Eeeeeeeeeeeeets March already and I am reading...

This is true!

And I try really hard to figure out what I think people will like.

Tales of Ordinary Madness - Charles Bukowski

Yes! Great book.

So I noticed. I read about half of it on the bus. Gotta love Bukowski.

There's not much to not love. One of my absolute favourites, and a huge influence on my own writing, though, I'm probably nothing Like Buk.

My first holiday book is We Are Oblivion by Michael Sonbert. So far it's both fucked up and awesome.

Finished Vurt.

What a crazy book. I was impressed, this guy is something else. There was about three books worth of stuff crammed in there. It's a head fuck, like a love triangle of Phillip Dick, William Gibson, and Irvine Welsh. Although that might be a little mean on Noon, it was more original than that. He has a very unique prose style, was scattered and erratic but very descriptive, very on-the-body.

Seriously fucking weird book. I have put Pollen and Pixel Juice on the list to buy.

Am now reading The Outsider by Albert Camus. It's tiny so shouldn't take all that long.

I'm reading it right now, too.

Guess I should crack that spine finally, too, then, hey boys.

You guys all suck!

I'm glad you liked it. Pollen is okay, PIxel Juice is great. Another favorite of mine is Automated Alice. If you really get into reading his stuff you'll find a lot of overlapping characters. I could give you examples, but that would involve spoilers. A lot of his books are hard to find and/or super expensive because they're mostly out of print. I've read them all but I still only own about half of them.

I've already tracked down a copy of Pollen. Shall be ordering that tomorrow.

Pixel Juice seems quite pricey, the cheapest I've seen a paperback so far is £10 (so what nearly $20?) There's 50 stories though right? Must be a pretty long book. I'm willing to pay a tenner.

It's really not very long, the stories are pretty short.

American Psycho is brilliant. Although its one of those books that takes me a while to read. Probably all the name dropping and understanding it, rather than Room, which is written from a child like perspective?

Holiday book Number 2: Star Island by Carl Hiaasen. I LOVE this guys books.

It's all about non-fiction for me at the moment.

I'm reading the new, definitive biography on Roald Dahl. Where the hell's Levi, to appreciate this?

Just finished We Are Oblivion last night. Got to read a very early draft some months ago, but this final draft is far better...more concise than the original.

I read about a page and a half of Freedom by Franzen before putting it down to watch TV. Think I'll come back to that one later.

I've got You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer and In the Meantime by Paul Tremblay coming in the mail. Don't know which will show up first, but one of them will be my next.

Finally, got a full review of The Samaritan by Fred Venturini up over at the new site which you can check out here: http://wearevespertine.com/reviews/the-samaritan/

Just started J.R. Ward's second book in the Fallen Angels series. Titled "Crave".

I CAN NOT PUT IT DOWN.

I finished The Black Dahlia. It was good and violent, but the beginning was slow, what with all the zoot suit and boxing stuff going on. It's more man-lit, in my opinion. I want to read another novel of his, though.

I'm going to start Columbine now...(not now now, this evening).

Another one! I'm glad so many people are reading Columbine. It is such a good book. And Dave Cullen stops by here every once in a while.

I read Columbine while selling candy to kidsz. I got freaked out on numerous occasions.

This book is FASCINATING! I'm 3/4 of the way through and I can't see two inches in front of my face. I'm going to finish it today, then I'm going to get Drew to read it.

I'm reading this book about Vietnam for my history class called Where the Domino Fell. It's kind of dense but i don't know shit about the Vietnam War (outside of James Ellroy) so it's very interesting to me.

Read the first story in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. It felt just right. Until the end, when he leaves you with this feeling that you've missed something minute, but essential. Lovely stuff.

Still working through Neverwhere as well.

Finished Eleanor Rigby by Coupland. Now reading Out of Touch by Mr. Tietz, which is excellent so far!

Love is A Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski.

Back to the fabulous Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simoneon.

Having finished Await Your Reply, I do feel I owe it a public apology of sorts, as I was pretty lukewarm on it here when I first began. Turns out it's a fantastic crossover book, as it's as plotty as your usual commercial fare, but the prose is up a few notches closer to the kind of books most of us dig. I admit it.

Now onto Chabon's A Model World. You can tell this is early stuff, as it's extremely verbose/purple, but it still puts a big grin on my face. "That sprawling New Yorker shit," as Charlie Kaufman might say.

The Plumed Serpent - D.H.Lawrence

I'm very glad to hear it won you over!

I'm starting 'The Chronology of Water: a memoir' by Lidia Yuknavitch.

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth

Hell's half acre by Baer.

Read the other two ages ago, then re-read them. Been saving this one. It's excellent so far.

HHA is ripping.

Not sure why, seeing as though I just read it again recently, like, wasn't it the start of this month, but I've found myself four chapters into Sometimes Rachel again.

I sweat I'm not obsessed.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I'm reading Henry Miller's Black Spring and it is fucking fantastic. I am hard for how good this book is.

The Samaratan by Fred Venturini.

I've put The Maltese Falcon on hold for a minute.

I started reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn and I can't stop.

The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Almost done with When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. This one is as good as Case Histories, so I think I'm going to have to get all of her books.

I'm glad I found an author that you enjoy so much - all with equal parts research and lucky guess.

I really can't thank you enough, Pete. Jackson Brodie is a character in both novels, and I've just read that he appears in four of her books, so I can't wait to read the ones I haven't read yet. She never intended to include him in any other stories, but she pretty much fell for him and can't NOT feature him in most of her writing. I don't usually care for mysteries, but it's her writing style and the richly developed characters (and omg, twist after twist) that I'm loving about her stories. Good stuff.

I say this every time you mention her, but I need to pick up Case Histories. The book does sound really good.

Finnish'd On The Road, I though Dean was a bit of a loser and Sal could have found a better road companion.

Now onto Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China by Robert Jay Lifton.

Rage by Sergio Bizzio. An Argentinian book that's been made into a movie by Guillermo Del Toro.

Another one of those books I read in college that made me wonder what all the noise was about.

Useful!

Just started The Implacable Order of Things by Jose Luis Peixoto. I've high expectations for this one.

Oh - make sure you jump into the book club discussion. We did it last month (if I remember right...)

70 pages later, I like it! I'll be sure to check it out.

Hospital gives you time to read :
Lost Stories (Dashiell Hammett)
The New York Trilogy (Paul Auster)

Probably not appropriate, but I read The New York Trilogy in hospital too.