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Little Kodansha Murakami Books

So I love Haruki Murakami. I am slowly reading through everything he has written. I read A Wild Sheep Chase* and then found it is the third book in the Trilogy of the Rat. Hear the Wind Sing* and Pinball, 1973* are the first two volumes.

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 Unwrapped

They are not in printed in the US, though Alfred Birnbaum did translations of both. I found new copies through Amazon Marketplace* and ordered them.

These very small paperbacks were about $25 each, but I had had enough wine to drink that I threw financial caution to the wind and ordered them both. And I am very glad that I did. They arrived quickly and were nicely wrapped.

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 WrappedOne of the Rat Trilogy Wrapped, Close Up

They are adorable little paperbacks that even have dust jackets.

Pinball, 1973 Showing Dust JacketPinball, 1973 Next to Dust Jacket

The publisher has even included little bookmarks.

Bookmarks included in the two Rat Trilogy books

I love these books.

I guess the moral of the story is, always drink too much and be fearless where spending is concerned.

Kafka on the Shore

That was fast! I already finished those two books. May be a record for me, the slowest reader I know.

Started Kafka on the Shore* by Haruki Murakami. Fifteen-year-old runaway. Talking cats. Unexplained (so far) unconsciousness in children. What more could you want?

Kafka on the Shore

While it’s not exactly summer reading for me (ok, I didn’t finish that in the summer…. but I did read it all summer long), it’s not exactly a quickie at 448 pages. I’ll have to try to keep up my pace, since this one’s checked out from the library. Luckily, it’s the school library and Patrick gets extended checkout times since he’s faculty. Whew!

Two Books from Two Friends

I don’t usually read more that one book at a time, with the exception of technical or work-related books. I’m pretty much the opposite of Patrick, who claims he reads too many books at once. Call me monobiblious? Anyway. Recently, two friends each gave me a book… I couldn’t decide which to read first, so I decided to read both. Going out on a limb here, truly!

How To Design a Typeface

David gave me How to Design a Typeface* by Design Museum. I read about half of it one morning. It has some interesting stuff about type history and such. I’m not to the case study portion, yet, which is where I think the “how to” will come into play.

The Violent Bear It Away

Dennis gave me The Violent Bear it Away* by Flannery O’Connor after we had talked about it and some of her other works. I read and loved Wise Blood* (Did you know there’s also a movie*? It’s one that actually does the book justice! Oh. And Ministry pays tribute to Flannery O’Connor using samples from the movie in Jesus Built My Hotrod* {and yes, I have that on vinyl and it didn’t cost me $50… and I’m not interested in selling it…]). I’m about halfway through TVBIA and loving it so far. But you expected that, didn’t you… When I’m finished with it, I’ll donate it to The Civil Life Library as Dennis suggested, so if you’re in Saint Louis you can stop by there and start reading it while you enjoy a tasty brew or two… or ten.

Thanks, Dennis and David!

I Felt Sober

“I felt sober, or rather, since feeling completely sober had been disagreeable to me for some years, fairly sober.” Kingsley Amis, The Green Man*

The Civil Life Library

Because I like to read books, I wanted a career that would pay me to read. There really isn’t one. Even an acquisitions editor probably reads 100 terrible pages for every good one. And my dreams of being an English professor (most of which centered around an endless wine-soaked sabbatical) were laughably unrealistic. The kind of reading one does while teaching freshman composition (and there is a great deal of it) is not quite what I had in mind. The crowning insult is that it doesn’t pay very well either. So I needed another job. Thankfully my friend Jake hired me to tend bar at The Civil Life . I had spent the previous years of my life on the other side of the bar, but as Charles Bukowski once said, “Hey, either side’s fine, as long as the bottle pours.”

[UPDATE 2012-03-20: In this space, I used to have an embedded LIFE magazine slideshow of pictures of various authors who are/were heavy drinkers. It appears that is no longer available.]

So as not to have wasted my twenty years of college, I carefully assembled a library of great books and installed them at The Civil Life. Read more about it here.

I Read Too Many Books at Once

I’m a little apprehensive about these “what I’ve been reading” posts. I love books and I read a lot, but the truth is, in some ways, I’m not the best reader. I read too many books at once and invariably abandon some, only to return to them years later. So any single snapshot of the books I am currently reading is accurate only in the strictest sense. I’m easily tempted. In the long list of the books I am working through, I am probably only actively reading say three on any given day.

I was reading David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years,* which is a fascinating study of how debt and fairly elaborate credit systems have almost always been the norm.

debt

Money was actually a later invention. Barter, at least as it’s treated in economics textbooks, is all but a fiction, historically. In fact Graeber basically paints economics itself as a completely bogus field. Having pursued a degree in it before turning to literature, I was oddly cheered. I wasted four years, but so did Alan Greenspan. I’m looking forward to the sections of the book arguing that widespread debt amnesty must come every once in a while or there is open revolt and the destruction of all records of debt. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Citi Bank.

Then Jake leant me a copy of The Tender Bar* by J. R. Moehringer, a memoir about a boy whose male role models come from the main bar in Manhasset, Long Island where he grew up. The book will be a part of The Civil Life Library when I return it. Jake thought I would enjoy it, and indeed I do. My wife is reading it now too. It’s funny and very readable. It’s also nicely structured, something I always look for in a book (pattern, symmetry, etc.). But most of all, I appreciate the way that Moehringer captures so eloquently in spots how the bar is, for many of us, no less than a scared space. The right kind of bar provides solace at every stage in life and suits every occasion, comic, tragic, or banal. There is something of the sacrament in the first drink one consumes upon entering the bar. Oh, and every drink thereafter. Amen.

cbgb lomo

I have also been reading Horst Dornbusch on Bavarian Helles,* a light, delicate, wonderfully refreshing beer I hoped to brew. Instead I brewed what promises to be a misshapen monster of a lager. My light delicate beer looks as if it will be close to 9% alcohol. Drink up! Clearly, I should leave brewing beer to people who know what the hell they’re doing.

I have also been reading Evelyn Waugh’s When the Going Was Good.* I kind of love Waugh, even when he’s being an ass. The book collects what he deemed his best travel writing. Whether in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) during a revolt or a coronation or deep in the Brazilian Amazon, rest assured, the gin flows freely. One of the essays contains what I think is among the most gorgeous descriptions of a drink ever composed:

I told him that I had had a late night, drinking after the ball with some charming Norwegians, and felt a little shaken. He then made me this drink, which I commend to anyone in need of a wholesome and easily accessible pick-me-up. He took a large tablet of beet sugar (an equivalent quantity of ordinary lump sugar does equally well) and soaked it in Angostura bitters and then rolled it in Cayenne pepper. This he put into a large glass which he filled up with champagne. The excellences of this drink defy description. The sugar and Angostura enrich the wine and take away that slight acidity which renders even the best champagne slightly repugnant in the early morning. Each bubble as it rises to the surface carries with it a red grain of pepper, so that as one drinks one’s appetite is at once stimulated and gratified, heat and cold, fire and liquid, contending on one’s palate and alternating in the mastery of one’s sensations. I sipped this almost unendurably desirable drink … (p. 59).

hangover drink

What more can one say?

Well, I’ve also been working through The Exegesis* of Philip K. Dick, About Writing* by Samuel R. Delany, a great collection of essays by Geoff Dyer called Otherwise Known as the Human Condition,* E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful,* Gershom Scholem’s memoir of his friendship with Walter Benjamin,* an old Penguin Classics copy of Balzac’s Old Goriot,* and The Waste Books* by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (brilliant little gems, these). I should probably do entries on all of these books at some point.

Oh, my parents gave me a copy of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84* for Christmas. It has a beautiful cover designed by Chip Kidd.

iq84 front

iq84 spine

iq84 back

Stay tuned.

The Tender Bar

Started The Tender Bar* by J. R. Moehringer on Christmas Day. Patrick’s reading it, too. He started on Christmas Eve… And he’s more than 150 pages ahead of me… in spite of the fact that he reads too many books at once, or so he says. The first paragraph is so beautiful, I knew I’d love the whole book, and so far, I do. Patrick has a good description, so I’ll just stop writing now :)

Kafka and Foucault Covers

Bookish misanthropes too busy shaking their fists at each new folly our world presents us with may miss out on the occasional surprise. I am not alone in my love for certain classic paperback covers, especially Penguins from many eras

Great new cover designs, however, are still out there. Check out these rather handsome treatments of Kafka and Foucault

Very nice indeed.

Bookmark Book

I just came across a new book called Forgotten Bookmarks.* It is a collection of bookmarks found over the years by a book dealer named Michael Popek.

He also has a blog with images of some of these bookmarks. So my “things found in books” is hardly original. Since I have found different things in my books, it seems worthwhile to post them anyway.

Free A&W Rootbeer for Bookmark Book

My friend Matt keeps track of what he uses to mark his books

Hmmm … it turns out several people have at least been listing the things they have found in books:

And if you happen to leave something in a book you return to the Burlington Massachusetts Public Library, they may mount it on a bulletin board so you can claim it the next time you are in. But they do not display “inappropriate pictures.” Alas. Something tells me a librarian in Burlington is collecting these for private use.

Jeeves in the Morning

OK, I lied. I said I’d probably read something by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. after I finished Gravity’s Rainbow*. But one day Patrick and I were laughing about some of the scenes from the television show Jeeves and Wooster, so I thought I ought to read one of the books by P.G. Wodehouse.

Jeeves in the Morning* (also published as Joy in the Morning) delights! Since I saw the TV show before reading any of the books, I actually picture Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry acting out the scenes as I read. Big time. And of course, I laugh out loud quite a bit.

Listen to this gem (Wooster is in bad need of an adult beverage): “I headed for my destination […] and was speedily in conference with the dispenser of life savers.” “Dispenser of life savers.” I love it! Oh. And by the way, Patrick’s now a “dispenser of life savers” at The Civil Life Brewing Company’s pub.

If you’ve enjoyed the TV show but haven’t read any of the books, you ought to get them all and start reading them right away. Heck! Even if you haven’t watched the TV show, get the books and start reading them right away. If you’ve seen, but not enjoyed the TV show, well, your taste probably differs from mine a good deal, so you can ignore everything I just said.

Gravity’s Rainbow

So I first started reading Gravity’s Rainbow* in 1998 at my first-ever jury duty. I think I made it about 100 pages in. I think I was psyched out by it or something. You know, everyone says it’s impossible and difficult and confusing and… and… and…

Gravity's Rainbow

Fast-forward 13 years. I’ve enjoyed The Recognitions,* Underworld,* Infinite Jest,* even Ulysses* (really!), plus, I helped Patrick with his dissertation—now a book—Pynchon Character Names: A Dictionary* … so I just knew I could handle GR.

Now I’m about 100 pages away from finishing it. Guess I got to this post just in time!

I’m also “reading” Zak Smith’s Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow* … page-by-page alongside GR.

Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow

What’s next? Probably something short. I sure like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. a lot….