Recently in Books Category

Books acquired: "Fire and Rain," David Browne; "Kafka Americana," Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz; "The Long Lavender Look," "The Empty Copper Sea," John D. MacDonald.

Books read: "I, Robot," Isaac Asimov; "Like I Was Sayin'," Mike Royko; "I Wouldn't Have Missed It," Ogden Nash; "Soon I Will Be Invincible," Austin Grossman; "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon," Philip K. Dick; "I'll Mature When I'm Dead," Dave Barry; "I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay," Harlan Ellison; "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner; "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," Harlan Ellison; "Take My Picture Gary Leonard," Gary Leonard; "Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto," Anneli Rufus.

Welcome to my first Reading Log of 2012, the feature where I chart my reading month-by-month, and you chime in with comments about your own reading life.

You may recall that over the past three decades or so I've accumulated a shameful number of unread books, close to 550. Yikes! (That includes some childhood favorites that I've read but intend to reread, and some omnibus books and anthologies, like the complete Shakespeare, that I'm counting as multiple books. But still.)

Between purchases and gifts, that number hasn't budged much despite three years of reading 50 to 60 books per year. But at least my backlog is slowly getting fresher.

This year I'm planning to focus on short books (200 pages or less) in an attempt to sweep away some of the easier ones on my shelves. If I can read, I dunno, 75 this year, including a lot of SF, a few literary classics and the final three Sherlock Holmes books, that would be satisfying. But you never know what a year will bring, and thus, I reserve the right to switch gears and delve into gloomy Russian epics.

I'm off to a good start, polishing off 11 (!) in January. That's too many to talk about, and even for the photo I had to stand on a footstool. But there weren't so many that I had to lay them out in a field and charter a plane for an aerial shot.

Just for fun, the first nine use the personal pronoun in the title, sometimes twice. I started some of them last fall, arranging to finish them in January for a month of "I" books. Oh, we must get our jollies somehow. With a week left in the month and no more "I" books to read, I found two with similarly narcissistic titles to round out the month.

Favorites of the 11 would be Nash's light verse, Dick's short stories and Rufus' defense of 24-hour wallflower people. Biggest disappointment was Barry's latest. I think Will Plunkett was similarly disappointed by it in a comment here last year.

As for the books' provenance, "I Have No Mouth" was bought in about 1981, with Nash's and Royko's acquired in the mid-1980s. Nice to have three oldies out of the way. The rest were purchased in the past decade; notably, Rufus' was purchased at the excellent Green Apple Books in San Francisco and Faulkner's at the Faulkner House museum and gift shop in New Orleans.

February will bring a much shorter list of books. i'll be starting from scratch today with a new, as-yet-unchosen book.

Now, what are you reading, and do you have any personal reading goals for the year?

In 2011 I read an even 60 books, a personal best, for whatever that's worth. That bests 2009's 58 and 2010's 52, the year I began reading more intensively. Below is my 2011 list, in order, from January to December. Wednesday's column (read it here) is about about my year in reading.

Mostly I read fiction, from literary to pulp, mysteries and science fiction, but there was also a smattering of nonfiction. Some authors got repeat books onto my reading list: two by Nick Hornby, three each by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, Mark Twain and the pseudonymous William Arrow, four by Philip K. Dick and five by Harlan Ellison. Many others show up only once, but that doesn't mean I might not love them.

1. "Tarzan of the Apes," Edgar Rice Burroughs
2. "The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer
3. "A Tapestry of Life: The World of Millard Sheets," Janet Blake and Tony Sheets
4. "The Polysyllabic Spree," Nick Hornby
5. "Bright Orange for the Shroud," John D. MacDonald
6. "Exploring Form: John Edward Svenson, An American Sculptor," David Svenson
7, 8, 9. "Return to the Planet of the Apes Nos. 1, 2 and 3," William Arrow
10. "The Return of Tarzan," Edgar Rice Burroughs
11. "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle
12. "The Return of Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer
13. "The Turn of the Screw," Henry James
14. "They Live," Jonathan Lethem
15. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," Philip K. Dick
16. "Blade Runner, A Story of the Future," Les Martin
17. "Web of the City," Harlan Ellison
18. "There's a Country in My Cellar," Russell Baker
19. "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," Mark Twain
20. "California Crazy and Beyond," Jim Heimann
21. "The Computer Connection," Alfred Bester
22. "Comic Book Culture," Ron Goulart
23. "Confessions of a Crap Artist," Philip K. Dick
24. "A Case of Conscience," James Blish
25. "Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress," Candacy A. Taylor
26. "10 Minute Clutter Control Room by Room," Skye Alexander
27. "The Batcave Companion," Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg
28. "The Book of Philip K. Dick," Philip K. Dick
29. "The Hand of Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer
30. "The Beasts of Tarzan," Edgar Rick Burroughs
31. "All Yesterdays' Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print 1966-1971," Clinton Heylin
32. "The Drawn Blank Series," Bob Dylan
33. "The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground," Peter Hogan
34. "Captain Blood," Rafael Sabatini
35. "A Touch of Infinity," Harlan Ellison
36. "Run for the Stars/Echoes of Thunder," Harlan Ellison/Jack Dann, Jack C. Haldeman
37. "The Deadly Streets," Harlan Ellison
38. "Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere," Hank Stuever
39. "Roadside America," John Margolies
40. "The Verse by the Side of the Road," Frank Rowsome Jr.
41. "Lonely Avenue," Nick Hornby
42. "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," Tom Vanderbilt
43. "Highway 61 Revisited," Mark Polizzotti
44. "Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock," Sammy Hagar
45. "Blood's a Rover," Harlan Ellison
46. "Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb," Philip K. Dick
47. "Red Harvest," Dashiell Hammett
48. "Into the Beautiful North," Luis Alberto Urrea
49. "Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Across the Borderlands," Michael Chabon
50. "The Innocents Abroad," Mark Twain
51. "Short Stories," Mark Twain
52. "Supreme Courtship," Christopher Buckley
53. "Stan's Soapbox: The Collection," Stan Lee
54. "Dave Barry in Cyberspace," Dave Barry
55. "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles
56. "In a Sunburned Country," Bill Bryson
57. "Golden Apples of the Sun," Ray Bradbury
58. "The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion," Brian M. Kane
59. "Vineland," Thomas Pynchon
60. "Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece," Domenic Priore

Books acquired: "Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By," Anna Jane Grossman; "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick," Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, eds.

Books read: "The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion," Brian M. Kane; "Vineland," Thomas Pynchon; "Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece," Domenic Priore.

To finish off 2011, I read three books in December to bring my total to an even 60. (A complete list will appear here soon.) After hitting 35 before July 1, I concluded to aim for 60 rather than 70 and get in some longer books. For December, that meant finishing a very wordy book about the "Prince Valiant" comic strip, a dense 400-page novel and, as lagniappe, a volume about the Beach Boys' unreleased-until-2011 "Smile" album.

"Prince Valiant Companion": I was expecting a more user-friendly guide to the Prince Valiant universe, one that would compile every known Foster interview or contain thoughtful analysis. The actual book is for the uber-fan, which I thought I was until laboring to read the 60 pages of tiny type recounting every PV adventure, 1937-2009. OK, and some of the interviews later in the book were interesting, but for diehards only. Also, the synopses are laden with typos uncorrected in the 17 years since the first edition. Is this really "definitive"?

"Vineland": This novel by the famously reclusive Pynchon was published in 1990, 17 years after his previous book, "Gravity's Rainbow," and was deemed a disappointment on that score. The plotting is untidy, the sentences twisty, but I liked it. Any novel that tries to make sense of the '60s from a Reagan-era perspective yet also makes room for ninjas and a cameo by Godzilla is all right by me. Also, loved the tossed-off names, such as More is Less, "a discount store for larger-size women."

"Smile": This is a book about the famously unreleased 1967 album by the Beach Boys, which was rerecorded by Brian Wilson in 2004 to great acclaim; the original 1967 tapes finally came out late this year. I almost gave up on this book on page 2 due to the writing. (For one thing, a quote by Van Dyke Parks on page 1 describing someone as "a gyro, gear-loose kind of a fella" shows Priore didn't get Parks' reference to the Disney mad-inventor character Gyro Gearloose.) But I'm glad I kept going because there was worthwhile info and analysis about "Smile" and Beach Boy internal dynamics amidst the fanboy worship.

I'm reading several other books with an eye toward a boffo start for 2012. Seventy is a possibility.

As for where the above books came from, "Valiant" was bought this year at Comics Factory in Pasadena, "Vineland" was a birthday gift in 2010 (hi, Mason!) and "Smile" was bought at Rhino Records a couple of years ago.

What were you reading in December?

Books acquired: "The House That Sam Built," the Huntington Library; "Common Ground: Ceramics in Southern California 1945-1975," AMOCA; "Aldo Casanova: A Retrospective," Scripps College; "This Shape We're In," Jonathan Lethem; "The Tomb," "Tales From the Cthulhu Mythos Vol. 2," H.P. Lovecraft; "Take My Picture Gary Leonard"; "Louise de la Valliere," "The Man in the Iron Mask," Alexandre Dumas.

Books read: "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles; "In a Sunburned Country," Bill Bryson; "Golden Apples of the Sun," Ray Bradbury.

November was a sunny month around the ol' reading log. Glancing at the titles, we had sky, sun and sunburns. Luckily we were wearing sunscreen as we read.

"The Sheltering Sky" is the month's literary effort, a 20th century classic about a trio of expatriate, bohemian New Yorkers who circa WWII travel to the Sahara and gradually lose themselves in its immensity and foreignness. I admire the 1990 movie version and finally got around to reading the novel, which is better, although kind of existential and depressing.

"In a Sunburned Country," by contrast, was cheerful throughout. A travel narrative by Bill Bryson, who's made a career of such books, this concerns Australia, which he argues persuasively, and often hilariously, is a wonderland that deserves to be better known. He layers in recent and ancient history, chats up the locals, visits lots of museums and an equal number of pubs and details many of the creatures that can kill you (there are loads). One of my favorite books of the year.

"Golden Apples of the Sun" is a 1953 story collection by my boy Ray Bradbury, one of his first, and the first to incorporate some of his mainstream fiction alongside the fantastic stuff. "A Sound of Thunder," "The Flying Machine" and "The Fog Horn" are three of his best and most famous stories. Most of the rest are awfully good too. I've read "Golden Apples" before, but I was a wee lad at the time, so it was nice to return to this, especially after all the time I spent a couple of years ago reading all his recent, often subpar stuff.

"Sky" was bought at Borders Montclair circa 2009, "Sunburned" was pressed into my hands by Darlene Scalf (hi Darlene!) and "Apples" is my beat-up, secondhand copy bought in Illinois circa the mid-'70s.

This brings me to 57 books for the year. This morning I finished No. 58, I'm one-third of the way through a difficult novel that will be No. 59 and I expect to squeeze in something else as No. 60 before year's end.

What are the rest of you (Hugh, Doug, Will, John, the absent Paula, etc.) reading?

Books acquired: "Last Night at the Lobster," Stuart O'Nan; "The Green Ripper," John D. MacDonald; "Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever," Ellen Weil and Gary K. Wolfe; "Two Years Before the Mast," Richard Henry Dana; "Tarzan the Terrible" and "Swords of Mars," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston.

Books read: "Short Stories," Mark Twain; "Supreme Courtship," Christopher Buckley; "Stan's Soapbox: The Collection," Stan Lee; "Dave Barry in Cyberspace," Dave Barry.

October was a sibilant month, with each title I read having two or more S's or S sounds. Seems silly? Well, anything for a theme, and after deciding to finally finish the Twain and read the Stan Lee, I found two matching titles to round out the month.

"Short Stories," more commonly found as "The Signet Classic Book of Mark Twain Short Stories," is 700 pages was read off and on for 14 months. As the short story wasn't Twain's metier, these sketches, fables, tall tales and sentimental fiction won't make anyone forget Poe and Hawthorne. Yet Twain was a born storyteller. "The Invalid's Story," about a man in a train's baggage car who mistakes a shipment of Limburger cheese for a rotting corpse, is a jaw-dropper. So is the scathing "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg," which takes aim at human folly and scores a bull's-eye.

"Supreme Courtship," published in 2008, is about a president whose choices for a Supreme Court vacancy are rejected by the Senate for petty reasons. He then nominates a wildly popular Judge Judy-type TV figure whom the Senate wouldn't dare vote down. Hijinx ensue. As a rule, I'm wary of fiction intended to be funny, but Christopher Buckley won me over within a few pages. From the president who loves to bowl to the Washington eminence with four Ns in his surname, the characters are well wrought and the constitutional crisis plausible, in a comic way. I like the way Buckley slips in a quote from his dad, too.

"Stan's Soapbox" is a slim compilation of every Stan Lee column from 1967 to 1980 from the pages of Marvel Comics, plus a timeline and contextual essays. I've read all the columns before but it's nice to have them in one place, plus it was produced as a benefit for aging comics creators. It's not without problems, though. If this is meant as a loving tribute, why did no one bother to proofread the Soapboxes after retyping them? There must be one or two mistyped words per page. Sheesh. (The worst is when an upcoming comic, "Odyssey," is called, in succession, "Oddyssey" and "Ossyssey.") Other than that, a nice little book for comics nostalgists, although Stan's tendency in later years to push product makes his monthly columns tougher to take when read one after another.

"Dave Barry in Cyberspace" is a book by the humor columnist, who turned out to be a computer geek, and was published in 1996, before computers and the Internet were ubiquitous. In 2011, a book like this is dated in ways Barry's other books aren't, which he sort of anticipates when he writes that its information "would be of immense practical value if not for the fact that it all became obsolete minutes after I wrote it." So this is something of a time capsule and not among his best. Still, it's often funny, many of his observations hold true (even in 1996, it seems, having an AOL email address wasn't cool anymore) and his surprise short story (!) about two ordinary people who meet online in a chat room is a successful stretch.

For those who like to know where and when I got the books, the Twain was purchased at Cameron's Books in Portland in 2010, the Buckley was a birthday gift in 2010 (hi Caroline!), I bought the Stan Lee book online earlier this year and the Dave Barry book was bought used a few years back, details forgotten.

This brings me to 54 books read for 2011, with hopes of getting to 60.

What have you been reading? And have you read any of the above? Post away, bibliophiles.

Books acquired: too many to list.

Books read: "Into the Beautiful North," Luis Alberto Urrea; "Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Across the Borderlands," Michael Chabon; "The Innocents Abroad," Mark Twain.

Where did the summer go? So many activities left undone, so many books left unread (unless you're Will Plunkett).

On the other hand, my 2011 tally of books read this month encompassed numbers 48, 49 and 50, including a fat volume I'd meant to get up the nerve to read for a year or more. All had travel as part of the title, balm after a travel-less summer.

Urrea's "Into the Beautiful North": A charming, sometimes slapstick tale of a Mexican girl inspired by "The Magnificent Seven" to bring home seven men from America to repopulate her village. Urrea gets in some jabs at American attitudes about Mexicans, terrorism and immigration and captures the wonder and strangeness of America to the visitors.

Chabon's "Maps and Legends": Recommended for entertainment-universalists who will dote on lines like "we may have forgotten how fundamental such stories-within-stories have always been to popular art from Homer to 'Green Acres.' " Essays on Sherlock Holmes, His Dark Materials, American Flagg, etc., are coupled with more personal pieces. The longest of those, about Yiddishness and golems, were the least interesting to me.

Twain's "The Innocents Abroad": The clear winner this month was Twain's chronicle of an 1867 "pleasure excursion" by boat to Europe and the Holy Land in which he took part. Did you know Twain penned five travel narratives? He offers observations and descriptions of France, Greece, Italy, Syria, Palestine and Egypt on a trip that covered 20,000 miles. It's often laugh out loud funny as he pokes fun at himself, fellow passengers, natives and customs, including the prevalence of dubious religious relics. Five hundred pages and well worth the armchair journey. (Cutting it close, I finished the book on Sept. 30.)

Urrea's book was purchased new this spring because it was the choice for Claremont: On the Same Page, a community reading effort. The Chabon and Twain books were bought new at various Borders a couple of years ago. (Sigh.)

Oh, and I read most of the Twain book on my e-reader, using the paperback for its explanatory notes in the back. I downloaded a Project Gutenberg copy that had the original illustrations, a nice bonus. The fact that the edges were wearing away of my paperback (the curse of the otherwise appealing Modern Library editions) after a week of gentle reading was encouragement to set it aside.

With 50 books under my belt for 2011, meeting that goal for the third straight year, my intention is to continue on the same track as in September, with fewer, longer books, many of which have been on my shelves for a lot longer than the above.

How was your September, and your summer, of reading? Any reading plans for fall?

Pomona has a ton of events planned for its Big Read community reading program centered on Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon." Find the calendar of events here.

To single out four of the best: the Oct. 8 kickoff with Hammett's granddaughter and several mystery writers; the Oct. 22 chance to have your police-style mug shot taken in a fedora or feathered hat; the Oct. 29 appearance by Denise Hamilton, Patt Morrison, Hector Tobar and Gary Phillips; and the Nov. 13 screening of "The Maltese Falcon" at the Fox.

But there's plenty more, including book discussions, crafts events for kids (make your own falcon!), an appearance by the Police Department's bloodhound, a classic noir film series and other chances to see the movie.

Meanwhile, Claremont has events surrounding its own reading program, based around "Into the Beautiful North" by Luis Alberto Urrea. You can find a list of those events here.

A name that's familiar, but a face that's unfamiliar, although perhaps more pleasing, adorn a book on display at Borders Books in Rancho Cucamonga last Wednesday.

With the local store set to close Tuesday, this is the closest I'll come to having a book at Borders. (The author is a well-known productivity expert.) The business-failure signs in the background of this optimistic tome are a nice, ironic touch. Seen and shot by my colleague Wendy Leung.

A few pieces of furniture from the Montclair Borders store have turned up locally in other businesses.

Rhino Records in Claremont snagged three bookcases, which the store is using for its expanded books section, both new and used, as seen at left.

Malibu Bagel in Upland got several tables and chairs from the Borders cafe for customer seating. This table and chairs, seen below, is from the store and it looks like the table at right and the chairs in the corner match them. Thanks to reader Chuck Barnett for the tip.

If you really, really, miss Borders, you could buy a book at Rhino, read it at Malibu Bagel and reminisce about the days of yore.

Books acquired: "Ask the Dust," John Fante; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Washington Irving; "To the Land of the Electric Angel," William Rotsler; "Middlemarch," George Eliot; "The Big Book of Adventure Stories," Otto Penzler, ed.; "Bob Dylan in America," Sean Wilentz. (All but one were bought at the Borders closeout at Victoria Gardens. Sigh, again.)

Books read: "Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock," Sammy Hagar; "Blood's a Rover," Harlan Ellison; "Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb," Philip K. Dick; "Red Harvest," Dashiell Hammett.

August was a hot month, but my reading pace was no more torrid than usual. All four of the month's books involved the color red, or the red stuff that flows through our veins. That's what I read, red.

"Red": I began reading Sammy Hagar's memoir because the early part covered his Fontana childhood and I thought it would make a good column. Perhaps unwisely, I kept going. Even as someone with no interest in Hagar or Van Halen, I have to admit his memoir was breezy, cheesy fun. Chapter 14, about the misbegotten Van Halen reunion tour, is hilarious. But was it time well spent? Not really.

"Blood's a Rover": This is an unproduced screenplay loaned to me by my friend Tom (hi, Tom), who bought it out of a stack of scripts at a Hollywood bookstore. I read it because I like Ellison's work. It's a sort of reboot of "A Boy and His Dog," an Ellison novella (one of the pieces he'll be most remembered for) about a brilliant, telepathic dog named Blood that helps his human "master" survive in a post-apocalyptic world, and that was turned into a cult classic 1970s movie. Anyway, this script, probably from the 1980s, retells and expands on the concept entertainingly.

"Dr. Bloodmoney": Speaking of the post-apocalyptic, this is like a post-atomic version of the author's "Confessions of a Crap Artist," down to the Marin County setting, pastoral landscape and extramarital affairs. Of course, "Crap Artist," being a realist novel, didn't have orbiting philosophers, dead-ish baby brothers and rat-eating TV salesmen, like this one. I really liked both books, by the way.

"Red Harvest": Hammett's unnamed operative for the Continental detective agency cleans up Personville, a town so rotten it's been dubbed Poisonville, and bends every rule in the book to do it. The web of intrigue can be tough to keep straight, but since we're not investigating the case ourselves that's all right; the Op's direct narration carries us right along. Example: "It was a fairly long walk for a man who sneers at exercise."

As for how these books came into my possession, "Bloodmoney" was purchased used an untold number of years ago (possibly as long ago as the '80s, but I don't remember), "Blood's" was loaned to me last fall, "Red" was a comp copy from the publisher this spring and "Red Harvest" was bought in July at Borders VG.

September will bring two or three books with travel-related titles, one of them the Claremont: On the Same Page community reading choice, "Into the Beautiful North."

What have you been reading?

Books acquired: "Housekeeping," Marilynne Robinson; "The Divine Comedy," Dante; "The Man Who Was Thursday," G.K. Chesterton.
(All bought at the Borders closeout sale at Victoria Gardens. Sigh.)

Books read: "The Deadly Streets," Harlan Ellison; "Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere," Hank Stuever; "Roadside America," John Margolies; "The Verse by the Side of the Road," Frank Rowsome Jr.; "Lonely Avenue," Nick Hornby; "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," Tom Vanderbilt; "Highway 61 Revisited," Mark Polizzotti.

Seven books in July, all with titles about roads or driving, even if the insides didn't always match the theme. (I get a weird kick out of having read "Off Ramp" and "Highway 61 Revisited" in the same month.) What did match was that all seven were pretty good in their own way.

"The Deadly Streets" is a 1961 story collection by Harlan Ellison, a favorite of this blog. He's best known for his fantasy work. These are stories of street violence, muggings, teen gangs and juvenile delinquency. Grim, brutal, efficient, these aren't Ellison's best, but they pack a punch.

"Off Ramp" is a collection by Washington Post feature writer Hank Stuever, who's become renowned for his indepth approach to offbeat topics. Self-storage facilities, "kampgrounds" and roller rinks are a few of the places in the American Elsewhere where Stuever stops for his closely observed pieces. He makes time for white plastic patio chairs, the creator of Josie and the Pussycats and the longtime stars of "Jesus Christ Superstar" too. In the collection's epic, he follows an ordinary working-class couple through their wedding, pace by pace.

"Roadside America" is pretty much what it sounds like: photos of motels, diners, coffee shops, movie theaters, gas stations and other commercial structures, some faded, some pristine, from odd corners of America. Some are paired nicely for humorous effect, such as two successive images involving a mock Statue of Liberty, one at a miniature golf course, one outside a heating and air conditioning business.

"The Verse by the Side of the Road" pairs a gracefully written history of the old Burma-Shave roadside signs with a complete compendium of all Burma-Shave jingles, some of which are awful and many of which are hilarious. One favorite, as spelled out on six successive signs: "Riot at/Drug store/Calling all cars/100 customers/99 jars/Burma-Shave." A fine bit of Americana.

"Lonely Avenue" is a 150-page hardcover of reduced dimensions that came with the deluxe edition of a Ben Folds CD, each song with Nick Hornby lyrics. The book has four Hornby stories, otherwise uncollected. Topics: soccer in the world's smallest country, a museum guard's reaction to a hot-button piece of art, a VCR that fast-forwards to the end of the world and parents who discover their teenage son is in an adult film. I liked each of them.

Most of us are worse drivers than we think (not everyone can be above average, after all), and driving is a lot more complex than we dare believe. In "Traffic," Tom Vanderbilt marshals dozens of experts and hundreds of scholarly studies, in dense but chatty prose, to lay out the psychology and physics of driving. Informative, perhaps too much so. Key points are already slipping away from me. But it's a worthwhile book about an activity most of us take for granted.

Lastly, "Highway 61 Revisited" is from the 33 1/3 series of slim books about classic albums, this one being an examination of Dylan's 1965 opus. Worthwhile if you love the album, as I do.

As for where the books came from, the Ellison has been on my shelf for 30 years (sigh), Stuever was bought used in New Orleans in 2008, "Roadside" was bought via mail-order last year, the Burma-Shave book was inherited from another reporter here a few years ago, the Hornby was bought at Amoeba this spring, "Traffic" was a birthday present this year and the Dylan book was bought cheap at Ontario's Virgin Megastore closeout in 2009.

That's a wrap for my dozens of Megastore purchases, incidentally, and also for this blog post.

What have you been reading?

Books acquired: "Surf Beat," Kent Crowley.

Books read: "The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground," Peter Hogan; "Captain Blood," Rafael Sabatini; "A Touch of Infinity," Harlan Ellison; "Run for the Stars/Echoes of Thunder," Harlan Ellison/Jack Dann, Jack C. Haldeman II.

June was a four-book month, with no theme, just a few things I wanted to read. I got off to a slow start, reading "The Velvet Underground Companion" (Albin Zaks, ed.) to page 57 before deciding its collection of mostly amateurish writings about one of my favorite bands was too obscure. First book I've abandoned since starting these reading chronicles.

Then I smoothly transitioned to my bookshelves' third and last unread Velvets tome, "The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground," which was a good basic biography and discography. I bought this at Rhino Records in 2009. Didn't finish it until June 20, which didn't bode well for June's reading.

"Captain Blood," acquired from a friend in May, was timely as I'd just seen the 1935 Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland adaptation. The 1922 novel, about an Irish physician in the 17th century who ends up commanding a pirate ship in the New World, is great fun. The movie sensibly compressed the action and is recommended in its own right.

I closed out the month with two Harlan Ellison books. "A Touch of Infinity," from 1960, was his first science fiction story collection. It's never been reprinted in full, perhaps because it's short and only passable. I bought it off eBay in 2008. It's an Ace Double, with a second Ellison book, also unreprinted, on the other side, but I didn't read that. (Titled "The Man With 9 Lives," it seems ripe to be read some month with other books whose titles begin "The Man...," of which I have four or five.)

Instead, I read "Run for the Stars," an Ellison novella about a junkie who is implanted with a bomb against his will to thwart, or at least delay, an alien invasion. It's paired with an unrelated, American Indian-focused SF story by other authors. Neither was all that hot. I bought this maybe five years ago at Bookfellows in Glendale and read it in one day last week.

(There was a minor amount of cheating here. A slightly shorter version of "Run for the Stars" was included in "A Touch of Infinity." I opted to skip that and read Ellison's 1985 revision instead, rather than read virtually the same novella twice. Sue me. Life is short and I have too many unread books to observe all the niceties.)

So, four books for June. This puts me at 36 books for the year to date. Getting to 50 by Dec. 31 shouldn't be a problem. Do I hear 60? Or 70?

July will be devoted to books with traffic-related titles (even though most aren't really about traffic). It'll be like taking a road trip from my armchair.

Enough of my reading. What have you folks been reading?

Books acquired: "Chronic City," Jonathan Lethem; "Red," Sammy Hagar; "A Pleasure to Burn" and "Switch on the Night," Ray Bradbury; "Pale Gray for Guilt," John D. MacDonald; "Slow Learner," Thomas Pynchon; "Men and Cartoons," Jonathan Lethem; "Tales of Mystery and Imagination," Edgar Allan Poe; "An Education," Nick Hornby.

Books read: "The Book of Philip K. Dick," Philip K. Dick; "The Hand of Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer; "The Beasts of Tarzan," Edgar Rick Burroughs; "All Yesterdays' Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print 1966-1971," Clinton Heylin, ed.; "The Drawn Blank Series," Bob Dylan.

May was a five-book month for yours truly. (Alas, it was a nine-book month on the acquisitions front.)

I read the Philip Dick story collection because it contains "The Adjustment Team," on which the recent, enjoyable movie "The Adjustment Bureau" was based. The Fu Manchu and Tarzan books are each the third in their respective series and were pleasantly pulpy. The Velvet Underground book compiles news and reviews of the band (one of my favorites) from the period when they were still functioning. The Dylan book is made up of color sketches by the musician and several very dull essays by others.

On the whole, an uninspiring month, with the Dick volume probably the best of the lot.

As for when and where the books were acquired, the first three came from various used bookstores the last decade (the details escape me), the VU was a remainder purchased at Moe's in Berkeley four years ago and the Dylan was bought at Pomona's Magic Door Books a few months ago.

June is shaping up as a light month. As I write this it's the 9th and I haven't finished anything since late May; I'm still in the early stages of two books after abandoning a third. Hope you're doing better.

Anyone want to share what they've read or are currently reading?

When she was in the fourth grade, Alice Ozma and her father made a commitment to read together every night for 100 nights. After 100 nights, they didn't want to stop, so they didn't, reading together for 3,218 nights straight, until she went off to college.

Isn't that sweet? Now Ozma has published a memoir about the experience, titled "The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared." She'll appear in La Verne on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop, 1030 Bonita Ave., to sign her book and talk about it. A natural question: Ask if she considered delaying college.

The event is also a kickoff to the store's summer reading program. Says the store's press release: "To encourage families to make their own 'Reading Promise,' Mrs. Nelson's will be offering a 25 percent discount on all of the titles Ozma and her father read together (titles are listed in the book). Also, to help kids finish their summer reading assignments, Mrs. Nelson's is offering 25 percent off of titles required by schools."

Info: (909) 599-4558, www.mrsnelsons.com.

Books acquired: Too many.

Books read: "There's a Country in My Cellar," Russell Baker; "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," Mark Twain; "California Crazy and Beyond," Jim Heimann; "The Computer Connection," Alfred Bester; "Comic Book Culture," Ron Goulart; "Confessions of a Crap Artist," Philip K. Dick; "A Case of Conscience," James Blish; "Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress," Candacy A. Taylor; "10 Minute Clutter Control Room by Room," Skye Alexander; "The Batcave Companion," Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg.

Nurse, give me 10 cc's of books. Or 10 books with two C's in the title. Yes, from my groaning shelves of unread books, for April I chose 10 books with a couple of C's in the title. No real reason, other than to make a game of it and to entertain you here. Most were books I'd been meaning to get to and a theme sort of coalesced.

Ten books in one month is also a personal best. Woo-hoo! (Maybe for "Books read" I should also have written "Too many.") The first two, by Baker and Twain, were the longest, and they were 99 percent read by the beginning of April; in fact, I started Baker's collection of columns in January. The rest were read throughout April.

Ten is too many to discuss here individually, but they include newspaper columns (Baker), a literary classic (Twain), science fiction (Dick, Bester, Blish), architecture (Heimann), comic book analysis (Goulart, Eury and Kronenberg), nonfiction (Taylor) and (gulp) self-help (Alexander). (It wasn't all that helpful, either.)

Readers of this blog, i.e. you, might particularly enjoy "California Crazy and Beyond," which is about mostly L.A.-area roadside architecture -- restaurants, gas stations and such that resemble a recognizable object. The 909 example pictured is the Wigwam Motel in Rialto, in which the standalone rooms look like tepees.

(The book's bibliography, by the way, cites a 1997 article I wrote for the Victor Valley Daily Press, days before changing jobs to come to Ontario, about a building in Victorville shaped like a lighthouse. This book was published in 2001 and I bought it at Powell's Books in 2007. Nearly four years later, I find my name in it. I've really gotta catch up on my backlog.)

Another book some of you might like is "Counter Culture," an ode to "lifer" waitresses at coffee shops and diners around the country. Turns out many of them love their jobs and keep working into their 60s, 70s and 80s not because they have to (in most cases) but because they think the activity keeps them young. It was illuminating and touching.

Some of these books I've owned a long time. The Blish and Dick novels date to my teenage years, the Twain to my college years and the rest to various later dates, the Batman book, from December, being the most recent.

The letter C must be fairly common in titles because even after reading almost 2 percent of my backlog in one month, I still have four unread books with a couple of C's in their title. If April had had 31 days (or maybe 40), I might've gotten to them.

For May I'm returning to a smaller number of books with a greater variety of letters.

So what have you been reading, readers?

Books acquired: "The Red and the Black," Stendhal; "Swann's Way," Marcel Proust; "Tales From the Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1" and "The Shuttered Room," H.P. Lovecraft; "John Carter, Warlord of Mars vols. 1-3, 5-7, 9," Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Books read: "The Turn of the Screw," Henry James; "They Live," Jonathan Lethem; "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," Philip K. Dick; "Blade Runner, A Story of the Future," Les Martin; "Web of the City," Harlan Ellison.

March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb, in the sense that all five books last month were read in the first 15 days.

"Turn of the Screw" was chosen because I was seeing the LA Opera production later in March. "They Live" is the analysis by the Pomona College prof of an obscure John Carpenter movie, the subject of a column a few weeks ago. "Do Androids Dream" was the basis for the movie "Blade Runner," the four-disc DVD version of which I'd been watching (the Pomona College prof, a Philip K. Dick expert, was interviewed in the bonus features). "Blade Runner" is a sort of photo-novel of the movie. And "Web" is another of the early social-realist books by Ellison, who is better known for his fantasy work.

I enjoyed them all in different ways, "Androids" and "Screw" being the masterpieces of the bunch. You'll notice from the photos that "Screw" was read on my e-reader, a first for the ol' Reading Log; the short novel was one of the 100 free classics that came loaded on it. (Most of the Sherlock Holmes book from February was read on the e-reader too but as I owned a paperback I used that in the photo.)

As for where the other books came from, "They Live" and "Blade" were bought in February, "Web" was found used (and collectable) five or 10 years ago and "Androids" has been on my shelves unread for probably 30 years. Gulp.

What did I do the rest of March? Started in on books for April, which for no special reason will all have not one but two C's in their title. By April 2 I'd finished two long books. Guess I'm coming in like a lion again.

One more note: I read a lot of graphic novels, comic strip reprints and the like but never include those on these lists, which are about prose. But I'd like to mention an exceptional graphic novel that I read in March, Guy Delisle's "Burma Chronicles."

It's a memoir by the French illustrator of several months he and his family spent in Burma, where his wife was stationed as part of Doctors Without Borders. Delisle has also done a similar book about North Korea titled "Pyongyang," which I've read, and "Shenzhen," which I haven't. "Burma" and "Pyongyang" are highly recommended for the window they provide on closed cultures and their gentle sense of humor. Here's the Amazon page for "Burma Chronicles," which allows you to look inside the book.

Books acquired: "The Female Man," Joanna Russ; "The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum"; "Blade Runner" (movie adaptation), Les Martin; "They Live," Jonathan Lethem; "Secret Stairs," Charles Fleming; "Juliet, Naked," Nick Hornby.

Books read: "Return to the Planet of the Apes Nos. 1, 2 and 3," William Arrow; "The Return of Tarzan," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle; "The Return of Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer.

There were many happy returns last month, in the sense that all six books I read had the word "return" in the title. Oh, I crack myself up.

On the bright side, I've plowed through 12 books in two months. On the down side, this was a particularly lightweight month from a literary standpoint, unless I get points for reading three books from a century ago.

I won't belabor my choices, most of which were indefensible. The elephant in the room, or really the gorilla in the room, is that I read three novelizations of a "Planet of the Apes" animated series, which I happened to be watching on DVD. (The Apes are one of my guilty pleasures.) Part way through the series I remembered I'd picked up these three books in 2007. If I were ever going to read them, this was the logical time. So I read one per weekend, as quickly as possible.

This might represent the nadir of my serious reading life. I'll have to get back to Mark Twain soon to recover a few shreds of credibility. Compounding my shame, the show and the books were kind of fun.

As for the century-old stuff, the Fu sequel was okay, the Tarzan sequel quite good (if you've read the first one, you should at least read the second, which ties off the loose ends neatly) and the sixth Holmes collection was also great.

For those who care, I've carried the Holmes book since boyhood and bought the rest in the past decade at various used bookstores.

What have you been reading? Other than in quantity, surely I've made most of you look good this month. No need to thank me. Just doing my job.

Borders Books is closing dozens of stores throughout the U.S. due to bankruptcy, including two of its three Inland Valley locations: Montclair and Chino. Sob! They'll likely close in April.

The Rancho Cucamonga store at Victoria Gardens will remain open. Here's the full list of closures.

Speaking as a Borders Rewards cardholder, it's a darn shame. I visit the Montclair store all the time (it's on my way home) and have been to the Chino store a few times. The VG store is inconvenient for me so I'm sure I'll be spending less at Borders.

Any customers want to comment?

Are any of you using an e-reader? I bought the model they sell at Borders, the Kobo. It's cool: simple to use (most of the functions are in one multi-directional button at lower right) and easy on the eyes with its e-ink screen, similar to the Kindle and Nook. And very thin and light; it's the dimensions of a mass-market paperback but much slimmer.

The Kobo came loaded with 100 public domain (past their copyright) classics. I was already reading "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," which is on the Kobo, so I've switched from my paperback to the electronic version. The e-reader should be especially useful when I'm traveling and don't want to pack books.

If you have one, what do you think of its pluses and minuses?

Books acquired: "The Drawn Blank Series," Bob Dylan; "We'll Always Have Paris," Ray Bradbury.

Books read: "Tarzan of the Apes," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu," Sax Rohmer; "A Tapestry of Life: The World of Millard Sheets," Janet Blake and Tony Sheets; "The Polysyllabic Spree," Nick Hornby; "Bright Orange for the Shroud," John D. MacDonald; "Exploring Form: John Edward Svenson, An American Sculptor," David Svenson.

How's your New Year's so far? Mine's been busy, if burying your nose in books while sitting immobile qualifies. I read six, not a bad start for 2011, in which I'll again attempt to read 50 books or more, mostly long-ago acquisitions that have gone unread.

It'll be the usual hodge-podge approach involving idiosyncratic choices, and of no practical use to anyone, really, but despite occasional thoughts of giving up this monthly chronicle I decided to keep it going at least another year. Sharing these bulletins of my progress spurs me to continue reading and allows you hardcore bookfolk to comment about your own bookishness, voyeuristically peep at mine and perhaps feel superior from time to time at my lame choices. (Next month I'll be a ripe target.)

Still, it's a new year, and I've already shaken things up by stacking my books for the photo. Shocking. For continuity I also arranged them in the usual on-their-backs posture.

I started the year off with the first in the "Tarzan" series. Parts of this book will seem familiar even if you've never read it: the English boy raised by an ape, fighting for supremacy among his tribe, teaching himself to read. But the part where he learns French, or the climax in the wilds of Wisconsin (!), are undreamt-of in Johnny Weissmuller's world. The plot is steeped in coincidences, but as pulp literature, full of action, emotion and a whiff of grandeur, this is hard to beat.

I've been curious about the Fu Manchu series since reading Marvel's Master of Kung Fu comic (in which the son of Fu Manchu teams with an aged Sir Denis Nayland Smith to thwart his pop's schemes) back in the '70s. In "Insidious," the first book, the climaxes every 20 pages make for an unsatisfying read, as do the yellow peril stereotypes. On the other hand, Fu is a great pre-Bond villain and the intensity is almost feverish. A flawed pulp classic.

"Polysyllabic" collects Hornby's book columns from The Believer magazine. A Believer-reading friend thinks Hornby's pieces are self-indulgent, and I can't say the analyses added many books to my must-buy list (although he did make me want to read "David Copperfield"). But gathered together, these columns chart the highs and lows of a reading life. Also, they're laugh-out-loud funny. Hornby takes books seriously, but not reading, and not himself. His pieces, by the way, are a model for these blog posts but are much longer, not to mention much better.

Next we come to two books about classic Inland Valley artists. "Tapestry," produced for a retrospective at the L.A. County Fair in 2007, is a career-spanning collection of Sheets' watercolors and oils with his most famous work, including the iconic "Angels Flight," and many lesser-known paintings. The two essays, one by Sheets' son, offer a helpful analysis and biography.

"Exploring Form" is a very readable biography of an iconoclastic sculptor from Montclair whose work includes maternal and animal subjects. A nice tribute to father from son with loads of photos.

"Bright Orange" is the sixth in the Travis McGee mystery series. A lot of series this month, eh? There are always a few gems of insight in any McGee book. Here's one about communication: "A friend is someone to whom you can say any jackass thing that enters your mind. With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. Many marriages are between acquaintances." Settling into its Florida locale, the sixth McGee is the best so far.

By my standards, none of the above are ancient purchases. "Tarzan" may date to the '90s, "Fu Manchu" and "Polysyllabic" to around '05, "Bright Orange" to '09 and the two artist books to last year.

What are you reading, and do you have any reading goals for 2011?

A chronological list, January to December, of the 52 titles I read in 2010. A breakdown: six by Mark Twain, five by A. Conan Doyle, three each by Harlan Ellison, Samuel Beckett and Jonathan Lethem, two each by Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury and John D. MacDonald and lone books by a bunch of others.

1. "Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett
2. "Happy Days," Samuel Beckett
3. "A Study in Scarlet," A. Conan Doyle
4. "Baghdad by the Bay," Herb Caen
5. "Three Coins in the Birdbath," Jack Smith
6. "The Thin Man," Dashiell Hammett
7. "Pulp Culture," Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson
8. "Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust," Nathanael West
9. "The Sign of the Four," A. Conan Doyle
10. "Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002," Jonathan Lethem, ed.
11. "The Lottery and Other Stories," Shirley Jackson
12. "What Mad Universe," Fredric Brown
13. "The Quick Red Fox," John D. MacDonald
14. "Dark Carnival," Ray Bradbury
15. "Solar Lottery," Philip K. Dick
16. "The October Country," Ray Bradbury
17. "Roughing It," Mark Twain
18. "Endgame," Samuel Beckett
19. "The World Jones Made," Philip K. Dick
20. "Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion," Patrick Jankiewicz
21. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Robert Louis Stevenson
22. "Dancing Under the Moon," Al Martinez
23. "Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell With the Rolling Stones," Robert Greenfield
24. "Why Call Them Back From Heaven?" Clifford D. Simak
25. "The Diaries of Adam & Eve," Mark Twain
26. "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle
27. "If You're Feeling Sinister," Scott Plagenhoef
28. "The 'Reel' Benchley," Robert Benchley
29. "Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944)," Gordon McClelland
30. "The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966," Robert Santelli
31. "The Loved One," Evelyn Waugh
32. "Let Me Count the Ways," Peter DeVries
33. "City Lights," Dan Barry
34. "The Lurking Fear," H.P. Lovecraft
35. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain
36. "No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger," Mark Twain
37. "Selected Shorter Writings of Mark Twain," Walter Blair, ed.
38. "The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain," Lawrence Berkove, ed.
39. "The Good, the Bad and the Mad: Some Weird People in American History," E. Randall Floyd
40. "The God of War," Marisa Silver
41. "A Deadly Shade of Gold," John D. MacDonald
42. "Gentleman Junkie," Harlan Ellison
43. "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury
44. "From the Land of Fear," Harlan Ellison
45. "The Fortress of Solitude," Jonathan Lethem
46. "Life on the Mississippi," Mark Twain
47. "Marvel Comics in the 1960s: An Issue-By-Issue Field Guide...," Pierre Comtois
48. "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle
49. "Memos From Purgatory," Harlan Ellison
50. "Motherless Brooklyn," Jonathan Lethem
51. "The Most of S.J. Perelman," S.J. Perelman
52. "The Hound of the Baskervilles," A. Conan Doyle

Books acquired: none.

Books read: "Motherless Brooklyn," Jonathan Lethem; "The Most of S.J. Perelman," S.J. Perelman; "The Hound of the Baskervilles," A. Conan Doyle.

Figuring 52 books for the year was a solid number, I polished off numbers 50, 51 and 52: my second Lethem novel of the year, a fifth Sherlock Holmes classic and a collection of humor essays that I've been reading off and on (mostly off) for nearly 30 years.

"Motherless Brooklyn" (bought a few weeks ago at a B&N) is a literary detective novel whose narrator is afflicted with Tourette's, causing him to bark, curse and touch things ritually at inopportune moments as he tries to trace who killed his shady but accepting employer. I worried the novel would be unreadable or show-offy -- Lethem's prose can be dense and self-referential -- but thankfully this was compelling, funny and compassionate.

"Hound of the Baskervilles" (bought new circa 1979 and, shamefully, never read) is the most famous Holmes book, and deserves its reputation. The lonely countryside, the windswept moor, the Baskerville family legend involving a demonic hound that kills two heirs, make this the most atmospheric Holmes story. A long section in which Watson investigates the case solo is a welcome change of pace.

My paperback, which looked almost as new as when I bought it, was like a preserved piece of my childhood. I avoided spilling syrup on it.

"The Most of S.J. Perelman" collects the best humorous essays from 1930 to 1958 by the late New Yorker contributor and screenwriter (the Marx Brothers, "Around the World in 80 Days," etc.). Perelman had a baroque prose style, and while it may be heresy to say so, a lot of his stuff is finely wrought but simply not funny. Although he can be hilarious, such as his travel memoir "Westward Ha!," and this line from a self-portrait: "Before they made S.J. Perelman, they broke the mold."

Anyway, I bought a Quality Paperback Book Club edition of "Most" around the same time I bought "Hound," and gradually read it, with growing dismay that his prose wasn't as funny as Groucho's speeches. Circa 1993, I found the hardcover original and learned the paperback had been abridged. Finally, 17 years later, I finished the thing.

Nobody said reading was easy.

Books acquired: "Pudd'nhead Wilson," "A Tramp Abroad" and "The Gilded Age," Mark Twain; "I'll Mature When I'm Dead," Dave Barry.

Books read: "Life on the Mississippi," Mark Twain; "Marvel Comics in the 1960s: An Issue-By-Issue Field Guide to a Pop Culture Phenomenon," Pierre Comtois; "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle; "Memos From Purgatory," Harlan Ellison.

Mmm-mmm, what a month of books all with an M in their title! That's just how it worked out -- mostly. They ranged from good to great. Or is that medium to marvelous?

One of Twain's greatest, "Life on the Mississippi" is a paean to the vanished age of riverboats and their pilots, told through a (largely hilarious) memoir about his days as a cub pilot and then through a riverboat journey he took 21 years later, after the Civil War and the use of tugboats and railroads to ship goods had made such travel quaint. "Life" is padded at times, but it's descriptive, informative, fond and, it goes without saying, very funny. I read this book in high school and liked it better this time.

Incidentally, the version I read this time, from Penguin, adds perhaps 10 percent to the page count by restoring bits of the original text cut from Twain's manuscript; the additions are okay, but you might be better off with, say, the Modern Library edition without the extra verbiage.

"Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes," the fourth of the nine books, evinces a slight slackening of invention on Doyle's part, with fewer memorable stories than in "Adventures." But it's still a must-read for Holmesians, and "The Final Problem," which inflates Holmes and his arch-nemesis to mythic status, is jaw-dropping. Marvel and DC comics, Ian Fleming and Sax Rohmer owe Doyle their livelihoods, not to mention royalties.

Speaking of which, there's "Marvel Comics in the 1960s," chronicling one of my personal passions (although the promised sequel about the 1970s, the era I discovered Marvel, will be even more welcome).

There are layout and repetition issues, and writer Comtois, a fretful sort, is constantly lamenting the passing of an era even before it passes. Some of his judgments seem wrong-headed too (the pedestrian Heck, Colletta, Tartaglione and "Sgt. Fury" have no bigger fan than him). But in these capsule reviews, Comtois again and again demonstrates that he gets what made Marvel great. On the all-important Kirby or Lee question, he sides with Lee, persuasively.

I closed out the month by reading "Memos From Purgatory." This memoir about going undercover with a teen gang and the criminal justice system in which he's trapped for 24 hours is vivid and harrowing, as Ellison almost goes out of his mind with fright (being cuffed to a man who killed a girl with a hammer didn't help).

Everything about Manhattan's notorious Tombs jail seems aimed at dehumanizing prisoners; Ellison observes, for instance, that only after a shower is he fingerprinted, forcing him to carry an inky reminder of his presumed guilt on his fingertips. A real departure for the fantasy writer, this is an amazing book, one that deserves to be better known.

As for how I came to own each book, "Marvel Comics" was bought this summer at Comics Factory in Pasadena, "Memoirs" was bought new in childhood (when I first read it), "Life" was bought earlier this decade at Brand Books in Glendale and "Memos" was bought at Bookfellows in Glendale perhaps five years ago (although I've owned the later Ace books edition since the 1980s, unread until now).

These constitute books 46 to 49 for me this year. With 50 easily within reach, my plan is to read three during December, to end the year at 52, and then perhaps get a head start on 2011.

Now, have you read any of the above? Probably not. Well, what are you reading?

Books acquired: "Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews," Sam Weller; "Motherless Brooklyn," Jonathan Lethem; "Dress Her in Indigo," John D. MacDonald; "The Invisible Man," H.G. Wells.

Books read: "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury; "From the Land of Fear," Harlan Ellison; "The Fortress of Solitude," Jonathan Lethem.

Our theme, such as it is, this month is the letter F, with one to three of 'em in each title (including implied F's in Four-Fifty-One). Would've been better had I finished four or five, but I could only get through three. Hey, at 500 pages "Fortress" is one of the longer books I've tackled this year.

"Fahrenheit," which I've read twice before, was a must because it's Pomona's choice for its Big Read citywide reading program. "Fortress" was chosen because not only have I meant to read it for a few years, but its author is a big deal who'll be teaching at Pomona College starting in January, and if I'm going to interview him (as I hope to), it'd be nice if I'd read his most famous novel. I rounded out the month with "From...Fear," an Ellison collection that's been sitting on my shelf a while.

"Fahrenheit 451" only improves with age. In the 1970s, when I first read this 1953 novel, it simply seemed like a science fiction story. I read it again circa 2004 when the book's wall-consuming televisions began to seem less fanciful. That's even more true in 2010; ditto with the "seashell radios" everyone sticks in their ear. Bradbury even posits a future in which women routinely give birth via Caesarean section to avoid trauma, which I believe has also largely come to pass. I still prefer "The Martian Chronicles" and have to say that in its hard edge and action "Fahrenheit" is unlike almost anything Bradbury ever wrote. But it's for the ages.

"The Fortress of Solitude," published in 2003, is a semi-autobiographical novel about a bohemian white kid growing up in a mixed-race Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1970s amid Marvel comics, gentrification, funk music, stoop ball, graffiti and drugs; the story then propels forward into 1999 to deal with the aftermath. Densely written, obsessively detailed and literary, it's probably too weird for the average reader, but I liked it and expect to read more by Lethem (such as "Motherless Brooklyn," which I've already bought).

"From the Land of Fear," from 1967, is an SF-oriented collection of stories by Ellison, including "Soldier" in two versions, as a short story and as a teleplay Ellison wrote for "The Outer Limits." Some good stuff, but it's one of his weaker books.

These three constitute books 43, 44 and 45 for me in 2010. My goal of 50 is within striking distance.

For those who want to know where these books came from, this copy of "451" was bought at Brand Books in Glendale around Labor Day, "Fortress" came from the Book Rack in Ventura in 2008 and "Fear" has been in my possession long enough that I can't remember where it came from!

Anyone read any of the above? Surely some of you have read "451." Or share what you've been reading. It can have any letter in the title you like.

As part of the Big Read, everybody in Pomona is supposed to be reading Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Have you started it? Have you read it before? Did you toss it in a fire? I hope not, because it's a book about book-burning!

Bradbury himself is due to appear Friday at 6 p.m. at the Western University of Health Sciences Health Center, 710 E. 2nd St., along with his biographer, Sam Weller. A certain columnist is supposed to participate as well, unless someone in charge comes to their senses.

Here's a list of all the "451"-related events in October and November: book talks, film screenings, fire safety demonstrations, storytime for the kids, even a genealogy lesson and a virtual tour of the Pomona of the 1950s, when the novel was written.

The Pomona Public Library, the recipient of the NEA grant that's allowing all these programs to take place, has some great Bradbury material on display, courtesy of fan Bruce Emerton, including many of his books, such as an entire case devoted to paperback editions of "Fahrenheit 451," and several posters from the 1966 film version by Francois Truffaut.

Books acquired: "Following the Equator," Mark Twain; "1000 Record Covers," Michael Ochs, ed.; "The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz," Ben Ratliff; "The Innocents Abroad," Mark Twain; "Exploring Form: John Edward Svenson, An American Sculptor," David Svenson.

Books read: "The Good, the Bad and the Mad: Some Weird People in American History," E. Randall Floyd; "The God of War," Marisa Silver; "A Deadly Shade of Gold," John D. MacDonald; "Gentleman Junkie," Harlan Ellison.

Greetings, gang. Welcome to another installment of my monthly Reading Log, this time chronicling a month in which all four books I read had a G-word in the title. Goodness to gracious, what kind of a system am I working under? One with a sense of humor, I guess.

"The Good, the Bad and the Mad" is an intriguing but disappointing series of short profiles of classic nutty Americans, from Stonewall Jackson to Emperor Norton; "The God of War" is a very good coming-of-age novel about guilt and family bonds; "A Deadly Shade of Gold" is the fifth Travis McGee mystery, a bit long and convoluted but stylishly written as always; and "Gentleman Junkie" (subtitled "And Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation") is a compelling 1961 collection by the acclaimed fantasy writer, except these are gritty urban tales without fantasy elements.

"God of War," by the way, was published in 2008, a rare 21st century outing for your classically minded blogger.

As for how and when the books came into my hands, "Good" came off the discount table at the Chino Hills Barnes & Noble earlier this year; "God" was found at Powell's in Portland this summer; "Gold" was bought used at (I think) Brand Books in Glendale last year; and the '70s Pyramid paperback of "Gentleman" turned up at Bookfellows in Glendale maybe three years ago. (I've also owned an '80s Ace paperback of "Gentleman" for more than 25 years, unread. Nice to finally cross this off my list.)

These constitute books 39 to 42 in my quest to again read at least 50 this year. Next month I expect to focus on books with an F in the title. Should be, dare I say it, fun.

Enough about me. Have you read any of these? What are you reading?

Everybody in Claremont is supposed to be reading Marisa Silver's "The God of War," a 2005 coming-of-age story set at the Salton Sea. (its lead character is a 12-year-old boy named Ares, who was the god of war in Greek mythology.)

Friends of the Claremont Library is promoting this for its fourth annual "Claremont: On the Same Page" effort. Check here for a schedule of events relating to the book, including an appearance by Silver herself.

Signs around town, such as this one at Yale and Fourth, promote the effort. That's me holding the book (with its price sticker from Powell's Books in Portland).

Have you read "The God of War"? I finished it last week, and liked it.

With the end of major combat operations in Iraq, many people are weighing in. Why not Mark Twain?

Reading Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger" over the weekend, I was struck by one passage from the circa-1905 story. Speaking is an omniscient character who is mocking mankind's follies when he turns to the subject of war:

"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one -- on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful -- as usual -- will shout for the war. The pulpit will -- warily and cautiously -- object -- at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and here is no necessity for it.'

"Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -- as earlier -- but do not dare to say so.

"And now the whole nation -- pulpit and all -- will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

Books bought: none.

Books read: "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain; "No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger," Mark Twain; "Selected Shorter Writings of Mark Twain," Walter Blair, ed.; and "The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain," Lawrence Berkove, ed.

A couple of you thought I was too pokey last month in posting my July books list on Aug. 10. So here's my August list on Sept. 1. At the David Allen Blog, we aim to please (when it's convenient).

So: August. One crime noir classic by James M. Cain and three books by Twain, who is on his way to becoming my Ray Bradbury of 2010.

You may remember that I read 24 books by or about Mr. Bradbury last year, out of 58 total books read. This year I've read five by Twain and three each by A. Conan Doyle and Samuel Beckett. I suppose that ties Doyle and Beckett as my Edgar Rice Burroughs of 2010; ERB was my No. 2 guy last year (with five books).

Uh, anyway. "Postman," which has been made into a movie twice, is short, brutal and relentless, well worth reading. Bought that in 2009 used in Scottsdale, Ariz., and read it in one day on a Metrolink trip.

"Selected Shorter Writings," bought in 1985 for a college class so that we could read one or two stories, includes fiction and nonfiction to show the range of Twain's talent. It includes the editorially botched 1916 version of "The Mysterious Stranger."

When I got to that, I stopped and read "No. 44," a later draft of the same basic idea and almost totally different. Bought this used maybe five years ago somewhere. It's virtually a fantasy novel involving time travel, dream-selves, duplicate people and sorcery. Good, but strange, and not quite the masterpiece I'd been expecting. I finished that Friday.

Back to "Selected Shorter," whose hoax version of "Mysterious Stranger" proved more diverting than "No. 44." Hmm. I read that Saturday, polishing off a book I'd been reading since May.

The "Best Short Stories" collection, bought new in May, was excellent, featuring Twain's earlier comic tales and his later dark satires on greed and hypocrisy. The latter includes the masterful "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." Likewise, I'd been reading this book for weeks and finished on Sunday.

Boom, boom, boom. Twain sets them up and I knock them down. I might even read another one or two by him before the year is out. (And another one or two by Doyle as well.) At this point, by the way, I'm at 38 books for the year, putting my 50-book goal within comfortable reach.

My plan for September: books with a G in the title. Good gravy, man, get a grip.

Now what are the rest of you reading?

Books acquired: Too many to list.

Books read: "The Loved One," Evelyn Waugh; "Let Me Count the Ways," Peter DeVries; "City Lights," Dan Barry; "The Lurking Fear," H.P. Lovecraft.

Notice anything about my list this month? I mean besides that I bought 12 books and can't be bothered to list them. All the books I read have an L in the title. Yes, on purpose. It was an oddball experiment to trick myself into reading a few books from my shelves I might not have gotten to otherwise.

Either my reading has taken a playful turn, or I'm so overwhelmed that I've abandoned all principle. I'm hoping it's the former.

"The Loved One" is a British satire on America's obsession with grand funerals for pets and people alike. Funny, albeit not as funny as I'd hoped. "City Lights" is a collection of New York Times columns on people and places in the city, all gracefully written. The two winners this month were "Let Me Count the Ways," a comic novel (disgracefully out of print) about a couple with diametrically opposed views and their confusing effect on their son, and "The Lurking Fear," a collection of cosmic horror stories by the revered pulp writer, who is not for every taste, certainly, but who was for mine. It's the first Lovecraft I've read, but not the last. Ditto with DeVries.

For those who like to know where/when the books came into my hands (hi Doug!): I bought "The Loved One" in 2008 at the late, lamented Second Story Books in Claremont. "City Lights" was purchased at the NYT shop at LaGuardia before my flight home in 2009. "Let Me" was bought at Powell's in Portland in 2007, as was "The Lurking Fear." I felt better about revisiting Powell's a week ago after reading two more of my unread purchases from that trip. In fact, I read the last half of "Fear" on this vacation.

As for August, I'm trying to bear down on a couple of Twain collections I've been reading since May, with hopes of finishing one, or both. Not doing the one-letter thing this time, although I'll probably come back to that in some future month.

What are you folks reading, and have any of you read any of the above?

Now that's the sort of city I'd like to live in. But "City of Books" isn't a real city, just the motto of Powell's Books in Portland, Ore.

I spent four days in Portland last week and probably six hours (over four visits) at Powell's, self-described as the world's largest independent bookstore. One million books over nine rooms, four floors and 68,000 square feet that covers an entire city block. They hand out maps to help you navigate.

I limited myself to seven books. Just browsing was enlightening. My boy Mark Twain filled 11 shelves. Dickens filled nine. Powell's stocks used and new books together, a consumer-friendly touch. Powell's doesn't have everything, but if you can't find something to interest you, you're not looking very hard.

Books bought: "Why Call Them Back From Heaven?" Clifford D. Simak; "The Diaries of Adam & Eve," Mark Twain; "If You're Feeling Sinister," Scott Plagenhoef; "The Farther Shore," Robert M. Coates; "Bright Orange for the Shroud," John D. MacDonald; "Booked to Die," John Dunning.

Books read: "Why Call Them Back From Heaven?" Clifford D. Simak; "The Diaries of Adam & Eve," Mark Twain; "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," A. Conan Doyle; "If You're Feeling Sinister," Scott Plagenhoef; "The 'Reel' Benchley," Robert Benchley; "Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944)," Gordon McClelland; "The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966," Robert Santelli.

Seven books in June -- not bad for a fellow who hadn't finished even one by June 21, if I do say so myself. I also managed to finish three of the six books I acquired, as well as one acquired the previous month (and one each in 2007 and 2005, and another from, er, 1976 or thereabouts).

To run through this quickly, and in order: the Simak was an intriguing SF novel about cryogenics and faith; the Twain a minor work, unfinished, but perhaps my favorite of the month's reading; tied with the first collection of Holmes stories, most of them classics; the Plagenhoef, about a Belle and Sebastian album, is padded even at 105 pages; the Benchley is a curio from 1950 of stills and transcripts of six of his comedy shorts; the Millard Sheets reproduces 93 of his paintings, paired with a biography of the Pomona native that is informative, dull and horribly copy-edited, with a minimum of one mistake per page (the man credited as "text editor" was overpaid even if he volunteered); and the Dylan is a basic but gracefully written bio with many photos and inserts of repro'd handbills, handwritten lyrics and the like, a fun collection.

And, for those who like to know such things, I bought Simak used at St. Louis' Book House, Twain new at the Montclair Borders and Plagenhoef new at St. Louis' Subterranean Books, all in June; Sheets in the gift shop of the Pasadena Museum of California Art in May; Holmes new somewhere circa '76 (and read it then as well); Benchley used at Portland's Powell's in 2007; and Dylan at Rhino Records upon publication in 2005.

In the latter case, it's a bit embarrassing that it took me five years to get to a book that took three hours to read, and in the meantime was remaindered for a fraction of its $45 purchase price, but at least I read it now.

Halfway through 2010, I've read 30 books -- more than expected, since my goal was 50. Either I'll coast the last half of the year, or I'll double my total to 60. (Already in July I've finished one.)

Whew! Now, what are you reading?

A Reading Log interim report: While I typically finish four or five books per month, on my way to my goal of 50 for 2010, it's June 22 and my reading total this month stands at zero. Gulp.

It's not that I'm not reading. I'm midway through eight books, on four of them 50 pages or less from the end. I went to lunch today with 26 pages to go on a novel (Clifford D. Simak's "Why Call Them Back From Heaven?") and came back with 13 pages left. My progress is such that I can wrap up four, or even five, books by June 30. Can't I?

The fact remains that I haven't finished a book since May 31, which makes me slightly nervous. Will I meet my goal, or will my next Reading Log be illustrated by photo of a blank floor?

This is what passes for a nail-biter on The David Allen Blog. Well, I do what I can.

* Update: After dinner out with friends on Tuesday I had time to finish the Simak novel. OK, there'll be at least one book in my photo next month. Whew.

Books bought: "The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain," Mark Twain; "Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress," Candacy Taylor; "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," Tom Vanderbilt; "Candide," Voltaire; "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass," Lewis Carroll; "The Good, the Bad and the Mad: Weird People in American History," E. Randall Floyd; "Millard Sheets, the Early Years (1926-1944)," Gordon McClelland; "This is Claremont," ed., Harold Davis.

Books read: "The World Jones Made," Philip K. Dick; "Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion," Patrick Jankiewicz; "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Robert Louis Stevenson; "Dancing Under the Moon," Al Martinez; "Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell With the Rolling Stones," Robert Greenfield.

May was a big month: I read five books, not the standard four. It was also a big month because I gained eight, thanks in large part to gifts (three) and the emptying of a B&N gift card received 14 months ago (three more). Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance.

"The World Jones Made," Philip K. Dick's second novel, has been on my shelves since the '80s. Jonathan Lethem has called it "godawful." About a man who can see precisely one year into the future, it's not very good. My chronological march through the PKD canon is going poorly so far. (I didn't much like his first novel either.)

The "Jaws Companion" book, published last year, was written by an Upland resident who's a pal of mine. It contains everything you'd want to know about the novel, the movie, the three (!) sequels and the phenomenon. Unfortunately, it also contains about 10,000 things you won't care about. Some good stuff here, but the writing ranges from insightful to dreadful. (Sorry, Pat.) Still, this is aimed at fans, and if you're one, you should get it.

I bought "Dr. Jekyll" last fall at Moe's in Berkeley for a couple of bucks. I'd have guessed I read it as a boy after Stoker and Shelley, but nothing in it seemed familiar. Well, other than the whole concept, of course. This is where the whole downing-the-foul-liquid-in-the-beaker-and-transforming-horribly shtick started. Still effective.

"Dancing Under the Moon," the book of Al Martinez columns, was bought (for $1) at Book Baron in Anaheim before it closed in 2007. Martinez himself signed it last year during his stop in Pomona. Published in 1992, it's a genial set of columns by the former L.A. Times scribe. My favorite is about two elderly neighbors who pedal around their neighborhood.

The Stones book, "Exile on Main Street," was bought during Virgin Megastore's closing sale in 2009 for a song, ha ha. It chronicles the "Exile on Main Street" period and May seemed like a good time to read it, what with the album being rereleased. Focusing more on the band's personal lives than the music, and without their participation, the book was disappointing -- unlike the album.

In June, I'm reading the Twain story collection bought in May (see above), more Sherlock Holmes and a couple of other things (so far).

Comments on the above or on your own reading are, as always, solicited.

Books bought: "The Complete Humorous Tales and Sketches," Mark Twain; "Mark Twain's Other Woman," Laura Skandera Trombley; "Earth Abides," George R. Stewart.

Books read: "Solar Lottery," Philip K. Dick; "The October Country," Ray Bradbury; "Roughing It," Mark Twain; "Endgame," Samuel Beckett.

Another four-book month, this time comprising sci-fi, fantasy, an American literary classic and a play. Three unread books were added to my groaning shelves. This means that if I maintain this pace of reading/receiving, I'll be caught up in, oh, 400 months.

"Solar Lottery" was Philip K. Dick's first novel and involves a future Earth in which everyone on the planet is a player in a lottery that could elevate any of them to the world dictatorship. Dick, of course, is best known for visionary writing that was turned into "Blade Runner," "Minority Report" and other films. Never popular or well-paid in his lifetime, he cranked out about 50 books, many of which aren't very good, and "Solar Lottery" is one of them; the plotting is a jumble and the ideas don't gel. But we all have to start somewhere.

Bradbury's "The October Country," from 1955, comprises the best of the out-of-print "Dark Carnival," plus four "new" stories. Among the half-dozen or so must-read Bradbury books, this collection of his earlier, macabre stories includes "The Small Assassin," "Skeleton," "The Lake," "Homecoming" and "Uncle Einar," five of his best-loved pieces. Most of the others are no slouch either.

Twain's travelogue of the Old West is sprawling, episodic, frustrating, padded and brilliant. It's also partly imagined, which this scholarly edition details in an equally sprawling notes section that is both welcome and beside the point. Marvel at Chapter 16, as fresh as Sedaris, in which Twain picks apart the Book of Mormon. The drunk's all-digression monologue in Chapter 53 is a hoot. And in Chapter 73, during a visit to Hawaii, young Twain grabs a board and goes "surf-bathing"!

I spent two months reading "Roughing It," in between other books. I finished it with a couple of days left in April and decided to plow through something short to maintain my four-book pace. So I turned to Beckett's "Endgame," which I've owned for years but never read, although I once saw the play performed live.

It's an allegorical four-character play, in which one character is dying, his son is tired of helping him and his parents live with them in side-by-side trash cans. I prefer "Godot," but "Endgame" is still devastating, not to mention devastatingly funny.

It was satisfying to tackle the 800-page (ooof) "Roughing It," and to do so without throwing off my schedule (even if it took me two months). I'm back to normal-sized books now, but I'll try to work in another doorstop or two before the year's out.

So, what are you reading, and have you read any of the above?

Today marks the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death in 1910. We'll all be marking the occasion in our own way, I'm sure. What will they be doing on this Rancho Cucamonga street (near 9th and Grove), I wonder? After all, the story that catapulted Twain to fame, and remains one of his most enduring pieces, is "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," a tall tale set in a Gold Rush county in California.

If you're so inclined, you can read the full text of the story here.

Books bought this month: "Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook," Joe Gentile, ed.; "Vineland," Thomas Pynchon; "Supreme Courtship," Christopher Buckley.

Books read this month: "The Lottery and Other Stories," Shirley Jackson; "What Mad Universe," Fredric Brown; "The Quick Red Fox," John D. MacDonald; "Dark Carnival," Ray Bradbury.

Four books read in March: one science fiction, one mystery and two creepy fantasy. The latter includes my first Bradbury book of the year (after, er, 24 last year -- did I overdo it?). I've already devoted a post to the not only out of print but barely in print to begin with "Dark Carnival"; it's pretty good, but anyone but a completist can stick to "The October Country," which reprints the best of its stories, and not miss out. More on "October Country" next month.

Incidentally, here's a portion of a comment Doug Evans left on that "Dark Carnival" post:

"Here's what you should now do in your spare time: become a wiki editor and update the 'Dark Carnival' page, providing info on which stories from that collection can now be found in which of Bradbury's later collections, minus the four that have never been collected elsewhere. Think of the service you'd be doing humankind! Or at least the Bradbury completist like yourself."

Humankind, look upon the updated Wikipedia page for "Dark Carnival" and tremble. (I added paragraphs two through four. It took way longer than you'd think.)

And now, back to the countdown.

Jackson's "The Lottery and Other Stories," bought used in January, was astonishingly good. Nearly everyone has read the story "The Lottery" in school, right? If not, do so immediately; it's an American classic. The rest of the stories are of the same caliber. Some are straight fiction, some have an element of unreality, but most are unsettling. Women's concerns drive several pieces. A favorite involves a wife who travels into NYC for a tooth extraction and finds more than her tooth liberated.

(Click on the thumbnail photos above for larger images.)

"Dark Carnival" was listed on the "Books by Ray Bradbury" page in all of his old Bantam paperbacks of my childhood, and yet I could never find a copy. Somewhere along the way I learned why: The 1947 story collection, Bradbury's first, was published only in hardcover by a small publisher, Arkham House.

Only 3,112 copies were printed and the book often goes for $3,000. Original price: $3. "Ray Bradbury brings something surprisingly new and delightfully different to the field of the supernatural," reads the jacket copy. The book was reprinted in 2001 in a limited edition, not that I knew about it, and (sigh) it now sells for about the same price as the original.

I had been okay with missing out on "Dark Carnival" until embarking on my quest to read all the Bradbury stuff I'd never read. Then I decided to take this gap in my knowledge more seriously, compiling a list of all the "Dark Carnival" stories -- 27 in all -- and figuring out which ones had been reprinted, and where.

Many appeared with minor rewriting in the Bradbury collection "The October Country" in 1955, and more showed up in later anthologies and collections; a few more are in a British-only paperback. Four stories, however, have never been reprinted, with RB deeming them too poor for re-release.

I know someone who owns the original: Dwain Kaiser, owner of Magic Door Books in downtown Pomona. Kaiser is a longtime science fiction fan and collector who believes he paid $10 for his copy.

I made a deal with Kaiser, a friend of mine: Since the book is too expensive to buy and too valuable to borrow, could I sit in his store and read those four stories? I could.

And so I went in, sat down on a rainy Saturday and polished 'em off. Frankly, two of the four, "The Maiden" and "The Night Sets," were indeed lame, but "Interim" and "Reunion" were okay. In any event, I read them.

Now I'm reading the last of the reprinted stories so that I can say, after 30 years of Bradbury fandom, that I've read "Dark Carnival" -- without going broke.

Thanks, Dwain.

Books bought this month: "Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed," Harlan Ellison.

Books read this month: "The Thin Man," Dashiell Hammett; "Pulp Culture," Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson; "Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust," Nathanael West; "The Sign of the Four," A. Conan Doyle; "Best Music Writing 2002," Jonathan Lethem, ed.

Choosing to ignore Chairman Mao's dictum "To read too many books is harmful," I made it through five books in January and, as seen above, five more in February: two mysteries, a classic L.A. novel, a collection of music essays and a coffee table book about pulp magazines.

I've owned Hammett's "The Thin Man" for a very long time and have intended to get to it since reading his "The Maltese Falcon" in fall 2008. I liked "Thin Man" more than "Falcon," as it turns out, although this could be because the movie version of "Falcon" overshadows the book and because I've never seen the Thin Man movies (but now I want to).

I read "The Sign of the Four," Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel, in the 1970s and had long wanted to revisit it. From the first paragraph about Holmes' cocaine and morphine addiction, it's a grabber, moreso than "A Study in Scarlet." A noncompletist reader could start here.

"The Day of the Locust" is often called the best Hollywood novel ever, despite having been written in the 1930s; I haven't read enough Hollywood novels to compare, but despite some startlingly good passages, "Locust" is sour and grotesque. "Lonelyhearts," a 60-page piece that shares the book, is about an advice columnist and is even more disturbing. They're both okay but not my cup of tea. I bought this one used in 2008 in L.A. at Gene de Chene Bookseller (which has since closed).

"Pulp Culture," which I bought last summer at Rhino Records, is a collection of eye-popping, lurid and lovely covers to pulp magazines of the Depression era, when a dime or quarter could buy you a thick magazine of fiction on cheap pulpwood paper. "Culture" has wry captions (the authors don't take this stuff too seriously) and short chapters that give an overview of the various pulp genres. Breezy, informative and fun.

"The Best Music Writing 2002," bought used a year ago at Book Alley in Pasadena, might seem dated, but most of the essays are as interesting for a committed music fan as ever and aren't about music of that year anyway. Topics include Ralph Stanley, J-Lo, the Beatles, the Strokes, power ballads, the recording of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and Korla Pandit, who was a turban-wearing organist on TV in L.A. in the '50s who is posthumously discovered to be black, not Indian. That one might be the best piece in the book.

As for the lone book I bought, I own almost all of Ellison's stuff, but this one's a rarity, a small-press collection of essays. Up until now it was known to me only as a listing in his "other books by the author" page. It was so far off my radar I didn't even have it on my want list. So when I found it at Book Alley, I snapped it up.

Now, a few words about strategy. To try to finish 50 books in 2010, I arranged to read five per month in January and February. With 10 books behind me, I can (if I choose) "relax" with four per month for the rest of the year. This might allow me to work in a handful of longer books to go along with the 200-page average I've been hitting.

My big book of the year may be Mark Twain's "Roughing It," his travel memoir of the Western U.S. of the 1860s; my edition runs 800 pages with textual notes and such and after a month of off-and-on reading I'm around page 200. I could devote all my reading time in March to it and might not finish, which would really blow my schedule (and result in a photo of a blank floor), but I'm going to read it as I can and try to finish in April or May.

So: Have you read any of the above? What are you reading now?

Unpersuasive press release for a thriller touted as "provacative" (sic):

"Dear Mr. Allen,

Valentine's Day is approaching and many singles are in desperate need of a diversion from the reality of their lack of a plus one on the romantic holiday. Nothing takes your mind off your troubles like devouring a new book that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. To that end, the reviews are pouring in over Gerald Deshayes' debut novel 'Gene,' a story about a paraplegic who undergoes head transplant surgery and his life afterwards."

Gong!

Books bought this month: "Happy Days," Samuel Beckett; "Three Coins in the Birdbath," Jack Smith; "Baghdad by the Bay," Herb Caen; "The Lottery and Other Stories," Shirley Jackson.

Books read this month: "Waiting for Godot" and "Happy Days," Samuel Beckett; "A Study in Scarlet," A. Conan Doyle; "Baghdad by the Bay," Herb Caen; "Three Coins in the Birdbath," Jack Smith.

It's a new year, but numerically the reading goal for 2010 remains the same: 50 books. Other than that, there's no firm plan for the year, other than more literary fiction and a wider variety of books. Also, to make progress on my backlog, I hope to buy fewer books this year. Wish me luck on that score.

For January, my main goal was to avoid Ray Bradbury, a fixture of my 2009 reading logs; he was present in each of the 12 months. In that, I was successful, although I did sneak in a few stories. I also read three of the four books I bought in January. That was another strategy to get myself to slow my buying. They were all purchased at Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, arguably the best secondhand bookstore left in the L.A. area.

I inched along my fiction shelf by rereading "Waiting for Godot" and buying and reading "Happy Days," both by Samuel Beckett. "Godot" is existentialist vaudeville and essential reading for the literary minded. "Happy" is an absurdist parable about a woman who tries to find the best in her lot as her options narrow in a literal sense, buried up to her waist in sand at first and later up to her neck, her beloved husband virtually invisible and uncommunicative. A proto-feminist work (1961) and one of Beckett's most touching plays.

"A Study in Scarlet" is the first Sherlock Holmes novel. I've been wanting to read/reread all the Holmes books -- I read two-thirds of them in childhood -- for years and the movie version, while it hasn't enticed me into a theater, put the idea on the front burner. There's an undeniable thrill in watching as Holmes and Watson meet and move into 221B Baker Street. We also learn in passing that Holmes is an excellent boxer, a fact the filmmakers ran with.

That said, a quarter of the book is a flashback to the establishment of the Mormon colony in Utah (!) and the pacing suffers as a result. It's perhaps not the best book to start with.

My plan is to read a Holmes book every month or so -- there are nine -- so look for more Holmes as the year grinds on.

"Baghdad by the Bay" is a 1953 book by longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. Caen can't have known every soul in San Francisco, but you can almost believe that he does, as well as every inch of its soil. This anecdotal account of his city is peopled by cops, judges, lawyers, hash slingers, bums, bartenders, tycoons, writers, doormen and dames, and his observant eye, lively prose and wordplay ("Skid Rowgues," "stuccommunity") keep his prose jumping.

"Every big city has its Skid Road, the home of the homeless, where pockets and hearts are always empty and pawnshop windows are always full" is a typical line.

Balancing out the California section of this month's reading log is the first book by Jack Smith, "Three Coins in the Birdbath." Smith may have been the quintessential L.A. Times columnist. This 1965 book is a collection of repurposed columns whose subject matter rarely strays from his Mount Washington home. Smith's quiet wit makes even the mundane sparkle.

Some may find this domestic stuff dull, and even a fan like me will say it's not a page-turner, but I liked it. (Chris Erskine mines similar territory today.) "Birdbath" is a product of what we think of as the classic period of L.A., when a home and a backyard represented the California dream.

Now, does anyone have a reading goal this year -- a certain title or author -- or a comment on any of the above?

As I made a purchase at a Victoria Gardens bookstore Monday, a clerk, for the first time in my recollection, tried to upsell, as if we were at Applebee's or something. Pointing to copies of a paperback novel displayed on the counter for impulse purchase, she asked, more or less: "Would you be interested in 'A Reliable Wife'?"

Insert your own punchline below.

Books bought this month: none.

Books read this month: "Usher," B.H. Fairchild; "The Bradbury Chronicles: Stories in Honor of Ray Bradbury," William F. Nolan and Martin H. Greenberg, eds.; "The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury," Sam Weller.

Three books read this month was my lowest monthly total yet, but why not, as I handily surpassed my 2009 reading goal of "30, 40 or even 50" books and coasted to a nice finish. Grand total: 58.

I'll have more to say about this in my column in a few days -- try to control your mounting excitement -- so here I'll focus on December.

"Usher" was my fourth poetry collection this year by Fairchild and was published in 2009 to acclaim. Any book with an Edward Hopper painting as its jacket is off to an excellent start as far as I'm concerned. Whether writing about a movie usher, an armless and legless sideshow freak or a panicked and procrastinating student studying for a final exam, Fairchild's poems are good stuff.

(I've interviewed him for a column that ought to appear in the next week or two.)

The two Bradbury-related books were saved to read the same month solely to capitalize on the oddity of their both having the same title, if different subtitles. Yes, even reading plans can have their own in-jokes. We must motivate ourselves however we can.

The Nolan-edited collection was published in 1991 as a 50th anniversary tribute, with various writers supplying stories inspired by his. At various points I would stop, remind myself this wasn't part of the canon and wonder why I was reading it. As with any anthology, the results are uneven, but in the end, I actively enjoyed one-third of the stories and most of the rest were at least okay.

The biography, the first and only, was published in 2005 and written with Bradbury's cooperation and with full access to his files. Bradbury has had an interesting life, and I especially enjoyed the tales of his poverty-stricken beginnings as a writer. At his wedding, he tried slipping the minister a few bucks as payment, at a point when he had only $20 in the bank. The minister returned the envelope, saying, "You're a writer, aren't you? You need this more than I do."

I did read more than these three books. Closing in on finishing my long march through my unread Bradbury, I cherrypicked the otherwise-uncollected stories from two 100-story anthologies, "The Stories of Ray Bradbury" (1980) and "Bradbury Stories" (2003), adding up to another 200 pages. But those books don't "count," since even though I've read the other 170 or so stories, in some cases it's been 30 years, and I'd rather reread them in the original collections at some point.

In other words, having read three books I felt like reading and feeling no need to run up the score, I used the remaining days of December to mop up.

Besides the 58 books I read this year, I also read 36 cartoon-related books: a few graphic novels, some comic book reprints in paperback or hardback, and numerous reprint books of vintage comic strips. I certainly could count all those in my total. An oversized page of, say, three Little Orphan Annie strips of 1931 probably has as many words as most novels, and those collections were over 300 pages each. Technically, then, I read 94 books.

But my goal for this year involved reading more prose, and that I did. Fifty-eight books, up from 24 in 2008. Hats off to Larry, as Del Shannon once sang, and hats off to me too.

As for 2010, I'm going to keep reading.

Books bought this month: "The Art of the Lathe," B.H. Fairchild; "Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest," B.H. Fairchild; "Usher," B.H. Fairchild.

Books read this month: "The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories," ed. Ray Bradbury; "The Art of the Lathe," B.H. Fairchild; "Richard II," William Shakespeare; "Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow," ed. Ray Bradbury; "Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest," B.H. Fairchild.

2009 is winding down and so is my year of reading. Yet in November I raged, raged against the dying of the light by galloping through five more books. Why, you'd think it was March or something.

This month saw me read two collections by Claremont poet B.H. Fairchild, two fantasy anthologies from the 1950s edited by my boy Ray Bradbury and, just to mix it up, a play by William Shakespeare.

The Fairchild books were fine stuff, and acclaimed: "Art of the Lathe" (1998) was a National Book Award finalist, "Early Occult Memory Systems" (2003) a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. The working class, oil fields, the desolation of the small-town Midwest, memory, baseball, jazz, old movies and art are among his subjects. Anyone who can base a good poem on "Creature From the Black Lagoon" should earn our admiration.

The Bradbury-chosen anthologies (featuring only one Bradbury story between the two of them) were intriguing, full of surprising choices. Authors such as John Cheever, John Steinbeck, E.B. White, Christopher Isherwood and others who aren't fantasy writers managed to have written something with a fantastic element, and that was good enough. Bradbury was obviously trying to legitimize his chosen field. Many of these stories originally appeared in the New Yorker.

Shirley Jackson, author of "The Lottery," is represented in each book, with stories that make me want to read more by her. Ditto with Robert M. Coates, whom I'd never heard of before. His story "The Hour After Westerly," in "Timeless," is about a New England commuter who loses an hour on a drive home through the country and remembers none of it; he later retraces his possible route and finds hints he made quite an impression. The whole thing is tantalizingly elusive.

The "Dr. Lao" book is long out of print, although I found up a copy a few months back for $3. The "Timeless" book is out of print too, but less far, and '70s editions can still be found at used bookstores.

As for Shakespeare's "Richard II," a production of that was performed recently at Pomona College and I thought I'd reread the play, for the first time since college, before seeing it. It's one of his history plays and, while not his A material, even his B material is nothing to sneeze at.

(I wrestled with whether to count it as a book since technically I read it from an 1,800-page, closely spaced "Riverside Shakespeare" textbook of the Bard's complete works. But one can buy any of Shakespeare's plays separately, it took me six hours over a week to read it and I've read books this year that didn't take me that long. So I counted it.)

This brings me to 55 books for the year. I've already finished a 56th and am expecting to end the year at 58. No point in running up the score.

Books bought this month: "The Shadow of Sirius," W.S. Merwin.

Books read this month: "Local Knowledge," B.H. Fairchild; "On Stage," Ray Bradbury; "The Wizard of Venus," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "The Cat's Pajamas," Ray Bradbury; "The Shadow of Sirius," W.S. Merwin.

The news this month: 1) I bought only one book, and read it, and 2) in my quest to read 50 books this year, I succeeded, reading books 46 to 50 this month. Yay me. And with two months to go, yet.

Onward to this month's books. The Fairchild (bought in September) and the Merwin are poetry. Now, poetry has never been this English major's bag. I like a few of the things we're all supposed to like, but for me, poetry is like jazz, classical music, modern art -- substitute your own mystery art form if you like -- that I don't much understand and have no critical apparatus to evaluate properly.

That said, I bought Fairchild's book at a reading I attended because he's a Claremont resident and highly regarded (a National Book Award finalist, for one thing) and I felt I should know what he's about. I liked his reading and I liked the book, enough that I'll buy more of his work.

Merwin's book was also purchased at a reading. He's one of poetry's heavyweights and his latest collection, the one I bought, won a Pulitzer this year. Well, what the heck, it was a slender paperback and he was there to sign it, so why not?

I was reading it sort of by autopilot -- poems require more concentration and a different type of reading than prose, and I have trouble adjusting to the pace -- when the poems started to connect. First came one about Merwin's childhood memory of his mother's hands as she played the piano: "the veins on the backs of her hands are the color/of the clear morning sky beginning to haze over." The next one combined his parents' first memories with their last moments before death, to great effect.

I can't say I loved or even understood all the poems, but I liked a number of them, and if a non-poetry reader can say that, it must be an awfully fine book.

Books bought this month: "Keaton," Tom Dardis; "The Short Novels of John Steinbeck"; "The First Men in the Moon," H.G. Wells; "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Robert Louis Stevenson; "Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure," Richard A. Lupoff; "The Iliad," "The Odyssey," Homer; "Local Knowledge," B.H. Fairchild.

Books read this month: "Carson of Venus," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "One for the Road," Ray Bradbury; "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays," Ray Bradbury; "Ray Bradbury, An Illustrated Life," Jerry Weist; "Yestermorrow," Ray Bradbury; "Escape on Venus," Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I said last month that this month's reading list would be even more arcane and I wasn't kidding. Six books read, two by Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan) and four by or about Ray Bradbury. Feel free to stop reading this entry immediately.

As I may have mentioned before, I've been plowing through everything by Bradbury published since 1989, as well as assorted ephemera from previous years that had escaped my notice. Loved him as a boy, gave up reading him (but kept buying him) as an adult. In the past year I've gone through about 20 (!) books, with another 10 (groan) left. Can't finish 'em all in 2009, but I hope to finish another five.

Such is the price of fandom. Catching up on his output feels like something I should do in honor of his impact on my childhood, as well as because he's the writer I'm most likely to identify as my "favorite." He's 89 and can't have a lot of years left, and I would like to be able to say, if only to myself, that I've read all his work rather than that I gave up on him two decades ago.

This month I read a 2002 collection of stories (just okay), a 1975 collection of three plays (good), a 1991 collection of essays (good) and a 2002 coffee table book of photos, book jackets, paintings, drawings, etc., from his career (diverting, if you're a fan). In other words, I can't honestly recommend any of them. That said, some of the essays, the ones about urban planning (especially in L.A.) and what makes a compelling, walkable shopping district -- a public plaza, lots of chairs, late hours, certain types of shops -- were pretty interesting. Did you know he helped conceptualize Horton Plaza in San Diego?

The two Burroughs novels were numbers 3 and 4 in his five-book Venus series, the one starring Carson Napier, the pride of Pomona College. The plots wear a bit thin by the fourth book, in which Carson and his mate, Duare, keep blundering into new hostile tribes (three or four of 'em), are enslaved and separated but manage by coincidence and million-to-one chances to reunite. Still, the stories are breezy and ERB's dry humor comes to the rescue again and again.

A favorite passage from "Carson," when our hero approaches a palace door and a sentry gives him attitude: "I guess putting a man in front of a door anywhere in the universe must do something to him. The tremendous responsibility implicit in such a cosmic assignment seems to remove all responsibility for good manners. I have seldom known it to fail. When it does, they must immediately transfer the man to some other form of activity."

Next month: more Bradbury, more Burroughs, and at least one curveball.

Books bought this month: "The Call of the Wild," Jack London; "A Canticle for Liebowitz," Walter M. Miller Jr.; "One Fearful Yellow Eye," John D. MacDonald; "The Prisoner of Zenda," Anthony Hope; "Kidnapped," Robert Louis Stevenson; "Mind Fields," Jack Yerka and Harlan Ellison; "Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto," Anneli Rufus.

Books read this month: "Ray Bradbury," Wayne Johnson; "Robinson Crusoe," Daniel Defoe; "The Call of the Wild," Jack London; "Ray Bradbury (Writers of the 21st Century)," Joseph Olander and Martin Greenberg, eds.

First, how do you like the photo? Pictured are my four books from August, arrayed on my living room floor. I've gone back and added photos to the seven previous Reading Log entries, which you can find, if so inclined, in the "Books" category. Thought these entries could use some spicing up.

As you can see, it was another four-book month on the reading front, and another month in which I bought more books than I read. Travel (that involves visiting cities with bookstores) will do that. Look for a similar situation in September.

As for what I read, this month's books represent more evidence that I'm on an esoteric path, one not to be emulated. Really, two out of four completed books are studies of Ray Bradbury's fiction? And I'm afraid next month's choices are going to seem even more arcane. Well, I'm reading what I'm reading, not picking books with an eye toward public consumption.

I won't belabor the Bradbury books: I found them in 1994 at a science fiction bookstore in Berkeley days before moving away from the Bay Area, knowing they might not be of great interest but also knowing if I didn't buy them, I might never see them again. Fifteen years later, having not seen them again in a store, I read them.

The study by Johnson is worth tracking down if you're deeply into RB: It explores his themes and preoccupations with clarity. The other book is turgid and academic. All I could do was skim it. The bibliography at the back is useful, however.

"Crusoe," bought a couple of years back, will be the subject of an upcoming column. Suffice it to say here that while not easy reading, it repays attention.

"The Call of the Wild" is that rare book that I read the same month that I bought it. I got it because it's the Big Read choice in Pomona this fall. It's told from the point of view of a dog kidnapped from his Monterey-area life of luxury and taken to the Yukon to work as a sled dog.

I was expecting, and dreading, to read the dog's "thoughts," but it's nothing like that. Buck observes life around him in a way that seems more instinctual than anything else. He becomes more real than any of the humans in the book. As E.L. Doctorow says in the introduction to the Modern Library edition I read, "Call" is a coming-of-age book involving a dog, who over the course of the book sheds rather than gains civilization. But it's not written in an ironic way; it's just a good adventure story.

It's probably the book more of you have read than anything else I've listed here this year (it was my 38th book of 2009, btw). Hadn't I read it in school? It's possible -- it seemed vaguely familiar, and yet I had no recollection of having been assigned it. Well, whatever, I liked it this time.

Books bought this month: "A Deadly Shade of Gold," John D. MacDonald; "Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion," Patrick Jankiewicz.

Books read this month: "Now and Forever," Ray Bradbury; "In Defense of Food," Michael Pollan; "3 Times Infinity," ed. Leo Margulies; "Dave Barry Does Japan," Dave Barry.

Four books read in July brings me up to 35, although it was a tough month. I've been reading "Robinson Crusoe" off and on since June and I'm still not quite halfway in. I like it, but it was written in 1719, and it's not an easy read.

I read the Bradbury book (bought in 2008) in one gulp on a day-trip by train to L.A. Published in 2007, it's comprised of two novellas. First one is set in a creepily perfect small town without children. Promising, but to my mind the plot takes a couple of wrong turns. Second one is an SF version of "Moby Dick" in which a spaceship chases a comet. Better than it sounds.

Pollan's book (bought in May, published in 2008) is subtitled "An Eater's Manifesto." Said manifesto is seven words long: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." This respected journalist's slender book, about the perils of the Western diet, argues quietly but persuasively that whole foods are best, nutrition science has made us less healthy, and supermarkets and fast food should be avoided. Easier said than done, but it's food for thought. Pollan was in the documentary "Food Inc.," a compressed version of the pro-organic, anti-industrial food argument.

Via LA Observed, I see that Wired magazine's "Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles" maps out real-life places connected to the famously private novelist's life and work. I was pleased to see that "The Crying of Lot 49's" fictional city of San Narciso, home to a college and an aerospace plant with the sublime name Yoyodyne, is identified as (possibly) Claremont.

Click on the bubble near Upland in the top map.

The Wired mapmaker is skeptical, but there's a San Narciso College website hosted by Pomona College (www.pynchon.pomona.edu) in which the Pynchon-obsessed lay out an argument for why the college and town must be based on Claremont. The website hasn't been updated in years but there's still useful information there for fans.

Books bought this month: "Pulp Culture," Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson; "The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories," ed. Ray Bradbury.

Books read this month: "Farewell Summer," Ray Bradbury; "From the Dust Returned," Ray Bradbury; "Collected Shorter Plays," Samuel Beckett; "Vanishing America," Michael Eastman; "Metropolitan Diary," ed. Ron Alexander; "Near-Life Experiences," Jon Carroll; "A Purple Place for Dying," John D. MacDonald.

Halfway through 2009, I've read 31 books, including seven this month. Also note that this month I limited my purchases to two. Progress on two fronts! (I own an embarrassing number of unread books.)

Bradbury, "Farewell Summer" (bought in 2007): In May I reread "Dandelion Wine" for the first time in 30 years. This month I followed up with the 2006 sequel, which is slimmer but has more plot. Supposedly at least part of the book comprised leftovers from 1957's "Dandelion," but with its preoccupation with the elderly and the passage of time, "Farewell Summer" reads more like a product of the octogenarian Bradbury. A lot of people found it a letdown, but I think they were romanticizing the original. And I thought the sequel's "controversial" ending audacious and funny.

Books bought this month: "The Pleasure of My Company," Steve Martin; "Maps and Legends," Michael Chabon; "City Lights," Dan Barry; "The World of Jimmy Breslin," Jimmy Breslin; "Metropolitan Diary," Ron Alexander; "Have Space Suit, Will Travel," Robert Heinlein; "The Rolling Stones," Robert Heinlein; "In Defense of Food," Michael Pollan.

Books read this month: "Here Is New York," E.B. White; "Between You and I," James Cochrane; "Concrete Island," J.G. Ballard; "The Soloist," Steve Lopez; "Driving Blind," Ray Bradbury; "The Subway Chronicles," ed. Jacquelin Cangro; "Dandelion Wine," Ray Bradbury.

Seven books read in May? Not bad. Although the first two were quite slim.

"Here is New York" (received as a birthday gift in March): A slim essay on the Manhattan of 1948, masterfully written, closing on a powerful premonition of a 9/11-type event but mostly looking back wistfully on a swiftly fading era of city life. A favorite line, from the 1949, one-year-later foreword: "The Lafayette Hotel, mentioned in passing, has passed despite the mention."

"Between You and I" (bought in April off the sale table at a B&N in Chino Hills): I considered adding a spoiler alert for those who don't want advance word on the difference between discreet and discrete ("tactful" and "individual," respectively). Cochrane is as mystified as me as to why people write "could of" for "could have." Not all the Brit's choices travel across the pond, but for a grammar book, it's fun

"Concrete Island" (purchased at Powell's Books in Portland in 2007): A mention somewhere of the hilarious premise prompted me to hunt this down. It's a Crusoe-like tale of an architect in 1970s London whose car goes off an overpass, marooning him on an "island" below the freeways. A gem.

"The Soloist" (received as a birthday gift in March): Even if, like me, you read all the LA Times columns this is based on, the book fleshes out the story. More nuanced than the movie. Gasp, Lopez isn't an emotional cripple with his ex-wife as his editor!

"Driving Blind" (bought several years ago): Late-period Bradbury has its ups and downs. And I'm never sure if it's him or me. This collection of 21 stories, if not classic, was at least consistent, varied and surprising (although the first two stories were clunkers). Standouts: "House Divided," "Fee Fie Foe Fum," "Nothing Changes," "Someone in the Rain," "Madame et Monsieur Shill," "Virgin Resusitas" and "Mr. Pale."

"Subway Chronicles" (loaned by a friend): The shortage of "name" writers may put some off, but this is a neat little collection of essays, best experienced in short bursts, of NYC subway encounters and transit ruminations. A favorite: Leigh Stolle's "Transfer," in which a subway mishap involving her Kansas parents opens a window into their lives.

"Dandelion Wine" (owned since the '70s): I read this Bantam paperback as a teenager but dug it out in preparation for reading the sequel. A warm, sun-dappled evocation of a small-town Illinois summer, 1928. The occasional fantastic elements (the Happiness Machine?) seem out of place. Mostly, though, this is about porch swings, trolleys, grandma's cooking and new sneakers. In the top rank of Bradbury books. A minor thrill: Bradbury signed it for me in Pasadena in 2000.

You'll have to wait until next month to hear about the sequel. Best I can do for a cliffhanger, folks.

I was unfamiliar with the story of Norman Ollestad until an e-mail from tireless reader Don J. about Ollestad's new memoir, "Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival." The pertinent details:

A Cessna 172 crashed into Ontario Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains on Feb. 19, 1979. There were four passengers: a pilot, a young woman, an attorney and his 11-year-old son. The pilot and the father were killed and the young woman died hours later, leaving the boy, Ollestad, to make his way down the mountain alone.

In the freezing cold, he slid down the hill on his pants, holding a stick in his fractured hands to brake his descent. Ten hours after the crash, he made it to Mt. Baldy Village and was taken to a hospital, bloody and bruised but alive. Whoa.

The book has already been optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie. Here's the Amazon link for the book.

Books bought this month: "The Jagged Orbit," John Brunner; "Bob Dylan, the Essential Interviews," Jonathan Cott; "Orange County," Gustavo Arellano; "Between You and I; A Little Book of Bad English," James Cochrane; "Vanishing America," Michael Eastman.

Books read this month: "Green Shadows, White Whale," Ray Bradbury; "Greener Than You Think," Ward Moore; "Three to the Highest Power," ed. William F. Nolan; "The Time Machine," H.G. Wells; "Lost on Venus," Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Someday I'll actually read a book the same month I buy it, but this wasn't the month. (One of these April purchases I've already read in May, at least.)

Two of the above are part of my Bradbury diet for 2009. "Green Shadows" is a fictionalized memoir of the months circa 1952 that Bradbury spent in Ireland with John Huston writing the screenplay for "Moby Dick." He incorporates his many Ireland short stories of the past into the narrative. It's a sentimental view of beggars and the pub crowd, enjoyable but a bit lightweight.

"Three" collects three SF novellas, by Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon and Chad Oliver, who was previously unknown to me. Each piece was entertaining.

"Greener Than You Think" is a comic SF novel about Bermuda grass that overruns first L.A. and then the world, and yet it scores points along the way on race relations and gender equality (it was published in 1947 and thus ahead of its time). The newspaper editor character is a comic gem with his rapier putdowns of the clueless narrator. More about this book in Friday's column.

As with a lot of older SF, little care was taken in the presentation; the typesetting is atrocious, with several missing apostrophes on virtually every page, making for an odd read. But the book can be found frequently in used bookstores and is worth tracking down for devotees of L.A. disaster fiction.

"Lost on Venus" is the second in Burroughs' Venus series. The book moves at a rapid clip and was a fun read.

As for "The Time Machine," that was the clear winner this month. Wells, I was surprised to learn, invented the concept of a time machine. I guess someone had to. This was his first book and, despite its slim length (my copy is 126 pages), it has a lot to say about class divisions and the possible fate of humanity as our hero journeys 800,000 years, and more, into the future.

An especially sobering passage: "... all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him, had been swept out of existence."

I read the entire book on a day-trip to L.A., blogged about previously.

I learned from Wikipedia that there's a "lost" chapter of "The Time Machine" cut before publication, presumably because it was too shocking. You can read it here.

After three months of reading four books per month, my reading pace picked up slightly in April to five. With 17 completed in one-third of the year, I remain on track for 50.

Comments on any of these books or authors, or your own reading, are always welcome.

Books bought this month: "Soon I Will Be Invincible," Austin Grossman; "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," Dave Eggers; "Here is New York," E.B. White; "The Norton Anthology of American Literature" (five volumes); "Tales From the 'White Hart,'" Arthur C. Clarke; "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain; "The Tummy Trilogy," Calvin Trillin.

Books read this month: "Let's All Kill Constance," Ray Bradbury; "More Than Human," Theodore Sturgeon; "Pirates of Venus," Edgar Rice Burroughs; "Bloch and Bradbury," Robert Bloch/Ray Bradbury.

This is the third one of these reading logs I've done, following recaps of January and February. Buying-wise, this was clearly an unrestrained month, although I have excuses: The first three were birthday gifts, the final three were bought used on vacation and the Norton anthologies, found in the bargain section of the Montclair Borders, cost a combined $15.95. If I can't find $15.95 in value out of 5,600 pages of American lit, I should quit.

As for the month's reading, for the third straight month the total is four books finished. If nothing else, I'm impressing myself.

The Bradbury novel, published in 2003, is the third in his pseudo-autobiographical pseudo-mystery trilogy, and the lesser of the three, I'm afraid. The Bloch-Bradbury book collects early short stories by the two, writing individually. The four Bradbury obscurities were worthwhile, the Bloch stories mostly excellent. "Psycho" was based on one of his works, btw.

Incidentally, I'm devoting much of my reading time this year to catching up on Bradbury books of the past couple of decades. He was a childhood favorite and, while I've kept buying his books, I haven't been so good at reading them. And he's very prolific. I think I've read five since last fall and expect to read a bunch more this year. Even though a lot of his later work is for devotees only, I suppose I qualify at this point.

"More Than Human" is a classic SF novel. "Human" is about six personalities who excel in certain ways (mind-reading, teleporting, etc.) but otherwise couldn't make it among regular folks; together, working as a unit, they could be the next step in human evolution. Technically Sturgeon's book is much better written than van Vogt's "Slan," which I read the previous month, but the overall concept wasn't really to my liking.

"Pirates of Venus" was my first exposure to ERB (as he's known) since reading "Tarzan" as a boy. Burroughs' Venus series of four books is considered lesser after the ape man and John Carter of Mars, but it was a lively read. And the hero attended Pomona College! At some point I'll be writing more about that, believe me.

Anyone read Burroughs, Bradbury, Bloch or Sturgeon?

Books bought this month: "The Loved One," Evelyn Waugh; "Lies, Inc.," Philip K. Dick; "The Best of S.J. Perelman."

Books read this month: "Slan," A.E. van Vogt; "Slippage," Harlan Ellison; "A Graveyard for Lunatics," Ray Bradbury; "Nightmare in Pink," John D. MacDonald.

As in January, I finished four books, and in a short month too. Also, based on buying three books and reading four, I should catch up on my backlog in about, oh, 400 months.

The books I bought, btw, were from Second Story Books' closeout sale. Don't know when I'll get to them, but I'm glad to have them. What put the Perelman book over the top: Its intro is by (ahem) Sidney Namlerep.

"Slan" is a classic sci-fi novel about telepaths known as slans who are outsiders from society, hated and feared. "Fans are slans" was a longtime rueful saying among the outsiders in SF fandom. Van Vogt's writing (and it's pronounced "van Vote"; thank you, Dwain Kaiser) is propulsive, but kind of clunky. This one, while diverting, didn't quite live up to its rep.

"Slippage" is a collection of stories by Ellison, a much-lauded fantasist, published in '97, and is his most recent work. I went through an Ellison phase in high school, then moved on, although I've continued to add his books to my shelves -- they're usually out of print and notoriously hard to find, meaning you have to horde them. "Slippage" has a few clunkers, but mostly it's a very fine book, with many tones and voices.

"Graveyard" is the second in Bradbury's trilogy of loosely autobiographical novels about old L.A., this one about a Hollywood studio circa 1954, a dark secret, a cemetery and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. Trifling but enjoyable.

(I then went back and skimmed the first book, "Death is a Lonely Business," about a series of deaths and disappearances in Venice, Calif., circa 1940, which I'd initially considered plotless and purple-prosed. After the even looser "Graveyard," "Death" came to seem foggily atmospheric and even a bit grand.)

Finally, MacDonald's second Travis McGee mystery. McGee leaves his Ft. Lauderdale houseboat for NYC to pay a debt to an old army pal whose daughter's fiance died in a mugging. Or was it a mugging?

I have the feeling the 21 McGee books are going to blur together like James Bond movies, all of them enjoyable, none of the plots especially memorable. But the writing is fine stuff. A favorite passage comes as McGee muses to himself after a fruitful chat with a banker:

"...I suspected that he was annoyed with himself for talking perhaps too much and too freely. There is only one way to make people talk more than they care to. Listen. Listen with hungry earnest attention to every word. In the intensity of your attention, make little nods of agreement, little sounds of approval. You can't fake it. You have to really listen. In a posture of gratitude. And it is such a rare and startling experience for them, such a boon to ego, such a gratification of self, to find a genuine listener, that they want to prolong the experience. And the only way to do that is to keep talking. A good listener is far more rare than an adequate lover."

Being a good listener is half the trick of being a good reporter. If I ever learn the other half, you'll be the first to know.

My statement in Feb. 15's column that the loss of Second Story Books "will leave Claremont without a bookstore -- other than the one at the Claremont Colleges -- for the first time in decades" drew comment from two other stores that sell books: the Thoreau Bookshop in the Packing House and the Friends of the Library store in the Claremont Library.

For various reasons, I can't exactly qualify them as bookstores, since both are nonprofits that rely on donated material and hence have very small collections. I give them a shout-out in Sunday's column anyway. And I'd like to quote the e-mails I got. The one concerning the Thoreau store was, as one would hope from bookish people, particularly well-composed.

First, here's what Rachel McDonnell, office manager of the Claremont Forum, had to say about the Thoreau:

Since I've written about my reading goals for 2009, I might as well share what I'm reading. If I remember, I'll write one of these posts each month. The idea, and the form, are unabashedly swiped from Nick Hornby's (now-defunct) books column in The Believer magazine.

Books bought this month: "Shakespeare Wrote for Money," Nick Hornby; "Highway 61 Revisited," Mark Polizzotti; "Exile on Main Street," Robert Greenfield.

Books read this month: "Billy Budd and Other Stories," Herman Melville; "The Demolished Man," Alfred Bester; "Double Indemnity," James M. Cain; "Bradbury Speaks," Ray Bradbury.

I liked all four, to one degree or another. "Billy Budd..." has already been featured here. "Demolished" is a '50s SF classic in which a man plans the perfect murder in a society where the police are mind-readers. The book holds up. "Indemnity" is lean and mean and makes me want to rent the movie version again -- script by Raymond Chandler, no less. The Bradbury book is a collection of essays and, although I'm a fan, is hit and miss.

Four books in January? I might actually meet my goal of 50 books this year -- or at least 48.

Incidentally, I had saved "Double Indemnity" to read someday on Metrolink, because the book is a mere 125 pages. Last Saturday I took the train to L.A. for lunch and a museum visit. I opened the book on the train and by Union Station was at p. 40. I read a few more pages on the subway. At lunch at Pete's Cafe I lingered and read more.

After the museum I walked to Clifton's, where I enjoyed a slice of pie and a drink and read. At the subway station I got in another four pages. At Union Station for the return home, I boarded the waiting train, turned to p. 80 and started in. When we stopped in Claremont, I had two pages left. Well, I couldn't ask them to hold the train, so I walked to my car and finished the book in the Metrolink parking lot.

A book in a single day? Haven't done that since I was in short pants. Credit a very short book and a very gripping story.

Echoing a couple of blog posts from earlier this week, Sunday's column is about reading for pleasure. (I hope it will be a pleasure to read.)

Reading is one of my hobbies, but I've never been very fast about it. I spend too much time lingering over sentences, my mind is easily distracted and besides, it's hard to find time to focus on a book.

Have you heard of the book "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"? Here's the list. Well, in 2007, this inveterate list-keeper read 10 books. At that rate, it would take me 100 years to read all the books I'm supposedly obligated to read. (Last year I read 24 books, a pace that puts me on track to finish in 42 years if I start this weekend.)

Of course, nobody in his or her right mind would really use that list as a parameter, unless you have a yen to read "Aithiopika" by Heliodorus and "The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole. Even the titles are boring. Heck, even the authors' names are boring.

For anyone reading this after reading that column, the link to the Sarah Weinman I-read-462-books-last-year interview that I mention is here. It's also a few blog posts down in the "Speaking of reading..." entry, preceded by a piece about "Billy Budd."

Two books items that caught my eye:

1) They're more ambitious than me over at The New Yorker, where the magazine's books staff is devoting January to reading Roberto Bolano's 900-page novel "2666" and declaring January to be National Reading "2666" Month.

2) An L.A. Times books blogger, Sarah Weinman, says she read (gulp) 462 novels in 2008. Whew. Me, I read 24 books last year, some of them art books, and was hoping to quicken the pace to 30, 40, even 50 this year, if they're short enough. How does Weinman read so quickly? Read the Q&A with her and be sure to read the comments afterward. Some fellow speedfreaks share their stories, such as the person who, at 11, read the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in one day. Then there are those more like me, who admit to being easily distracted. I also like the occasional smart-aleck commenter, like the one who says she can't write more because she has to read all of Proust in the next half-hour.

Well, that was fast (-ish). On Saturday, 10 days into the new year, I finished Melville's "Billy Budd and Other Stories" -- having already read everything but "Billy Budd" at the tail end of 2008.

That meant I read "Billy Budd's" 100 pages in 10 days. That's far from an amazing feat, although it was slightly faster than expected. (Melville's archaic stylings and long, winding sentences require concentration.)

I liked "Billy Budd," which probably goes without saying: It's a straightforward story of law and justice, with allegorical overtones that include a hanging that seems an awful lot like the Crucifixion. Wikipedia has a good entry on the story.

As for the other six stories in this Penguin edition, they range from amazing ("Bartleby") to tedious ("The Encantadas"). The second sketch in "Encantadas," however, reminded me of "Moby-Dick"'s lyricism, as Melville describes the aged Galapagos tortoises:

"These mystic creatures, suddenly translated by night from unutterable solitudes to our peopled deck, affected me in a manner not easy to unfold. They seemed newly crawled forth from beneath the foundations of the world...

"As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancient scars of bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marly mountains of the isle -- scars strangely widened, swollen, half obliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark of very hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying the bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible creatures whose very ghosts are now defunct."

Whoa!

This sketch may be my favorite part of the book. As exasperated as some portions of this book made me, I'm glad I read the whole thing.

Happy New Year!

You may recall that last New Year's, I decided to begin an ambitious book, "Moby-Dick," a novel that turned out to well repay the hours (and days, and weeks) I devoted to it.

That gave me the idea of starting one long, classic book each Jan. 1, something to lose myself in during the winter months and to constitute a sort of intellectual self-improvement program. What is Jan. 1 for if not for outsized goals?

I was batting around the titles of various complex novels on my shelves, including "Don Quixote" (bought from a sale table at B&N circa 2001, never read) and "Crime and Punishment" (bought after seeing "Match Point," ditto), before deciding to read a shorter classic book: Herman Melville's "Billy Budd and Other Stories."

I'd meant to read this last spring, sometime after finishing "Moby," but got sidetracked. (The ambition of January gives way to the pragmatism of May.) Besides, given the alarming number of unread books piling up, this year my hope is to read more, but shorter, books, to fool myself into thinking I'm making more progress.

In a way, this choice is cheating, because I've spent the past month reading "...And Other Stories" -- "Bartleby," "The Piazza," etc., including the short novel "Benito Cereno" -- and 285 pages later, all that's left is "Billy Budd," which is about 95 pages. I'll report back when I'm done. Since Melville isn't a quick read, give me two or three weeks.

Anyone want to offer encouragement, or share their own New Year's goal?

Jim Strodtbeck, Ontario's redevelopment director, is retiring, it was announced at Tuesday's council meeting. Which makes this as good a time as any to share a Strodtbeck story.

I know he's a reader; once or twice I've bumped into him on his lunch hour, eating solo and reading a book, as I ate solo and read a New Yorker.

A few weeks ago, he approached me before a council meeting, opened his briefcase and handed me Larry McMurtry's new memoir, "Books," about his life as a bookstore owner and bookhunter. Strodtbeck said he hadn't known who to give the book to once he'd finished but then thought of me. "I've marked a particular section for you," he said slyly.

The back flap was used to mark a page in which McMurtry talked about finding a rare copy of "Moby-Dick." (You may recall that I read the book earlier this year.)

As McMurtry tells it, the British edition of "Moby-Dick" had always been published in three volumes, and a certain editor, one Charles Reade, had been tasked with reducing the novel by two-thirds to fit into one book. The copy McMurtry viewed was Reade's working copy, the book he had marked up with passages for deletion.

Such deletions began on the first page.

"Charles Reade was not a man to be intimidated by a mere American classic," McMurtry wrote.

"He began his editorial work by drawing a bold line through 'Call me Ishmael.' "

Now that's editing.

Thanks for the laugh, Jim, and enjoy retirement.

Five years ago, a reader named Jeremy Heist of Upland wrote me a nice long note, much of it about his connection to St. Louis, after hearing (incorrectly) that I hailed from there, rather than from remote Illinois. But Heist went on to say that he gives copies of Jonathan Franzen's first novel, "The 27th City," "which takes place all over St. Louis," to local friends from there. "Check it out sometime if you haven't," Heist urged.

I eventually found a copy of the novel at a used bookstore, bought it and put it on my bookshelf. There it languished, as if the simple act of purchasing it was the achievement, actually reading it being secondary.

Planning a visit to St. Louis, I pulled "27th City" down in late September to read. It's a 517-page brick with dozens of characters, and a plot that involves a political conspiracy to reunite the city and county, their separation being blamed for the city's slide into irrelevancy during the 20th century. "Municipal science fiction," one reviewer called it. I can't say I loved it, and I'm not even sure I liked it. But it held my interest, perhaps primarily because of the novelty of being set in such an overlooked locale.

I met Heist a couple of times, once in Pomona at an experimental, and fairly awful, traveling film festival called 20,000 Leagues, and once, the last time, in Claremont outside the Folk Music Center, where Dave Alvin would perform. Heist had a degenerative condition that made breathing an effort. He didn't think his chances were good.

And apparently they weren't; a database search shows that he died a few months later.

Too bad, for all sorts of reasons that pertain to him and his family, not to me. Personally, though, I'd have liked to sit down with him and talk about the book.

Every now and then I let slip in print what a geek I am, and Friday is one of those times, as I write in praise of used bookstores. As I say there, they really are among my favorite places. Visiting them on out-of-town trips is a habit ingrained since childhood, and my parents didn't discourage it; my mom can happily spend an hour in a bookstore.

I love the vast number of sections in the larger used bookstores. While doting on Fiction, Classics, Sci-Fi, Journalism, Humor, Music and Comics, I always get a kick out of the arcane sections full of dusty hardcovers: Military, Railroads, Sailing, British History, Metaphysics, Linguistics, whatever. (Patrons in those sections tend to be dusty, too.) At Brand Bookstore in Glendale, there's a shelf devoted to Hobos. Amusingly, it rubs patched elbows with a section on Wealth.

The occasion, or rather excuse, for Friday's column is that Acres of Books in Long Beach closes Saturday. That could have merited a column of its own, as I've been there eight or 10 times over the years. (When I was there a couple of months ago most of the good books were already gone, so I wouldn't encourage anyone to make the trip at this point.)

Instead, I wrote, mostly, about our local bookshops. Did you know the Inland Valley has five used bookstores? Me neither. They all get a plug with their address. Join us Friday for the story, and if you're reading the print version, be sure to dogear the pages and underline favorite passages.

Any favorite memories of used bookstores?

Today's column is about the community reading programs in Rancho Cucamonga, Pomona and Claremont. Each city has numerous events planned, far too many to list. Thank goodness for the Internet.

Read about Rancho's effort here. Claremont's, here. And Pomona's here.

The Pomona program's web address is the ridiculous http://www.class.csupomona.edu/downtowncenter/bigread/events.html. Putting that in my column would have resulted in two or three hyphens, which would only have confused everyone more.

Here's the Big Read website and its current lineup of books. I've read only eight of the 22.

Britain's Telegraph has a charming video asking authors what famous literary work they've never read. I found the link through my friend Greg Stepanich's blog. He offers thoughts on authors whose names pop up repeatedly in the video or in the reader comments -- such as Melville, Faulkner, Joyce and Dickens -- and addresses the challenge in reading long-winded old novels in 2008.

Is there a famous novel you're sheepish about not reading? I could list reams of them, but you'll find my choice as a comment at the end of Greg's blog post. It's a book in a series I almost, but not quite, finished 30 years ago. I keep meaning to read the whole series again from stem to stern, but a more sensible approach would be just to read the darn book. Maybe in 2009.

Feel free to comment here or on Greg's blog, or both places, on your own secret shame.

No, that's not the headline atop the Bulletin's "click picks" list online. It's the title of a collection of post-Katrina columns from Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

I picked up a copy at Beckham's Bookshop while visiting the City That Care Forgot, having heard good things. I dipped in, liked what I read and bought it. By the time I'd left for home I'd read about half, finishing the back half a few days ago.

Excellent stuff. Rose became a voice for the Crescent City, chronicling the community's collective despair, helplessness and triumph. He defends Mardi Gras, cheers for the Saints and finds a strange sense of excitement when the first stoplight is turned back on. There's also the story of Miss Ellen, his shut-in neighbor who whiled away her time after the hurricane by painting pictures on blown-off roof shingles.

By the end of 2006, where the book ends, Rose was recovering from a near-breakdown, much like his city.

He's rarely angry in his columns but usually direct, empathetic and often very funny.

So, for anyone interested in a ground-level view of New Orleans' recovery, as well as in reading a real columnist for a change (ahem), "1 Dead in Attic" is recommended.

My column on “Moby-Dick” prompted an invitation to the rare book room of Scripps College’s Denison Library, where librarian Judy Harvey Sahak, who tendered the invite, brought out a special edition of Melville’s classic for me to peruse.

It was my first visit to the rare book room, and the place is impressive, with scads of old and limited edition tomes, including an enormous Medieval choirbook from the early 1500s.

My copy of "Moby-Dick" was purchased at a Starbucks, of all places, where it was sold amidst mugs and bags of coffee. The novel's first mate is named Starbuck, the apparent connection.

This version, as Harvey Sahak had suspected from comments in my column, is a paperback reprint of the deluxe edition published by Andrew Hoyem, a Pomona College alumnus and much-lauded printer, in 1979. Photographs of each page were taken for the paperback to reproduce the way-cool type and the woodcut illustrations.

Well, Harvey Sahak showed me Hoyem’s hardcover original.

Only 265 copies were printed. The paper is heavy and bluish-gray, like the sea, and was handmade in England. Consequently, the book is six inches thick. Its dimensions are roughly 18 inches by 30 inches. Original cost: $1,000. It's a thing of beauty.

We rested the book on a table — oof! — and I read a few favorite passages. Quite a novel, and quite an edition, and it was very nice of Harvey Sahak to invite me over.

Bang for the buck, though, I’m content with my $25 “Moby-Dick.” Especially since it was discounted to $10, which represents 1 percent of the original hardcover price.

Call me practical, as well as Ishmael.

I'm overdue telling you this: I finished "Moby-Dick"!

I wrapped it up on Easter weekend. Sorry for the delay; "Hal Linker" got in the way.

The final three chapters follow the last three days of the hunt for the white whale. Read the first on that Saturday, then the final two on that Sunday at Coffee Bean -- fitting, since I'd read so much of the novel there. Except it was so hot I got an iced drink to cool down, not my usual, a hot drink to warm up.

A little sobering to note that between when I started the book (Jan. 1) and when I finished (March 23), the seasons had turned.

For the record, the ending did nothing to dissuade me from my opinion that "Moby-Dick" is awesome. In fact it reinforced that feeling.

My plan is to write a column about "Moby" in the near future. In the meantime, let the heavens ring with the news that I've completed my quest, a bit more happily than Ahab did.

When last I wrote about "Moby-Dick," on Feb. 6, I was at Chapter 54 and page 248.

Since then I've read 47 chapters and 209 pages and still am not done, although I'm getting there, inch by inch. As of Monday I'm up to Chapter 102 (out of 135) and page 457 (out of 577), reading at least four pages every single day since Jan. 1, and sometimes more. Sunday I read 32 pages, which took an hour of concentration at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, where I've read big chunks of the book. (I know I should read at Starbucks, since Starbuck is Ahad's first mate, but I like Coffee Bean better.)

Also since Feb. 6, the Claremont Insider blog devoted a post to my quest for the White Whale. Strange to think that the big news in Claremont that morning was that a Claremont resident was reading "Moby-Dick," but just when I was coming to grips with that, they quickly went back to deriding the Claremont elite and all was right in the world. I did appreciate the attention on myself and the book.

So here's where I am: The Pequod is still on the open ocean and, despite Ahab asking passing ships "Hast thou seen the White Whale?" two or three times already, we've yet to see him.

Do I feel cheated? Not at all. It's an amazing book, full of poetry and philosophy and humor. The anticipation and buildup is part of what makes "Moby-Dick" a classic.

The book is full of digressions about whales and whaling. Entire chapters are devoted to the parts of the whale, such as the skin ("The Blanket"), the forehead ("The Prairie"), the spout ("The Fountain"), the brain ("The Nut"), the head ("The Battering-Ram") and the tail ("The Tail"). An editor could pull all the digressions out and leave a book half the size that would have thrust and momentum. However, at that point you would have a nice whaling tale for boys. It's the digressions, in my opinion, that make the book.

The whale -- Leviathan, as Melville often calls it -- was in his day, and ours, the most incredible mammal in existence, and yet still somewhat mysterious and unknowable, at least at that time. The way he explores and ruminates upon each aspect of the whale, and details how each bit was mined and used by man, can try one's patience at times, but I find those chapters among my favorite, and the most lyrical. They make the whale loom even larger in our imagination.

At any rate, I've got 120 pages to go, or about four hours of reading; two minutes per page is as fast as I can go with Melville, as he takes a lot of concentration. I should finish by the middle of March.

Hopefully the whale shows up by then.

You may recall that my New Year's goal was to read "Moby-Dick."

Well, at the one-month point, a progress report: I'm at page 248, out of 577, or Chapter 54 of 135. At this rate I'll finish by the end of March, which isn't bad; I initially thought it could take me to the end of April.

Did you know Barack Obama cites "Moby-Dick," and also "Beloved," as his favorite books? When I read that, I suddenly became an Obama fan.

"Moby-Dick" is an amazing book -- there's a reason classics are classics -- although it's not what you would call a quick read, owing to long sentences filled with semi-colons that sometimes require a second or third reading to decipher. Some of the language is jaw-droppingly lyrical, though. My schedule is such that it's rare I can find even a half-hour a day to read it, further limiting my progress.

Still, I've managed to read a little bit every single day since Jan. 1, usually six or eight pages. It's not much individually, but nibbling at it daily does make a difference.

Call me Incrementalist.

I've just read "Muscatel at Noon," a 1951 collection of essays by Matt Weinstock, a columnist for the old L.A. Daily News. Bought it a few months ago, I think at Magic Door Books in Pomona, and it's a fun read. (Still gotta read "My L.A.," his earlier, and sole other, book, which I know I bought at Magic Door.) Weinstock was the spiritual father of Jack Smith, the Times columnist who came along a bit later, and he penned witty, self-effacing, character-rich pieces in the days before L.A. became a metropolis.

You'll see why I like him with this excerpt from the back jacket: "Mr. Weinstock says the nicest thing he can say about himself is that he is a working newsman -- despite the fact that he writes a column. Incidentally, his only formula is to try to get around to as many places as possible. He doesn't try to prove things, merely to report, reflect and have a little fun."

There's plenty of great writing inside. One favorite piece begins: "When old timers get together and cry in their beer over the days that used to be in Los Angeles they invariably think of Morris Schlocker, though many of them don't know him by name. Morris Schlocker painted no picture, designed no bridge, founded no memorial. He was, in fact, only a street sweeper. But in his way, he was an artist."

This next bit is sort of an inside-baseball thing but may prove illuminating. Weinstock at one point mentions that his newspaper publishes six editions a day. Imagine, six editions! These days, even big-city newspapers typically publish only one. But it struck me that in a way, newspapers are returning to the multiple-edition concept.

At dailybulletin.com, our online elves stealthily post stories throughout the day and night as they're finished. The idea from the higher-ups is that we're now a 24-hour newsroom. Well, not exactly: There are no news reporters on duty for about 10 of those hours, between roughly 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. But rather than wait until dawn, when the newspaper lands in your gardenias, you can log on at various points in the day or night and find fresh content.

Wonder what Weinstock would think of all this? He'd probably be curious and amused, as he was by so much else.

Skipping out on both dinner and the Pomona City Council on Monday night, I instead left work and headed directly to Pasadena to see novelist Janet Fitch read from and sign her second novel, "Paint It Black," at Vroman's Bookstore.

I interviewed Fitch in 2001 for a Bulletin feature story when she taught creative writing for a semester at Pomona College. She was a good interview subject and nice about everything. "White Oleander" was a bit flowery for my tastes but she's clearly a good writer, and I wanted to do a good job on the story.

Of course it's excruciating to write a story about a writer because you know the writer will read it, and the writer is always, always, going to be a much better writer than you.

When you write about a writer, let me tell you, you worry over each sentence, as much as deadline allows. You do your best to write grammatically, to eliminate awkwardness and to not be trite. You show off a little with what you imagine is a literary turn of phrase here and there, but even that little is probably too much. No doubt the writer is reading you with an indulgent smile, interrupted by an occasional wince.

But enough about my problems. Fitch said my story was fine and signed a very nice inscription in my copy of "White Oleander," as well as drawing a sketch of an oleander, which is a poisonous plant, and writing next to it: "Don't pick the oleander."

Her second novel got lavish praise -- "Janet Fitch is an artist of the very highest order," declared the L.A. Times, between drags on a French cigarette -- so I forsook our noble Pomona leaders to see her closest local appearance and pick up a copy.

"Paint It Black" is set in L.A. at the end of 1980, after the suicide of Germs singer Darby Crash and the death two days later of ex-Beatle John Lennon. The main character is an artists' model at the Otis Art Institute, when it was near MacArthur Park, Fitch explained.

At a previous event, "someone said, 'Oh, it's a historical novel,' " Fitch recounted, to laughter. "Well, I guess to some people it is."

Of her dark themes, such as the aftermath of suicide, she said: "My writing is all about how people internalize difficult experiences ... I'm interested in the times of life when people are pushed to the extreme."

When it comes to others' writing, she most enjoys reading, and listening to, poetry; its musicality teaches her to write her own sentences with what seem like the right number of syllables and beats.

(Naturally we do this in the Bulletin newsroom, everyone reading his or her work aloud on deadline: "A man was stabbed at a party in Fontana," "City leaders in Rancho Cucamonga are mulling a smoking ban," "After deliberating three days, a jury reached a verdict.")

Afterward I got in line to have my book signed. Fitch volunteered that she had kept looking at me knowing she knew me from somewhere but unable to place me. Well, it's been six years, so she gets points for even semi-remembering me. She wrote something nice in my book and thanked me for making the drive.

At this point I thought I could catch the last part of the Pomona meeting, so, dedicated Pomona-ite that I am, I didn't linger at Vroman's. When I got to Pomona I lucked out, sailing along down Garey, every light either green or turning green as I approached. But at City Hall, even though it was only 8:55, there was only one car in the parking lot. Must have been a short meeting by Pomona standards. Sometimes by 8:55 they're still arguing over the consent agenda.

Too bad. I could have hung around Pasadena some more. Maybe even had some dinner.

I've written in my column about the NEA-affiliated Big Read drives in Pomona and Rancho Cucamonga and the independent On the Same Page drive in Claremont, in which residents were urged to read "Bless Me, Ultima," "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Cannery Row," respectively.

I finished "Mockingbird" on my lunch break Thursday, completing the trifecta.

(My favorite line is the first sentence of Chapter 10, the daughter saying of her father: "Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty.")

Tuesday I heard Steinbeck scholar Robert Morsberger speak at the Claremont Library, the final event in the "Cannery Row" series. Morsberger named "The Grapes of Wrath," "Cannery Row" and "In Dubious Battle" as his Steinbeck favorites. "'Cannery Row' is the book I most enjoy rereading," he said, describing it as funny and poetic. A friend, he added, says Doc is one of her favorite characters in literature.

Thursday I heard Mary Badham speak at Rancho Cucamonga's Celebration Hall about her role as Scout in the movie version of "Mockingbird." Badham, the sister of director John Badham, said she got the part in an audition in her native Alabama. She was honest enough to admit she was too young during filming to remember a whole lot other than Gregory Peck's kindness and the boy actors fighting with her.

She was a real-life tomboy, so the part fit her. But she wasn't especially interested in acting, she said, and thus didn't do much after "Mockingbird," although, among other things, she was in the very last "Twilight Zone" episode. As a first-timer without an agent, she didn't get paid much for playing Scout. "I think the last residual check I got was for 89 cents," she added. No wonder she was charging $20 for her autograph after the talk.

I already wrote about seeing Gustavo Arellano speak in Pomona about "Ultima," which meant I went to at least one book event in each of the three cities.

But only Rancho Cucamonga put me on a poster.

Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel laureate for literature, spoke Thursday night at Claremont McKenna College, and it was yet another count-your-lucky-stars moments, to get to hear a world-class thinker and writer expound so close to home, and free of charge.

Pamuk read excerpts from two of his essays, one describing Istanbul, the other constituting a monologue from his daughter's point of view on all the reasons she didn't want to go to school. (Among them: "The teacher gives me a nasty look, and she doesn't look too good to begin with.") He talked about why he writes, listing a series of explanations: he "can't do normal work," he likes to be alone, he likes the attention, he likes the smell of paper and ink and he wants to read books like his. He also spoke of representing Turkey to the world through his work.

Pamuk, as you may know, faced prison for speaking openly about the Armenian genocide, which his government refuses to acknowledge. After an international outcry, he was instead accused of "insulting Turkishness," a charge that was quietly dropped. He didn't talk about that directly on Thursday, nor did he say anything about the faltering move in Congress to press Turkey on the genocide issue.

"If your country is troubled, as mine is, those troubles find their way back to me in journalists' questions, and then I cannot shut up my mouth," Pamuk said. Other than that remark, he did a good job of shutting up his mouth.

Afterward he signed books. "Snow," his most popular novel, sold out right before I got to the sales table. Instead, I picked up "The Black Book," a novel whose back cover notes that one of the characters is "a popular newspaper columnist." Maybe I can pick up some pointers.

Gustavo Arellano, who writes the "Ask a Mexican" column for the OC Weekly, came to Pomona Saturday afternoon to talk about "Bless Me, Ultima," the Rudolfo Anaya novel that everyone in Pomona is asked to read as part of an NEA-funded program, the Pomona Big Read.

Calling it "an amazing book," Arellano told an audience of 50 in the Cal Poly Pomona Downtown Center that he first encountered it in English class in Anaheim and was won over -- first by its profanity ("That was the first time I had ever seen curse words in a book") and then by its power. He said the novel, about an immigrant boy growing up in New Mexico during World War II and torn between his mother's desire that he become a priest and his father's that he become a laborer, is "as American a novel as you'll find."

During the Q&A, nobody asked about "Ultima." Instead, they wanted to know about his column. He said he gets 50 to 60 questions a week and has a backlog of several hundred, enough to keep him going six years if no one ever again asked one.

"People are just fascinated by Mexicans," he said with a smile. Aren't we, though?

I hope to write about the various city-reads efforts (Pomona, Claremont and Rancho Cucamonga) in print this week or next. Meanwhile, I've gotta get back to "Ultima."

I'm a bit late in noting this, but Kem Nunn's 1992 novel "Pomona Queen" has been optioned for a movie. According to a Variety article forwarded by Derek Deason, Shoreline Entertainment has hired Jeremiah Chechik to direct the film, with Christopher Doyle as cinematographer and with shooting to begin before the end of the year.

As Variety summarizes the plot: "The book revolves around Earl Dean. He is a broken-hearted door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman who happens to knock on the wrong door. Before he knows what happened, he is embroiled in a stranger's manic quest to avenge the death of a brother. The story takes place over the course of one night."

It also takes place in -- where else? -- Pomona, with mentions of such local spots as the Midway bar, Golden Ox hamburgers and Buffum's department store. After I recommended the book in print a few years ago, readers were divided on its merits, with its grittiness turning off some and delighting others. For my money it's an entertaining way to learn the darker side of our local history.

Nunn, a former Pomona Library page, has gone on to write several well-regarded "surf noir" novels and he created HBO's recent "John From Cincinnati" series.

Incidentally, the Pomona Queen of the title was a real-life orange crate label. Now it's the name of a local brew by Dale Brothers. That probably means something, but I'm not sure what.

Gore Vidal, that is. The novelist, playwright and essayist spoke Tuesday evening at the Claremont McKenna College Athenaeum to impressionable college students, town graybeards and journalists (me).

At this point the literary lion doesn't roar, he merely speaks in a sepulchral purr. To summarize his key points, America has been in deep decline for five decades, the world hates us, things are unlikely to improve and most of us are too dumb to know it, to know our own history, or to care.

Moderator: "So I'm not hearing a lot of hope."

Vidal, poker-faced: "I bubble with it."

On what passed for the bright side, Vidal said in response to a question about 9/11: "Bush didn't do it. He's too incompetent."

If you hear reports of a mass suicide in Claremont, you'll know what triggered it.