Does anybody read Raymond Carver anymore? I feel like the revelation about how much his editor shaped his "style" kinda nipped his legacy in the bud. Could be wrong (I'm not very plugged into the literary world these days).
You'll find a lot of holdouts aged mid-60s and above who went to grad school in creative writing for whom he's still a big deal. Strangely enough, his poetry seems to have more supporters than his fiction does among people younger than that. Of course, part of what did him in is that everyone started writing his kinds of stories so it got to be so predictable. It's hard to hold him responsible for that. But your impression is pretty accurate: the revelation that Gordon Lish did a lot to invent Raymond Carver hasn't helped. I reread one of his collections a few years ago. It was great, for about two stories. Then it was repetitive for the rest of the book.
The Bureau and the Mole - David Vise FBI finally catches Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who was passing secrets to the KGB for years. This book is ok, but large chunks of it are not about Hanssen but instead about FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Rivers of America: The Illinois, a river I"ve never actually walked over on a bridge, unless you want to count of the tributary of a tributary I walked across ten times a week when I lived in Chicago, by James Gray. Damn fine book: Minimal racism and good, entertaining history, some of which assumes the native Illiniwek were actually human beings. Alas. I can't find a picture of the book. Damn shame.
How To Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby. It's subtitled Courageous Christianity and the Journey toward Racial Justice. I saw Tisby on the Evangelicals for Harris Zoom. I expect to be enlightened by this book.
It started with a manuscript being discovered in December 1945 by two brother in Eygpt. And them, the novel began in 1099 when the Crusaders were about to sack Jerusalem. Before the fall of the city, people of all faiths assembled to listen to the profound teachings of a Greek wiseman referred to as the Copt. The storyline resonated with my taste in books— history, war, bloodshed, and enlightenment. However, the entire plot consisted of 5 pages. It unfolded as a series of continuous quotations, delving deeply into wisdom and insights of the Copt. I don't mind reading a book for enlightenment, but I selected this one because it was a novel. If I wanted something philosophical, I would have read "Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant. I don't like it.
Speaking of racism and Christianity. . . when I was reading that book about 2Tone records on the previous page, there was a reference in the book to a National Front newspaper edited and mostly written by a guy in his late teens named "Joe Pearce" who would denounce bands like The Specials and The Selecter for having black people in them while (much to the band's chagrin) extolling the virtues of Madness for being all white. I looked up Joe Pierce. Turns out I have some books by him: mostly biographies and group biographies of Catholic writers. The reasons why I have books by him are chronicled in this book, his memoir of his racist youth: Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love which is good enough that it's in the running for books I might assign if I ever get to teach the class on Catholic memoir that my college offers. It's a pretty good treatment of his early days as a precocious, professional piece of shit racist to a better, though still flawed, human being.
Well, this is weird. I went to youtube and found out that, pretty much right when I posted about the book, a Catholic podcast I check out periodically has Joseph Pearce on it talking about doing time because he called for racist violence back in the day... and raising special needs kids.
The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. This is a classic epistolary novel by Lewis. It's a correspondence between two demons. The book comes out of the Christian tradition. Should be an interesting read.
I had to read this one in my Modern Utopia's (gen ed literature credit) in college. That's all I have to say, don't really remember what it is about, oh except the Airborne Toxic Event, because I saw them at Lollapalooza in 2009.
Burner - Mark Greaney Book 12 of the Gray Man series sees our "hero" blowing up the yachts of Russian billionaires as his part of standing against the war in Ukraine. He's found by a CIA agent who has never done field work to help retrieve a phone containing banking information tying Russian influence to American leaders. At the same time a second phone with identical information is being tracked down by Zoya Zakarova, the Russian defector sometimes partner of the Gray Man. Both were given to a Swiss banker by a Russian whose conscience had finally caught up with him. The goal is getting at least one of them, and the banker, to New York to meet an investigator that has developed software that can work through the layers of shell companies and fake names to tie the correct transfers to the responsible people before an accord is signed making Russia a full trade partner for the world again while giving them the land they've already won in Ukraine. This one doesn't get ridiculous until the last 30-40 pages, outside of a gun battle on a train between 4 competing forces, and it's better for it. The character who isn't field experienced helps give the good guys a goal to overcome that feels different. The most surprising thing is one of the main antagonists, across several of the books, actually dies.
Knocked off another River of America... frankly not one of the more deserving ones, but it's my home state and the author is fairly well known and associated with the region, plus Abraham Lincoln used to fish in it so they published (and the University of Illinois Press reissued). . . The Sangamon, which is pretty good, though it mostly consists of outtakes and extended scenes from author Edgar Lee Masters' two autobiographies, rounded out with a few poems by the author. Also, from my kindle unlimited, a short book . . . Thomas Merton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and The Protection of All Beings, an exercise in literary history that covers the story of how a short lived literary journal (The Journal for The Protection of All Beings) that brought together the Beat Generation, and, surprisingly at the time but not really given what we know of him, Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Decent archival spelunking by Bill Morgan
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal - Ben Macintyre Good read about the master spy who worked for Soviet intelligence for years, including more than ten years when he was in MI6.
The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood. The C.V. stands for Cecily Veronica. Wedgwood wrote this lengthy book in the 1930s, which she admits shaped her writing. This historical work details the conflict in the Holy Roman Empire, which includes today's Germany.
A few months back, I met someone who suggested that I embark on the "Road of Santiago de Compostela" in northwestern Spain. This route comprises a network of pilgrims' paths leading to the shrine of the apostle James at the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in Galicia. During our conversation, they brought up Paulo Coelho's work "The Pilgrimage," a semi-autobiographical tale recounting the author's profound experiences along this very road. However, I picked up the wrong book "Manuscript Found in Accra" from the library, but as mentioned below, I disliked it. So I started reading the "Phigrimage" last week. Unlike the other book, this one has a storyline. The protagonist went through villages after villages. In his journey, he discovered love and its various forms: agape, philia, and eros throughout the journey. It consisted a lot of interesting elements of western philosophy and Christianity. Certainly, the story of Jesus was used or mentioned throughout the book, but I admitted not knowing the Bible enough. In fact, the book did dealt with life through suffering, in which I considered to be Buddhist, but i might have gotten the message wrong. cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain