3.18.2003

What I'm reading right now is Joyce Cary's funny, effulgent The Horse's Mouth

I've only made it through Basin & Range, the first book in McPhee's Annals of the Former World, and will read through the rest as soon as I can, but Jonathan Carroll's White Apples was due at the library soon, so I skipped to that -- good stuff, but he doesn't seem to be at his best in third person (the voice sounds an awful lot like the first, but with none of the benefits -- but there's sharp bits on sex, love, and death, along with a Humboldt penguin, some nice twists, random surrealism, and absolutely convincing moments on the malleability of time and identity. Well worth reading).

3.01.2003

What I'm reading right now is John McPhee's Annals of the Former World.

Vivir Para Contarla was wonderful, as were Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust (way way better than Brideshead) and Philip Roth's The Dying Animal (dark and bitter and incredible).