New month
- City Poet: A Life of Frank O'Hara by Brad Gooch. His ironic nickname in the Navy was "Butch."
- Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun. Frank O'Hara's sister didn't want Calhoun to write this book for reasons that were actually borne out by the book. It was really about her relationship with her father.
- Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Stye=conversations embedded in paragraphs, present tense, narration of main character observing herself.
- Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie. Great first chapter with Ariadne Oliver choosing a hat for a literary party.
- Rocannan's World by U.K.LeG. The beginning, originally a short story, is a complete melding of fantasy and science fiction.
- The Nation of March 2025: "In other social systems, oppression is directly enacted and therefore obvious: When a feudal lord forces his serfs to give up a certain quantity of grain, for instance, or a pharaoh forces his subjects to perform a certain amount of labor, the structure of power is clear. In capitalist societies, on the other hand, the gaps between rich and poor may be just as stark, but the mechanisms of exploitation and the methods of domination are far murkier. Everyone appears to be acting of their own free will: Wage workers enter into contracts of their choosing, and the overall social order seems to emerge from a mass of individual choices. Countless workplaces operate independently, under the private direction of whoever owns them—and yet they are all connected to one another through the globe-spanning networks of trade and commerce that send prices shooting up or crashing down. To understand this system, one cannot simply take it at face value, as economists typically do. One must instead examine its hidden depths, the relationships and forms of power that constitute its inner workings. This, Reitter and North’s edition insists, is the crucial point of Capital: Both essence and appearance, both the material world and its abstract representation, are critical to understanding capitalism." Review by Alyssa Battistoni.
- NYer of 3/10/25. Lane quotes Ross Macdonald: "'This is practically a slum,' George said. 'I thought that Malibu was a famous resort.' / 'Part of it is. This is the other part.'" (The Barbarous Coast)
- Planet of Exile by U.K.LeG.
- The Golden Ass by Apuleius.
- Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti. Several phrases "Desolation Row" are from Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels: "a perfect image of a priest, "her sin is her lifelessness"
- NYer of 3/24/25. Things by Perec sounds good and was model for Perfection by Vincenzo Latronio's Perfection.
- NYer of 3/3/25. Cartoon of man wearing hat in apparent self-satisfaction: "Rakish angles don't work for you."
- Nyer of 3/17/25. Movie Eephus sounds perfect for me.
- Sex Criminals V. 3:Three the Hard Way. That title... and the character range broadens (anime demon)
