Missing The Moon: Books

Books

January 01, 2024

The Year In Reading 2023

Prize Stories From The 1970s O. Henry Awards (B+)
Elton John: Me (B+)
Roberto Bolaño: Antwerp (B)
Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything Is Illuminated (C-)
Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye (A+)
Paula Fox: Desperate Characters (B+)
Ken Follett: The Man From St. Petersburg (B)
Mario Puzo: The Godfather (A+)
Ray Bradbury: Death Is A Lonely Business (C+)
John Grisham: The Pelican Brief (B-)
E. F. Benson: Queen Lucia (C)
Annie Ernaux: Getting Lost (B+)
Robert Nye: Merlin (D-)
The Best American Mystery Stories Of The Century (B+)
A. E. Hotchner: Doris Day: Her Own Story (B)
Tobias Wolff: Old School (B+)
Sherwood Anderson: A Story Teller's Story (D)
Jeffrey Eugenides: The Marriage Plot (B)
Anthony Hope: The Prisoner Of Zenda (A+)
Malcolm Cowley: Exile's Return (C)
Graham Greene: Orient Express (F)
Iain Pears: The Portrait (B-)
Simone De Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed (A)
Gerald Durrell: The Mockery Bird (B)
J. Edgar Hoover: Masters Of Deceit (F)
John Mortimer: The First Rumpole Omnibus (B-)
Arthur C. Clarke: Childhood's End (B+)
Michael Riedel: Razzle Dazzle (C+)
Diana Vreeland: D. V. (A)
Gore Vidal: Duluth (A+)
Doris Lessing: The Habit Of Loving (C+)
Doris Lessing: The Real Thing (B)
Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book Of Food And Drink (B)
Isak Dinesen: Daguerreotypes (C)
David Niven: The Moon's A Balloon (B+)
David Niven: Bring On The Empty Horses (A)
Laurence Olivier: Confessions Of An Actor (A)
Michael Lewis: Liar's Poker (B-)
Robin Moore: The French Connection (A-)
John Simon: Paradigms Lost (F)
Ken Follett: Never (B+)
Nolan Ryan: Miracle Man (B)
Graham Moore: The Last Days Of Night (B)
Jay McInerney: The Last Of The Savages (C)
Eric Newby (ed.): A Book Of Travellers' Tales (A+)
James A. Michener: Legacy (A+)
Robert Stone: Outerbridge Reach (D+)
Calvin Trillin: Quite Enough Of (A+)
Dorothy B. Hughes: The Expendable Man (B+)
Jay McInerney: Bright Lights, Big City (A)
Steven Millhauser: Dangerous Laughter (B+)
John Simon: On Film (D)
Agatha Christie: The Mysterious Affair At Styles (A+)
John Irving: Setting Free The Beas (**)
Gerold Frank: Judy (B)
Richard A. Lertzman and William J. Barnes: The Life And Times Of Mickey Rooney (B-)
D. H. Lawrence: The Virgin And The Gypsy (A)
Jean Giono: The Horseman On The Roof (C)
Theodore Zeldin: The French (B)
Edwin Newman: Sunday Punch (C-)
Albert Camus: American Journals (A+)
Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr.: Spock, Messiah! (C)
Scott Turow: One L (B-)
Robert Crichton: The Secret Of Santa Vittoria (B)
Ken Kesey: Sailor Song (D+)
John O'Hara: The Ewings (A)
Steven Gaines: Heroes And Villains (B+)
Graham Greene: The Human Factor (A+)
Rosalind Russell: Life Is A Banquet (A+)
E. L. Doctorow: City Of God (D)
William Maxwell: The Outermost Dream (B+)
G. K. Chesterton: Tremendous Trifles (C-)
George Plimpton: Truman Capote (A+)
Herman Koch: The Dinner (B)
William Goldman: Control (C)
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee: The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail (A+)
Joan Crawford: My Way Of Life (F)
Charles Portis: True Grit (A+)
Sebastian Junger: A Death In Belmont (A-)
Michael Frayn: Headlong (B+)
Agatha Christie: Poirot Investigates (A+)
E. L. Doctorow: Homer & Langley (A+)
Lillian Ross: Picture (A-)
Stefan Zweig: Chess (A+)
Calvin Trillin: Floater (B-)
E. M. Forster: A Room With A View (A-)
Ruth Rendell: From Doon With Death (A+)
E. M. Forster: Abinger Harvest (B)
Thomas Heggen: Mister Robers (C+)
William Golding: The Spire (D-)
Philip Roth: Sabbath's Theater (C)
George Plimpton: The Man In The Flying Lawn Chair (A)
Harry Kemelman: Conversations With Rabbi Small (B)
David McCullough: Truman (A)
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.: Robert Kennedy And His Times (B-)
Bruce Shlain: Oddballs (A)
Larry Tye: Demagogue (A-)
Rick Perlstein: Nixonland (B+)
Martin Cruz Smith: Stallion Gate (B)
Jeffrey Archer: A Twist In The Tale (B-)
Ross Macdonald: Find A Victim (A+)
Alastair Cooke: Six Men (D)
Arthur Hailey and John Castle: Runway Seven-Eight (B+)
Mary Gordon: Final Payments (C-)
Joseph Heller: Closing Time (B+)
John Mortimer: Clinging To The Wreckage (A-)
Granta 61 "The Sea" (B)
Julian Symons: The Blackheath Poisonings (B-)
Robert Barnard: Fête Fatale (C+)
André Gide: The Immoralist (B+)
Nelson W. Aldritch, Jr. (ed.): George, Being George (A+)
Vladimir Voinovich: The Fur Hat (C+)
Ruth Rendell: Make Death Love Me (B)
Ira Levin: The Boys From Brazil (A+)
Bruno Schulz: The Street Of Crocodiles (C+)
Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm (B-)
Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward (C-)
Fred Kaplan: Gore Vidal (B)
Hugh Greene (ed.): Cosmopolitan Crimes (B+)
Kitty Kelley: His Way (A)
Truman Capote: Breakfast At Tiffany's (A+)
Candice Millard: Destiny Of The Republic (A-)
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Beautiful And Damned (C)
James Simon Kunen: The Strawberry Statement (A-)
Sam Staggs: Finding Zsa Zsa (A-)
Cormac O'Brien: Secret Lives Of The U.S. Presidents (A)
Julian Barnes: Through The Window (B+)
Evan S. Connell: Mr. Bridge And Mrs. Bridge (A)
Thomas Harris: Black Sunday (A)
Ben MacIntyre: Agent Zigzag (A-)
Marion Davies: The Times We Had (A+)
J. B. Priestley: Salt Is Leaving (B)
Ruth Rendell: Thirteen Steps Down (D+)
Graham Greene: Travels With My Aunt (A)
Louis Nizer: The Implosion Conspiracy (B)
Leonardo Sciascia: Open Doors (C+)
Vladimir Nabokov: Mary (B)
William Kennedy: Legs (B+)
Agatha Christie: Evil Under The Sun (A+)
Michael Shaara: The Noah Conspiracy aka The Herald (D+)
Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast (A+)
Marie-Françoise Allain: The Other Man (A+)
Dominick Dunne: Another City, Not My Own (D-)
Max Beerbohm: Zuleika Dobson (C)
Mavis Gallant: Paris Stories (B)
David Robinson: Chaplin: His Life And Art (A)
Carol Burnett: One More Time (A)
Carol Burnett: This Time Together (A)
Philip Roth: The Human Stain (B)
Robert Harris: Pompeii (C-)
Anthony Lewis: Gideon's Trumpet (C+)
Brian Moore: An Answer From Limbo (B)
Robert Nye: Mrs Shakespeare (C+)
Julian Barnes: Levels Of Life (A)
Donald Spoto: The Dark Side Of Genius: The Life Of Alfred Hitchcock (A-)
Heinrich Mann: Man Of Straw (B)
Jostein Gaarder: Sophie's World (A-)
Edgar Box (Gore Vidal): Death In The Fifth Position (A-)
Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology Of Humorous Writing From The New Yorker (B)
Thomas Tryon: Harvest Home (A+)
General Sir John Hackett & Other Top-Ranking NATO Generals & Advisors: The Third World War: August 1985 (F)
Michael Dibdin: The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (F)
Lawrence S. Ritter: The Glory Of Their Times (A+)
Norman Mailer: Mind Of An Outlaw (B-)
John Williams: Stoner (B+)
Selina Hastings: Evelyn Waugh (B)
Sidney Reilly: Adventures Of a British Master Spy (C+)
Jose Saramago: Blindness (A+)
Classic Horror Stories (B+)
Beryl Bainbridge: Every Man For Himself (C)
Pete Dexter: Train (A-)
Edwin O'Connor: The Last Hurrah (A+)
John Steinbeck: Travels With Charley (A+)
Mark Salzman: Lost In Place (B+)
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Quo Vadis (C)
James Gould Cozzens: Morning Noon And Night (D)
Ruth Rendell: Sins Of The Fathers (A+)
Julian Barnes: Nothing To Be Frightened Of (B+)
Tennessee Williams: Memoirs (A+)
P. D. James: A Mind To Murder (B-)
A. S. Byatt: Angels & Insects (B+)
Thomas Thompson: Serpentine (A)
William Hjortsberg: Jubilee Hitchhiker (A)
Agatha Christie: The A. B. C. Murders (A+)
Robert Musil: Five Women (B-)
Jay Parini: Empire Of Self (A+)
Pete Dexter: The Paperboy (B)
Thomas Thompson: Blood And Money (A-)
Ignacio Padilla: Antipodes (C+)
Vladimir Nabokov: Glory (A-)
English Country House Murders (A-)
Trevanian: The Eiger Sanction (B-)
William Lindsay Gresham: Nightmare Alley (B)
Kenneth Koch & Kate Farrell: Sleeping On The Wing (B+)
Yasunari Kawabata: Thousand Cranes (C+)
Jean Stein/George Plimpton: Edie (D)
Anne Tyler: Breathing Lessons (B)
Scott Turow: Presumed Innocent (B)
Ruth Rendell: The Babes In The Wood (B+)
Saul Bellow: Letters (B)
Pete Dexter: Spooner (B)
Granta 46 "Crime" (C)
Keith Richards: Life (C-)
Pete Dexter: Paris Trout (A-)
Barry Hannah: High Lonesome (C)
Eric Newby: The Big Red Train Ride (B+)

Posted at 10:41 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 01, 2022

The goal every year is to read 120 books. This year I blew way past that, finishing at 140 books reviewed. I was sort of pushed into retirement (yay!!), and life at home consequently got much better as a result (yay!!), leading to peace of mind and a rather impressive reading list. My only regret was not as many titles about China, my focus for the past 10 years.

Books of the year: well, anything rated "A+" can sensibly be recommended as the gold standard. You know what you're getting when you read Jim Cain, or The Exorcist, or O'Hara, or Vonnegut; fame and familiarity haven't dimmed their luster. The pleasures are the same on the 10th go-round as on the first. So I'll mention some discoveries: Julien Green's psychological crazefest Avarice House; two political masterpieces in The Leopard and All The King's Men; Robert Harris's riveting Dreyfus novel; Pat Barker's jaw-dropping WWI fugue, Regeneration; Lagerkvist's meditation on evil, The Dwarf; Liu Cunxin's Mao's Last Dancer, about his harrowing escape from Communist China, Roald Dahl topping all of the above.

I'm not an easy grader, as you'll see. For some reason, a lot of the books were just great. Or, not great.

China

Edward Slingerland: Trying Not To Try (C+)
Liu Cunxin: Mao's Last Dancer (A+)

The Nobelists

Heinrich Böll: Irish Journal (A-)
Günter Grass: The Tin Drum (B)
William Faulkner: Uncollected Stories (B)
Pär Lagerkvist: The Dwarf (A+)
Isaac Bashevis Singer: Love And Exile (B+)
Isaac Bashevis Singer: Scum (B+)
Isaac Bashevis Singer: Meshugah (A-)
Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Certificate (A-)
Patrick Modiano: Missing Person (B-)
S. Y. Agnon: A Book That Was Lost (D)
Isaac Bashevis Singer: Gimpel The Fool (A+)
Hermann Hesse: Narcissus And Goldmund (A-)
Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Death Of Methusaleh (A+)
Dario Fo: The Pope's Daughter (B)

Novelists Of My Youth

Norman Mailer: Advertisements For Myself (B)
William Peter Blatty: The Exorcist (A+)
Norman Mailer: Cannibals And Christians (B)
Philip Roth: Portnoy's Complaint (C+)
John O'Hara: Appointment In Samarra (A+)
Anthony Burgess: Nothing Like The Sun (D)
Philip Roth: My Life As A Man (B)
Anthony Burgess: Honey For The Bears (D+)
Gilbert Sorrentino: Mulligan Stew (C+)
Frederick Forsyth: The Odessa File (D+)
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (B)
Peter Benchley: Q Clearance (C)
Thomas Rogers: The Pursuit Of Happiness (B)
John O'Hara: The Cape Cod Lighter (A+)
Barry Hannah: Ray (C+)
Richard Condon: The Final Addiction (B+)
John O'Hara: The Big Laugh (A+)
Raymond Kennedy: The Flower Of The Republic (B)
Barry Hannah: Boomerang (B+)
Barry Hannah: Never Die (C+)
(David Jasen, ed.): The Uncollected Wodehouse (A+)
Kurt Vonnegut: Deadeye Dick (A+)
E. L. Doctorow: World's Fair (A+)
Thomas Berger: The Feud (A-)

Lady Writers

Barbara Pym: Excellent Women (B)
Vita Sackville-West: All Passion Spent (B+)
Anaïs Nin: The Four-Chambered Heart (D)
Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived In The Castle (A-)
Zoë Wicomb: You Can't Get Lost In Cape Town (C)
Henry Handel Richardson: Maurice Guest (B-)
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall (C+)
Pat Barker: Regeneration (A+)
Jane Kramer: The Last Cowboy (D)
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (B)

Politics

Henry Adams: Novels And Memoirs (Library of America) (C-)
Julian Barnes: The Noise Of Time (B+)
Aleksander Wat: My Century (C-)
Jeff Pearlman: Football For A Buck (A-)
Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn: The Complete Yes Minister (A+)
Robert Harris: An Officer And A Spy (A+)
Thomas Mallon: Watergate (B-)
Giuseppi di Lampedusa: The Leopard (A+)
Henry Bromell: Little America (C+)
William F. Buckley, Jr.: Nuremberg (B)
Montesquieu: Persian Letters (C-)
Robert Penn Warren: All The King's Men (A+)

Mem-wahs, Belles-Lettres, Other Non-Fiction, Drama

Lawrence Durrell: Reflections On A Marine Venus (B+)
H. G. Wells: A Short History Of The World (C)
Amos Oz: In The Land Of Israel (A-)
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations (A)
Eugène Ionesco: The Bald Soprano & Other Plays (A+)
Christopher Plummer: In Spite Of Myself (A-)
D. H. Lawrence: Selected Poetry (A+)
Stephen Jay Gould: An Urchin In The Storm (A)
Roald Dahl: Going Solo (A+)
James Spada: More Than A Woman (A-)
Jerry Lewis: Dean & Me (A-)
Marguerite Duras: India Song (D+)
Patrick McGilligan: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life In Darkness And Light (A)
John Kenneth Galbraith: The Great Crash 1929 (C)
Harlan Ellison: The Glass Teat (A-)
Gertrude Stein: Lectures In America (A+)
Stephen Davis: Hammer Of The Gods (C)
Three Plays About Crime And Criminals (A+)
Michael Palin: New Europe (C)
Noël Coward: Three Plays (A-)
The Paris Review 196 (Spring 2011) (B)
J. Randy Taraborrelli: Sinatra-Behind The Legend (A)
John Gunther: Death Be Not Proud (A)
Edmond Rostand: Cyrano De Bergerac (B)
John Kaag: American Philosophy (C-)

More Fiction

Amos Oz: Unto Death (B)
Kingsley Amis: The Folks That Live On The Hill (B-)
Cees Nooteboom: In The Dutch Mountains (B-)
Cees Nooteboom: Rituals (C)
Sholom Aleichem: Marienbad (C)
Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities (A)
Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son (A)
Sebastian Barry: A Long Long Way (B+)
Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie (C-)
André Schwarz-Bart: The Last Of The Just (A)
George Saunders: Tenth Of December (A-)
Jack London: The Sea Wolf (A-)
George Orwell: Coming Up For Air (B)
Chaim Potok: My Name Is Asher Lev (B+)
Nevil Shute: On The Beach (A+)
William Maxwell: The Folded Leaf (B)
Julien Green: Avarice House (A+)

Baseball

Jane Leavy: The Big Fella (A+)
Art Shamsky and Erik Sherman: After The Miracle (A+)
Pat Jordan: The Suitors Of Spring (A+)
Jim Bouton with Neil Offen: "I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad" (A)
Fay Vincent: It's What's Inside The Lines That Counts (B-)
Peter Golenbock: Red Sox Nation (A-)

Mysteries

Adrian Conan Doyle & John Dickson Carr: The Exploits Of Sherlock Holmes (B-)
James Ellroy: Clandestine (B+)
Raymond Chandler: The Lady In The Lake (B)
Dave Thompson: Sherlock Holmes FAQ (A)
Georges Simenon: Maigret And The Killer (B)
Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian (eds.): Hard-Boiled (B)
James Crumley: The Last Good Kiss (B-)
S. S. Van Dine: The Kidnap Murder Case (B+)
S. S. Van Dine: The Winter Murder Case (B+)
Charles Drazin: (On) Blue Velvet (F)
Boris Akunin: The Winter Queen (B-)
John Le Carré: Our Kind Of Traitor (B-)
James M. Cain: Double Indemnity (A+)
Josephine Tey: The Man In The Queue (C)
Georges Simenon: Pietr The Latvian (B)
Jonathan Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn (B-)
James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice (A+)
Brian Moore: The Statement (A+)
Barry Reed: The Verdict (A-)
Agatha Christie: Murder On The Orient Express (A-)
Aaron Elkins: Fellowship Of Fear (C-)
Dennis Lehane: The Drop (A)

Excretement

Jean-Patrick Manchette: Fatale (D)
Jimmy Breslin: I Don't Want To Go To Jail (D-)
Roy Blount, Jr.: Crackers (F)
Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (F)
Parker Tyler: Chaplin: Last Of The Clowns (F)
Bob Woodward: Fear (F)
David Sedaris: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk (D)
Peter Ustinov: Add A Dash Of Pity (D+)

Posted at 10:57 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 01, 2021

The Year In Reading 2020

The goal was to read 120 books per annum, as it is every year. I totaled 124 this year. There's generally no logic to book selection; no plan. I used to work in a used bookstore, I was an English major in college, and until the Covid hit, I frequented used book bins. Often. Lots of books around here.

The pandemic has affected my bookbuying and also my reading habits. I no longer go to the bins, I stopped in February. I don't want to get sick. I've also ceased ordering online for the present: I read that Jeff Bezos was making $20 billion a day from this crisis. So...lots of books around here.

Another goal is to always read books about China. I did some, but not nearly enough to satisfy me. The list includes a ridiculous number of Nobel laureates, and also quite a lot about war. I can't say why. I review all the books I read on Twitter; David Schwartz (@paledave) / Twitter is the link to get you there.

The four books that really hit me this year were an early novel by Joan Didion; she's a spectacular writer that I never really got around to before; an anthology of First World War poetry and a collection of Yeats; and Slaughterhouse-Five. There are other "A"s and "A+"s, you should check them out.

There are a few "F"s as well. The most egregious is a laughably put-together thesaurus and a collection by the vile de Sade, which is no way defensible.

Next year will be different, for everyone I hope. For me, I am loosening my "rule of 120"; I hope to read more epics, trilogies, tetralogies, Library of America entries, as well as the usual fodder.

China