All the wonderful things I read

Here’s the booze; the bottle’s extra

September 29, 2011

I was about to make a few remarks regarding my Nook e-reader, but then Jeff Bezos announces all the new Kindles and renders my thoughts even more irrelevant than usual. I am beginning to hate gadgets of all kinds, simply because it’s impossible to be content with the device you have for more than a [...]

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History that’s better than the legend

September 21, 2011
george armstrong custer

When I was a kid we used to have some Eddy Arnold albums around the house, one of which contained the track “Battle of the Little Big Horn.” As a song, it’s mawkish and lame; as history, it’s hilarious. There are references to muskets and cannon balls (neither were used), “old General Custer” (the man [...]

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Hey, Steve. I’m back.

September 18, 2011
stephen king

I used to love Stephen King’s books. But until getting Under the Dome on my Nook last week, I don’t think I’d read anything he’s written during the last 10 or 12 years — except for his excellent On Writing two or three years ago. It wasn’t a conscious decision to boycott his later work. [...]

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James Bond for the beach

August 8, 2011

I suppose Carte Blanche is what they call a beach book: The kind you might enjoy, but keep on the down-low lest others accuse you of reading lowbrow crap. It is lowbrow crap, of course, just as all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were. And maybe it’s worse that this one wasn’t even written [...]

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Speaking of luck …

July 31, 2011

Today I’m writing from the Virginia home of my daughter Jessie, who writes the blog Rurally Screwed and who has emerged as a pretty good example of how one does the whole blog thing correctly. (Step 1: Make it about something, and update it every day, instead of just when you feel like it.) Jessie [...]

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Guilty, yes. Pleasure, not so much.

July 7, 2011

When one speaks of “guilty pleasures” in reading, it usually means one is reading trash, but one is enjoying the hell out of it anyway. I wouldn’t call George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series trash exactly, but it is fantasy, and fantasy has long been the preferred genre of dorks and misfits and [...]

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A late adopter acquires a Nook

June 29, 2011

I finally succumbed to the e-reader craze. As of about a week ago, I’m the proud owner of an All-New Nook. That’s actually what it’s called, presumably to distinguish it from the Nook Color and the Relatively Old Nook. So far, I’ve purchased and read one book on it, and sampled a couple more. I [...]

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Where I’m writing from

June 2, 2011
raymond carver

I stayed up too late last night reading some stories by Raymond Carver. They’re so short you decide to go on to the next one, and then the next. Then it’s 2 a.m. and you realize that a person who is slightly prone to depression should probably not read so many of them in a [...]

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Now a major motion picture

April 18, 2011
ayn rand

Atlas Shrugged may be the worst famous book I’ve ever read. It’s about a thousand pages; cut it in half and it would still be too long. I read it about 15 years ago, when I had more energy. I would go to the Y and get on a stair-climber and sweat through two or [...]

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It’s a thankless task

March 8, 2011

I'm rewriting my novel. Well, technically I’ve been rewriting it for about as long as I’ve been writing it, but this is different. The other day I dusted off the flash drive where I stored the entire reeking mess 18 months ago, and now I am going through it with a bad attitude and a [...]

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