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The Stars, Like Dust - Isaac Asimov

My apologies. I misunderstood what you were driving at. At any rate, you're quite right. Blue Highways is like a tour of the US, while PrairyErth is like a tour of time as seem through the lens of rural America.

I've read a great deal of Bukowski over the years (say 90% of his prose and 50% of his poetry), and wouldn't claim that he is a great writer. Or, at least, would say that his writing is very uneven. But, as I have said in other threads, when Bukowksi was on his game, he was capable of genius...

I couldn't tell you anything about William Least-Heat Moon's politics or ideology. And, Blue Highways is a wonderful book. But, PrairyErth is unlike anything else I have ever read. He calls it a "deep map", and there is something deep, almost tidal, about the feel and pace of the book.

I've only read some of the early Parker books (Double Deuce & The Godwulf Manuscript, to be exact), and am sorry to hear, first hand, that his writing has deteriorated. I liked the books that I read. I thought that there were certain stylistic similarities to Rex Stout (my favorite). But, I...

Some of the books that I would regard as essential non-fiction are: PrairyErth - William Least-Heat Moon The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes The Great Bridge - David McCullough The Path Between the Seas - David McCullough Endurance - Alfred Lansing A Short History of Nearly...

The only sports book that I can think of having read is a biography of Moe Berg called The Catcher Was a Spy. It was a very interesting book and well written. However, I have been meaning to read several sports books (When Pride Still Mattered, The Majors - that sort of thing).

Perhaps you mis-understood what I meant by "no-brainer". I didn't mean to suggest that the plots were brainless. Instead, I meant that for the person who is obsessed with books (like me), the choice to read Dunning's books is a "no-brainer". In fact, as I said, I thought the first two books...

Madeline, I've read most of the Cliff Janeway mysteries. Obviously, the plots are "no-brainers" for us book-addled types. However, you may have missed the first two Janeway novels (Booked to Die & The Bookman's Wake). To my mind, they are much superior to the later novels. Some of the newer...

In my younger days, I read a great many of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries, but Poirot isn't British, so . . . You might do well to start with something like the anthologies edited by Hugh Greene (the first of which is called The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes) to get a taste of a lot of...

That first scorching hot sip of good, black coffee . . . Diner breakfasts . . . My old leather boots . . . Kind women . . . Legends involving lost treasures and the like . . . Long, scalding hot showers . . . Stone fireplaces . . . The Pittsburgh Steelers . . .

For a "classic" thriller, you'd be hard pressed to beat Frederick Forsythe's The Day of The Jackal. For something a little out of the mold, you might want to try Eco's The Name of the Rose or Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon . . . maybe even Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End...

I'm glad to hear the positive reviews. I just picked up Blindness, All The Names, and The Double. But, your description also leads me to wonder whether or not you've read any Borges? If not, you should.

I've read the Nero Wolfe canon three times (some books more often than that), the Three Investigators series about four times, and the Encyclopedia Brown series prob'ly more than that. Odd, I suppose, for a guy my age, but I think that it is a measure of the sense in which all three of these...

Oddly enough, I just finished it myself last week. Overall, I thought it was a sort of mediocre book. Certainly, it was a better piece of writing the either The Da Vinci Code or The Rule of Four. There were even moments when it reminded me of books like Calvino's Invisible Cities. However, I...

While not strictly about conspiracy theory enthusiasts, you might also want to check out Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. If I remember correctly, the author is McKay or Mackey or something.

Yeah, I even wondered if Garcia's book (Anonymous Rex) and Lethem's book (Gun, . . . ) both stemmed from some common writing execize. They're both West Coast guys, I think. But, that really doesn't matter. I picked up Fortress of Solitude today - and it's moving up in my TBR pile.

I've only read (as yet) Gun, with Occasional Music but it is very much a "Re/De-construction" effort (a melange of sci-fi and hard-boiled detective story). I enjoyed the book, but it definitely shows signs of being a first novel. Eric Garcia's Anonymous Rex covers the same ground much more...

Quite right. In Notes of a Dirty Old Man (and other places) Buk discusses the Beats. He really didn't think much of any of them.

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