Reading Log: January 2023

Books acquired: “Bad City,” Paul Pringle; “Chasing History,” Carl Bernstein

Books read: “The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere.,” James Spooner; “The Ballad of Bob Dylan,” Daniel Mark Epstein; “Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down,” Tom Dardis; “Woe is I,” Patricia O’Conner; “Baseline Road,” Orlando Davidson; “The Season to be Wary,” Rod Serling

Happy New Year from the Reading Log! Here I’ll track my reading (and book acquisitions) for 2023, a month at a time, as I’ve been doing for more than a decade now. And where you are always encouraged to do the same via the comments function.

In January I read two biographies, a grammar book, a graphic novel, a detective novel and a collection of novellas. Let’s dive in.

“Baseline Road” (2023): This noir novel is set in Claremont, California, and environs in 1972, when a San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigator (male) and a Claremont Police detective (female), both best friends, team up to solve a post-Kent State bombing at the Claremont Colleges from two years earlier. It’s certainly of local interest due to the number of proper nouns (streets, restaurants) and it’s a skillfully told mystery besides. Not as dark and poetic as Kem Nunn’s “Pomona Queen,” the obvious local antecedent, but Davidson, a Claremont Colleges alumnus of that era, creates a couple of likable leads and keeps things moving. (Advance copy provided by the publisher.)

“Ballad of Bob Dylan” (2011): Having read a shelf full of Bob books, I nearly skipped this quirkily structured bio, and the first part, about a concert from 1963 that the author attended as a teen, is so hyper-detailed I almost gave up. Thank goodness I didn’t, because this may be the most illuminating Dylan biography of all, full of sympathy, wit and insights. There’s a new, credible version of the ’66 motorcycle accident, the sweet story of Dylan’s lifelong friendship with Larry Keegan, and surprises about his ’90s road band. Dylan comes across here as more human than he does anywhere else. (Pro tip for the audio version: If you speed it up to 1.25, Bronson Pinchot talks at a normal pace.) (Birthday gift in 2015.)

“Keaton” (1979): Serviceable, relatively compact biography of Buster Keaton that touches most of the bases and interviews people in his circle — Keaton died in 1966 — still around in the ’70s. Keaton was a more obscure figure in 1979 than he’s become since, and he’s often today more highly regarded than Chaplin. This bio is curiously scant on Buster’s ’50s-’60s comeback, with no mention of his Twilight Zone episode, now the only role the average person might know him from. Speculates with some persuasiveness about how the rough treatment from his father onstage as a boy in their vaudeville act may have made Buster curiously passive the rest of his life, and how the alcoholism that wrecked his career was not understood as a disease in Buster’s day. (Bought in 2009 at Santa Cruz’s Logos Books used for $3.)

“Woe is I” (1996): Brisk, cleverly written guide to grammar. The advice is sensible in nearly all cases. But O’Conner’s faith in “his” as an all-purpose pronoun, preferable to “his and her” and definitely to “their” — “Anyone entering must show his ticket” — was dated even upon publication in 1996 and is worse today. One takeaway from reading all these rules, almost all of which I had internalized as a native-born speaker and careful writer, is how daunting English must be to learn as a newcomer. (Bought in 2013 at St. Louis’ Patten Books.)

“High Desert” (2022): A chronicle of a time and place as a misfit teen, who is a Black punk fan, searches for his tribe in a mostly white desert town and on a visit to NYC. One thing I liked about this was how honest Spooner is in his recollections: how he was uncommunicative with his well-meaning mom, ghosted a friend who needed him, and knew almost nothing about anything. And there’s a refreshingly playful spirit amid the teen angst and subcultural explorations. (Bought in 2022 at Skylight Books in Los Feliz.)

“Season to be Wary” (1967): This collection of three novellas was published between “Twilight Zone” and “Night Gallery” and showed that Serling could translate his ideas into prose effectively. He later adapted two of these, “The Escape Route” and “Eyes,” for the terrific Night Gallery pilot. The other, “Color Scheme,” is about a racist in the South who gets his comeuppance and was, Serling said, considered too hot for TV. It still packs a punch. I bought this circa 1981 at, possibly, the Bargain Bookshelf in Decatur, Georgia, based on the store stamp inside, while visiting my grandfather and read it almost immediately. Having watched “The Night Gallery” on DVD the past couple of years in dribs and drabs, I felt like reading this again. So I did.

This was a hodge-podge of a month, and in other circumstances I would not have elected to read so much nonfiction, but that’s how it worked out. February should balance things out.

While how this year will go in reading will unfold over the next 11 months, my answer is different at the start of February than it would have been at the start of January. I was planning to try to read a bit less this year (!), shooting for, say, 52 books rather than last year’s 80, to allow time for other pursuits. But here I was knocking off six books in January. February should bring four or five. There’s just a lot of books on deck that I’d have liked to have gotten through last year, if last year had had, you know, 16 to 18 months. So, maybe I’ll aim for 60 books.

I expect to read many of my oldest books, ones bought from 2007 to 2013 or so, including a few heavyweight literary works; some purchases from the last couple of years; some gifts from friends that have shamefully languished unread; at least two of my four remaining Mark Twain books; a couple of the Ballantine Best Of science fiction anthologies; and some if not all of my remaining half-dozen Travis McGee mysteries.

How about you? What did you read in January, and what sort of reading goals do you have for 2023?

Next month: Nighttime is the right time.

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Column: Riverside was fired up to buy these old bricks

You remember our friends from Wednesday’s column, the stash of 1890 bricks from a demolished landmark? They all sold within hours of the publicity in my column. [blows on fingernails] I cannot right the wrongs of the world, but I can sell bricks, and I guess that’s something. I explain more about how the bricks came to be available, and the couple who once bought 10,000 of them (!), in my Friday column.

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Column: Theater bricks are mementos of 19th century

About 30 bricks from the Loring Opera House/Golden State Theater in Riverside, which was built in 1890 and burned down in 1990, are available for purchase from the Old Riverside Foundation. Also, more items about the theater, Cellar Door Books and the State of the City event last week. Yes, it’s an all-Riverside items column. I must be settling into this expanded role, eh? Read ’em all in my Wednesday column.

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