by bill | Sep 27, 2026 | Read it in books |
Acquired:
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Jorge Amado
Judgment on Deltchev, Eric Ambler
Passage of Arms, Eric Ambler
Yellow Dog, Martin Amis
Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
Rock, Chuck Klosterman
Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground, Richie Unterberger
Offloaded:
Progress Made:
Martin Amis: The Biography, Richard Bradford
Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground, Richie Unterberger
Finished:
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
Passage of Arms, Eric Ambler
We Can Build You, Philip K. Dick
I’m writing this a little earlier than usual as we are off on an international adventure for the nest few weeks.
I just finished Passage of Arms, which is absolutely top-drawer edge-of-the-seat Ambler. The Dark Frontier was a notch down. Judgment on Deltchev is queued up next, but I am trying, trying not to run through them all. October is likely to be a light reading month, as we will be traveling in Japan for most of it.
I had hoped to finish Vineland before the trip, but that now seems unlikely. You can’t force-feed Pynchon; either you’re in the mood or you aren’t.
(more…) by bill | Sep 24, 2026 | Whatever Else |
Recently when I referred to one of the Other Blogs, Kiss the Culprit, as “my personal Winchester Mystery House,” FOB Knox commented:
Your personal Winchester House gives structure and meaning to your life which otherwise might be missing.
Which I knew, of course, but it never hurts to be reminded.
In fact I have two, the other being the music library on my computer. When we moved into our current house about a dozen years ago, my darling wife commissioned custom shelves for my CD collection (which numbers about 3000 and has held pretty steady since then – I’ve mostly sworn off physical media, for music anyway). When they were finally done and the boxes unpacked I decided it was time to put all of my music in one digital library, which I had never actually done before.
At first I just burned stuff as fast as possible, but I soon realized that was stupid. If you’re not actually listening as you go, what’s the point? So I slowed way down and just accepted that it was going to take A Long Time.
(more…) by bill | Sep 13, 2026 | Moving pictures |
If you ever wanted to see John Cena act opposite Foghorn Leghorn, this is the movie for you.
by bill | Sep 2, 2026 | Read it in books |
Acquired:
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
Galactic Pot-Healer, Philip K. Dick
A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations, Pico Iyer
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Earl Mac Rauch
Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, Et Al: A Compendium of Evils, The Reno Kid with E.M. Rauch
The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum, Stanley G. Weinbaum
Offloaded:
John Buchan, The Courts of the Morning
Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick
Progress Made:
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
We Can Build You, Philip K. Dick
Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
Finished:
Here Lies, Eric Ambler
The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, Kyle Arnold
Another Green World (33 1/3), Geeta Dayal
Deus Irae, Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny
Late one sunny, ennui-laden August afternoon, I decided to finally tackle the project of rereading Vineland. Ever since One Battle After Another came out last year, I’ve been mildly vexed by the question of what on Earth it had to do with Pynchon’s book, upon which it was supposedly based.
So far I see nothing, save maybe a vague resemblance between Leo DiCaprio’s burnout dad character and Zoyd Wheeler, Vineland’s hapless hippie protagonist. But it’s a fun read, definitely in the “Pynchon lite” category with Inherent Vice and Shadow Ticket. I don’t mean that as a knock on those books — in fact I prefer them to the doorstoppers. I’d read more of them; does 88-year-old TP have any left in him?
Here Lies did indeed pick up the pace with the advent of WWII. Most of Eric Ambler’s war stories involve moviemaking; he served in the Army Film and Photographic Unit. There are numerous entertaining tales with appearances by the likes of David Niven, Carol Reed, and John Huston (the latter was apparently a maniac who casually risked his own life as well as other people’s). After the war the book just kind of stops. Ambler lived another 50 years after that, but apparently he found none of those years worth writing about. (Here Lies was published in 1985.) Or maybe he was planning a second volume that never materialized?
(more…)