs,
retirement benefits,
savings accounts,
Green Stamps,
time clocks,
newspapers,
mortgages,
sermons,
miracle fabrics,
deodorants,
check lists,
time payments,
political parties,
lending libraries,
television,
actresses,
junior chambers of commerce,
pageants,
progress,
and manifest destiny.

I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.

— — —

recent reading : october 2025

current reading :

‘It’s wonderful, Margot thought, Tilly always tells the truth, but it never means what you think it does.’
— Peter Straub. Wreckage [and:] What Happens in Hello Jack. 447; 141 pages. 2 vols., Subterranean Press, 2025. [Dust jackets after photographs by Jenny Calivas].
I am a few chapters into Wreckage, the first publication of the substantial novel left unfinished by Peter Straub, intended as an “interweaving” of Henry James and Jack the Ripper. My understanding is that What Happens in Hello Jack is a detailed summary of the intended arc of the novel. I’ll leave that for later : I dove right into Wreckage. It is wonderful to read passages of Straub’s prose and see connections unfold to certain parts of his late work : the Das Beben movement, Tilly Hayward, the invented memoir of an overheard conversation in the life of Henry James*. “An Incident at Monte Carlo”, extracted from Wreckage, appeared last year in Conjunctions. I don’t know where this is going : off the cliff of incompletion, perhaps, but I am on the road. Straub’s interest in Henry James was of very long standing, but he was also always true to his midwestern roots, and that deep America is everywhere in his books.

* “Beyond the Veil of Vision : Reinhold von Kreitz and the Das Beben Movement” by Peter Straub and Anthony Discenza ; The Process (is a Process All Its Own) ; A Dark Matter, readings at past Readercons, etc.

— — —

recent reading :

— Michael Innes. Operation Pax [1951]. Penguin Books, [1964].
— —. Silence Observed [1962]. Penguin Books, [1964].
— — . The Ampersand Papers [1978]. Penguin Books, [1980].
— —. A Night of Errors [1948]. Penguin Books, [1966].
— —. The Appleby File. Detective Stories [1975]. Book Club Associates, [1975].
— —. Appleby Talking. Twenty-three detective stories [1954]. Penguin Books, [1973].
— —. Appleby Talks Again. Eighteen Detective Stories [1956]. A Four Square Book, [1966].
— —. The Bloody Wood [1966]. Penguin Books, [1968].
— —. The Daffodil Affair [1942]. Penguin Books, [1968].
— —. The Open House. [1972]. Penguin Books, [1973].
— —. The Long Farewell.[1958]. Penguin Books, [1971].

I have now read through most of the box of Innes, and always with pleasure. I found the three collections of Appleby short stories witty but lacking in the digressions and piled up absurdities and extended word play that are at the heart of the novels. I particularly enjoyed The Ampersand Papers and The Long Farewell. I have even started notes toward a Note or Essay.

late september : more Innes, book fair, etc

It’s late September, and preparations are afoot for the Empire State book fair (Friday to Sunday (26-28 September) at Vanderbilt Hall near Grand Central Terminal. I continue to read my way through the box of Michael Innes, always with pleasure. If you come to the fair, come say hello, I’ll be there (at the Cummins booth). Copies of The Critical Mess by Michael Zinman will be available, as well as copies of my own books.

— — —

recent reading :

— Michael Innes. Christmas at Candleshoe [1953]. Penguin Books, [1961].
— —. A Connoisseur’s Case [1962]. Penguin Books, [1966].
— —. A Family Affair [1969]. Penguin Books, [1972].
— —. Death at the Chase [1970]. Penguin Books, [1971].
— —. An Awkward Lie [1971]. Penguin Books, [1974].
— —. Appleby’s Answer [1973]. Penguin Books, [1978].
— —. Appleby’s Other Story [1974]. Penguin Books, [1978].
— —. Appleby and Honeybath [1983]. Penguin Books, [1984].

And with two additions to the titles in the box :

— Michael Innes. Appleby’s End. Gollancz, 1945. File copy in the (slightly faded) yellow dust jacket.
This is the best of them all, (though The Secret Vanguard runs a close second).

— Michael Innes. From London Far. Gollancz, 1946. File copy in the (slightly faded) yellow dust jacket.
Hilarious, madcap conspiracy of international art smuggling in a background of the end of the second world war, impeccably choreographed (with knowing aside to John Buchan), and a crazed mastermind whose secret lair is the wildest ever, and with a suitable catastrophe ending.

/ file under : Fleming (or : Bond) and his precursors

— — —

how I spent my summer vacation, part ii

the first part in Copenhagen (see : here) and the second bit near the seashore :

sunrise on a beach

(this is the etc. in the title)

— — —

end of summer mailbag :

— Michael Swanwick. Life : a User’s Manual. [Dragonstairs Press, 2025]. Edition of 40.
Seven miniature essays, including The Abyss, which begins : “This is a test.”

— Michael Swanwick, with Marianne Porter. Under a Harvest Moon [2023]. [Dragonstairs Press, 2025]. Edition of 80.
Printed record of a work of landscape art, “written on leaves in and near cemeteries in Philadelphia” in the autumn of 2023.