21 July 2021

Reading List, January - March 2020

Harvey Pekar, illustrated by Dean Haspiel, The Quitter. NY: Vertigo, 2005.

Legendary comics writer Pekar delivers an unsparing autobiography that shows his passage through school and menial jobs, development as a jazz critic, and eventual realization that comics could be more than superheroes, which led to his celebrated American Splendor series.


Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country. NY: HarperCollins, 2016.

The Safe Negro Travel Guide allows people of color to move almost freely in 1954 America, but it doesn’t list accommodations in Devon County, Massachusetts. Still, that’s where Marvin Turner has gone, so his son Atticus, brother George, and niece Letitia follow. They discover Marvin in chains, a group of natural philosophers trying to tap primal energies, and a way to escape, but only after several more encounters do they finally, perhaps, defeat the cult’s lone survivor.


Andrew Kaufman, All My Friends Are Superheroes, 2d ed. Toronto: Coach House, 2013.

Tom has a problem: at his wedding reception, an ex hypnotized his new wife. Now Tom is invisible to her, and she thinks he’s run off. She’s waited for months, but is planning a move to Vancouver to start over. Tom has booked the seat next to hers, but now has only until landing to make her realize that he never left. It is a simple, sweet story, complicated by the fact that there are 249 superheroes in Toronto, but Tom isn’t one of them.


Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

The final founding father on my Run-Up to Revolution 2020 reading list, Franklin is also the most generally interesting. Well-known as a printer and publisher, thanks to Poor Richard’s Almanac and his Autobiography, and as a scientist for his work with electricity, Franklin not only served in but also organized the Pennsylvania militia, ran the Post Office, started the first public lending library, and built a university in addition to his lengthy diplomatic career in France and his political service at home. This biography, as easily approachable as the subject was said to be, tries to provide a balanced look at the man, often noting how other scholars have viewed an incident that requires explanation. Similarly, Isaacson ends with a Conclusion section that discusses how Franklin’s reputation has changed over time. This is a solid, if ambitious, choice for high school libraries as well as appropriate for public and academic collections.


Brian Martin, Detroit Wolverines. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018.

I’ve been hoping to find this book since discovering the Wolverines in a very thin clipping file at the Hall of Fame in 2004, because learning more about Detroit’s short-lived first Major League team, the National League and World Series champions of 1887, otherwise requires extensive primary source research. Martin, as pages of endnotes demonstrate, has done that work, scouring the local and national sporting press of the day as well as drawing on the work of other early baseball scholars such as Peter Morris and David Nemec to tell a story of big-league ambition, competitive success, and commercial failure.


Megan Abbot, Queenpin. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

I was delighted to discover new (to me) noir in the dollar rack, and it was the first book I reached for that night. Then I found the autograph. I didn’t panic, though: this has happened to me before, with sci-fi from a Kiwanis Club sale in Ann Arbor. I just nodded, smiled, and turned the page.

And the the next page, and the next. I did not need a bookmark last night, and Abbott’s first-person tale of an underworld girl’s career already places her alongside Walter Mosley in my esteem. I will be reading more of her soon.


James Ellroy, Killer on the Road (originally Silent Terror). NY: Avon Twilight, 1999.

Martin, a serial killer, is in love with Ross, another serial killer. This makes for an awkward love story, though told as a prison memoir, makes a gripping read nonetheless.


Philip K Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. NY: DAW, 1974

The story is about an entertainer who unknowingly steps into an alternate universe and the policeman who then pins a murder on him. Unlike much sci-fi, though, Dick simply asserts his absurdities, rather than examining them in a theoretical or mechanical way, and uses them to launch psychological exploration. Chapter eleven, on love and grief, is both central to the plot and a moving discussion in its own right, and an example of why Dick is so well-regarded by many in spite of his sometimes incomprehensible plots.


Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man. NY: Riverhead, 2012.

Leonid McGill, boxer and con turned P.I., once framed a woman for stealing $58 million. Now he’s arranged for her release -- but the real thief wants her, and everyone remotely connected to the crime, dead -- proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.


Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer. NY: One World, 2019.

This is Magical Realism, a story of slavery and escape; of family and love; of memory and storytelling. It features Harriet Tubman, and is based in part on the true efforts of William and Peter Still. It is magnificent.


James Agee, A Death in the Family. NY: Avon 1938.

I got this book, a 1964 thirteenth printing of the paperback edition, second hand. It came to me illustrated, with a portrait of Lenny Stockwell inked inside the back cover.

Lenny Stockwell is not part of the story, which follows a Knoxville family through a difficult moment, presenting each perspective with caressing detail and gentle rhythms that leave the reader’s feet chill from standing barefoot in dewy grass. Agee writes beautifully, and that alone is reason to read him.

Reason enough. There is so much more than just the prose, that’s just the easiest part to sell. This book is worth reading. Go as slow as you like. It’s worth the time.

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