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Apr 12, 2001__ BLUE HIGHWAYS, by William Least Heat Moon. Travels around America, with descriptions of great characters found
along the way on back roads (blue roads on maps). He has a wonderful knack of summing up a person in a few words. Apr 20__TEN
PLUS ONE, a thriller about a serial sniper, by Ed McBain. Hard boiled mystery. June 15__ THE LECTURERS TALE by James Hynes.
Satiric takeoff on the culture wars in the English Departments of fashionable universities. Despite slow start and unbelievable
closing Apocalypse, he shows a mastery of American speech, from the gutter snipe to the most nonsensical theoretical jargon.
Worth a read. July 21 __ GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE by Ray Bradbury. Ostensibly the story of Bradbury's trip to Ireland to
write the script for John Huston's film 'Moby Dick.' He presents Huston as a self-obsessed monster genius. Some great chapters
with amusing Irish dialog in Finn's pub. The lilt and extravagance of Irish speech are recorded precisely. Aug 4 __ MARS by
William Sheehan & Stephen James O'Meara. Everything you wanted to know about Mars, including its role in ancient myths,
the history of the scientific work of astronomers (esp. the 'canals' of Schiaparelli and Lowell) the role of Mars in popular
culture (the War of the Worlds by HG Wells, the Invaders from Mars broadcast of Orson Wells), the visit of Mariner 9 and the
Mars Global Surveyor. A good editor would have been a useful addition to the writing team. Sep 13 __ THE LETTERS OF NANCY
MITFORD, ed by Charlotte Mosley. She knew everyone in English letters and kept up a busy correspondence with them for decades.
What a family of fanatics! One of her sisters was a Nazi sympathizer (a friend of Hitler), another a Fascist sympathizer (she
married Oswold Mosley, the head of the Fascists in Britain), and a third became a communist. Oct 14. __ DAUGHTERS AND REBELS,
by Jessica Mitford. Another literary work by one of the talented, half-mad Mitford clan. Her account of the childhood of the
Mitford girls makes the family even more eccentric. Jessica became a Communist and went to live in America before the war.
Her husband enlisted in the Canadian Air Force and was killed. Oct 20. __ MOO by Jane Smiley. Carrying's on at a great Midwest
university, bearing some similarity to Iowa or Iowa State. Very funny, but the multiplicity of main characters, at least 30
or 40, is confusing. Much back paging to find out who comrade X is. Smiley is like a juggler who keeps several dozen balls
in the air at one time. Dec 30 __ RAVELSTEIN by Saul Bellow. Conversations on BIG ideas (e.g., the difference betwen the literary
and the artistic interpretation of reality) between Bellow and Harold Bloom, his long term friend from Chicago. This novel
has the smell of death in it. Ravelstein is dying; the narrator has a near death experience in the West Indies. The writing
is formless--no chapters, no simple chronology. The talks range from Keynes' opinions of the teatment of the Germans at the
Versais conference to the treatment of the Jews over the centuries.
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