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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.