Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories. Should be the required manual to read for all 2+2 Mods.

Enough said.

Empire Express, Building The First Transcontinental Railroad, by David Haward Bain.

[That's the first transcontinental railroad across the US, for you nitpickers.]

A practical manual on how to get a very herculean job accomplished. Not as good as The Book of Revelation, but then what is.

I've read "A Hunger Artist." I'm not sure how it will help.

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A great hard-boiled mystery; self-conscious but not winkingly so, and great fun. After a straight apprenticeship novel, Crumley's first three detective stories (The Last Good Kiss, The Wrong Case, and Dancing Bear) were all terrific. I thought Crumley lost it with the fourth, however, The Mexican Tree Duck, and I never went back.

And talk about killing the (literary) father: I thought The Last Good Kiss was fun to read as Crumley offing Hemingway.

Finished Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano. I first read this collection of three novellas (I think that structurally they qualify as long short stories) in March of 2015. They use all the classic Modiano tropes and themes. I liked it the last time. I liked it more this time.

Reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

I'm reading this morning's NY Times Book Review and in it George Pelicanos says Sughrue, the hero in that novell, is his favourite fictional detective. And that Crumley "lit up a whole generation of crime writers."

Finishing up "Istanbul - A tale of three cities" Enjoyed it - my wife and I have been to Istanbul twice and loved it - we were planning to go again but dunno if we'll make the trip seeing that things seem a bit unstable there. Vienna/Petra maybe instead.

Still grinding my way thru the Pentagon Papers, too.....

MM MD

Really thought Girl on the Train was overrated.

This morning's Toronto Globe and Mail has an essay ("Why Some Fake News Lasts Forever") adapted from Harari's newest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Here's an excerpt:
http://"https://www.theglobeandmail....asts-forever/"

That's a great quote, Russell. I think I'll give the book a go.

Hon Mention: The Ransom of Red Chief

10. Flowers for Algernon
9. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
8. The Lottery
7. Perfect Day for Bananafish
6. The Snows of Kilimanjaro

5. Razor
4. The Overcoat
3. On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
2. Are These Actual Miles?
1. Girl with Curious Hair

Finished The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel. Very readable, but not as well written as promo's suggested (too many sentences beginning with "It" as in, "It took Anton a long time . . ." or "It was the weather that bothered his mother . . . "; I'm still looking for "It".), worthy of a read because of the engaging narrative.

Still reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (overrated is correct) and Making Love by Jean-Philippe Toussaint (beginning to hope that awful things happen to the characters).

*2 Things Dimly, Were Going at each Other
*Poetics for Bullies
*Amy Foster
*Rock Springs
*A Clean Well-Lighted Space
*Bop, Bop Against that Curtain
*Car Crash While Hitch-hiking
*Porque No Tiene, Porque Lafalta
*The Half-Skinned Steer
*Counterparts

Granddaddy=Chekhov

another good read about building an epic railway is The Man-Eaters of Tsavo: And Other East African Adventures by John Henry Patterson

Check out Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone possibly the best book about the CIA. Written by a former Chief of Station who served in Zaire AKA Congo and Laos.

I highly recommend Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff

Once the richest city in America, Detroit is now the nation’s poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass-production, blue-collar jobs, and automobiles—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, dropouts, and foreclosures.

Growing up I was obsessed with working as a spy (it all started with Bond) and read everything I could get my hands on about it. I ended up actually interviewing with the CIA and getting accepted to their Professional Trainee program for the directorate of operations.

Anyways I bailed because I was so upset with our politics at the time and was starting to worry that I wouldn’t be able to keep it together living abroad if I didn’t 100% believe in what I was fighting for.

Kind of a tangent but I always thought See No Evil was the best CIA book; I’ve never read this one. Its now next on my list, thanks for the rec!!!

In regards to the CIA...in the June 7th issue of The NY Review Robert Kaiser had a fine essay on Edward Lansdale. The piece reviewed Max Boot’s new book The Road Not Taken which doesn’t interest me...but the essay in general made the very fine novel of Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke way more intelligible. Johnson was partially raised in the Philippines where his father was CIA in the early 60’s. The clandestine operations against the Huks served essentially as the US’s disastrous template for Vietnam.
The article I refer to is locked and I can’t get my PW to work. I blame the CIA

thought it was legit bad

Wait until you try The girl with the dragon tattoo.

I loved this movie, although I've never seen the english language version.

Finished Making Love by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated by Linda Coverdale. Extraordinarily well written (even in translation) upper class navel gazing, all things are describe in detail, characters obsess about daily life and insist that life be dramatic and artistic when it could be so simple. Despite my foregoing remark, the main characters wander in slush and snow wearing socks and open sandals while drinking heated, canned cappuccino from a coin vending machine without whining. Could they really be French? (They whine about everything else.) The writing is amazing as is the sense of the transient nature of beauty.

Still reading The Girl on the Train (because Making Love didn't make me suffer enough?).

Finished The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I can't recommend it.

Reading Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and (re-reading) The Devil's Music by Giles Oakley.

I’m slowly reading The Devil’s Music for the first time. so much better than the bloated bios of Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie McTell I slogged through in recent years.