TUMBLE DRY LOW • writing • reading

poetry • publications • reading
fiction • poetry • non-fiction

What's weighing down my night stand these days? BabyCatcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (Peggy Vincent), a fascinating read, whether or not you're about to go into labor; Amy Hempel's collected stories; John Cheever's collected stories (I fell in love with two anthologized stories of his, but his work doesn't strike me as consistently brilliant; most of the time, he seems cranky and full of complaints. All my friends told me this about Cheever, but I refused to believe them). I'm still slogging through Nabokov's collected short stories, which are unusual and unexpected (a story about a dragon! a story about a wood sprite! a story about an angel who gets shoved in a closet!). At least in Nabokov's early work, someone--generally a woman--tends to die by the end of practically every story--what a strange motif! Also up: some fun reading I hope--The Dispossed (Ursula Le Guin) and Brighton Rock (Graham Greene).

Just completed: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. So much for my uplifting cheerful reading! Also, The Bug in the Martini Olive and Other True Cases from the Files of Hal Lipset, Private Eye (Patricia Holt) -- which was actually a fun light book about one of the big private investigators in recent decades, Hal Lipset.

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