Attention E. L. Doctorow Fans

E. L. Doctorow's second novel, Big as Life, is hard to find, expensive to buy, and pretty much forgotten. 

But you can read it for free on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bigaslife0000eldo

No, no...thank YOU.

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

 

I was going to wait until I finished reading this novel to comment on it. Maybe even wait until I had finished reading all of Daniel Mason's books, as I intend to do. But at page 110 of The Piano Tuner, my enthusiasm overwhelmed me, and I thought that I had to give a shout.

This is such a great fucking novel!

And it was published in 2002, when he was a mere 26 years old. I don't know how such a young fella could know so much about Burma and rare pianos.

It's just amazing.

There was an episode wherein a deadly tiger is being hunted, and it was so intense and distressing that I didn't really read it, I watched the movie.

And this is just his first novel. I am looking forward to some sweet reading for the next couple of months.

You come too?

Asimov = 🐖

I've been enjoying Murder at the ABA (by Isaac Asimov*) for a week or so now. There have been some minor misogynistic missteps, but that's pretty much par for the course for Isaac. (Not saying that makes it ok, btw.) And then he did this:

What the fuck, man. Granted this is a character speaking, but given Asimov(*)'s reputation,  it's not a very big leap to see him in sync with this. 

Fucking hell, man...how could such an intelligent man be so stupid?

* 🐖 

P.S. Yet this is how Asimov's (writing in third person) sees himself:

For fuck's sake.
 

That Explains It

"...for him she was uncommon, and we all want to be uncommon, and the moment she realized the error of her understanding was the moment that she left."

"For the Union Dead"
A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth
by Daniel Mason

Stoned Thought

I'm not going to try to lose weight anymore, I'm going to focus on growing five inches.