Bookmonday

And now! An update absolutely all of you (except two of you) haven't been waiting for: My Reading Slump.

Novels, still struggling. Picked this up today, and 45 pages in, sortazoom:

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and will pick this up tomorrow (on the recommendation of friends and strangers):

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but what gives me hope, and maybe not false hope even though it isn't fiction is this:

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which I'm devouring poem by poem, line by line, word by word.

I risk jinxing myself, but..... NO! no analysis, not even in notebooks, not even as I find myself thinking, Good, I'm not thinking about it, until it's over....

Though it doesn't help that I've just discovered this article on the trendy apocalyptic novel, which cites Jamestown as emblematic of the rage, sparking that whole adolescent I don't want to be reading what everybody else is reading punkasssnobbiness.

(The musical version being, That band was great until they had a number one single, and then they sucked.)

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I confess I never heard of Roberto Bolano (and confess I don't know how to place a tilde over his N) until these reviews in the latest New Yorker and in the latest Bookforum and in the latest Harpers (which is promising a brave new e-edition for subscribers starting April 1).

Anyone read him? Which one would you recommend for the first-timer (coming out of a slump)?

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Neddie Jingo on that chord. One of my favorite professor's favorite novelists. The Millions is four.