Are you happy? Do we need galoshes? Are bluebirds perfect? Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen? Is it clear to you why I am asking you all these questions? Should I go away? Leave you alone? Should I bother but myself with the interrogative mood?

The acclaimed writer Padgett Powell is fascinated by what it feels like to walk through everyday life, to hear the swing and snap of American talk, to be both electrified and overwhelmed by the mad cacophony—the “muchness”—of America. The Interrogative Mood is Powell’s playful and profound response, a bebop solo of a book in which every sentence is a question.

Perhaps only Powell—a writer who was once touted as the best of his generation by Saul Bellow and “among the top five writers of fiction in the country” by Barry Hannah—could pull off such a remarkable stylistic feat. Is it a novel? Whatever it is, The Interrogative Mood is one of the most audacious literary high-wire acts since Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine. Powell’s unnamed narrator forces us to consider our core beliefs, our most cherished memories, our views on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In fiction as in life, there may be no easy answers—but The Interrogative Mood is an exuberant book that leaves the reader feeling a little more alive.

…….
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 “Is this a novel?” 2009-11-27
By book whisperer (netherlands)
Whatever this book is or will be recognized to be, it is one of a kind. Literally every sentence in the book is a question. What amazed and delighted me is that it’s actually a good read! Not just because it is witty, captivating, touching and beautifully written… there are more examples of all that. I was reminded more than once of Holden Caulfield. I could well believe that this is him badgering you with all these questions. (and in view of Salinger’s easy access to lawyers I hasten to add that this is purely my own private impression, and in no way is the author responsible.)

I believe here is a new way of storytelling, and a very interesting and rewarding one. When I got over my initial surprise (and yes, impatience) I found that instead of sort of trying to answer the questions, my brain started to go with the flow… much as I would go along with a strong, intelligent and convincing voice, not unlike those of Nabokov’s Charley Kinbote or Martin Amis’ John Self. But even among these giants Powell more than holds his own. The Interrogative Mood literally forces your brain to make up its own ‘story’, and in that sense offers a truly different and new reading experience. Much more than previous lame experiments in ‘interactive’ storytelling, this book needs a good reader to make it happen, to make it complete. Be that reader and you will never forget it.

 “:-)” 2009-11-20
By A. Stevenson (Florida)
I had a smile on my face the whole time I was reading this book. Witty, ridiculous, droll, disarming, laugh-out-loud, original. A peek inside the author’s mind: Ye gods, fella! I really loved it.

 “Is It Possible, That Padget Powell Has no Answers?” 2009-11-09
By Jordan Robitaille (Gainesville, Florida)
Is the reason I chose this book obvious to you? Will it be? If you were to read this book, would you have done the same thing? Does a book, in which every sentence is a question, sound absurd? Or compelling? How many questions, do you think, are in this book? Does not knowing drive you mad? Does it sound right to you, that the reason I chose this book is that it makes me, and probably everyone else who reads it, take a long, second look at themselves? And also, that after reading this book, I found a new side to myself that I never knew exists? Does that sound reasonable? If I told you that I found this book so compelling that I read it twice, trying to find different answers to each of the questions that were still true, just not the same as my first answers, would you believe me? Would you allow me to say the reason I chose this passage is because it helps you to understand the personality of the person talking to you, and shows you that he is a little crazy, or would that be unacceptable? Does my saying that the reason I chose this book is that this book has no story line, but still seems more exciting than most books that do because you get to star as the main character in each sentence, make you want to do nothing else, but just read this book? Does it seem too out of sight, the notion of a man, who has never met you, who doesn’t even know your name, can help you understand yourself, more than some professionals. I think that the most compelling reason I chose to do this book, is, no matter how many times you read it, the story line is always changing, always molding around you, or is that a load of baloney? And, I ask you, is it possible, that Padget Powell has no answers?

 “to buy or not to buy – that is the question” 2009-11-03
By Harriet Klausner
This is an odd yet fascinating book as there are no declarative sentences. Instead every line is a question that goes deeper and deeper in profundity and acerbity. Starting with a childlike innocence re “Are your emotions pure?” and asking seemingly silly questions like “Would you eat a monkey? and ending with the seemingly finish to a relationship between the interrogator and a silent responder (can that be readers?) whose lack of resonances implies much with “Are you leaving now? Intriguing with a weird psychological spin, recommend those who appreciate a deep internal look at one’s self, answer the questions; just do it over a few weeks or your loved ones will ask are you crazy especially at $21.99? Hopefully yours do not answer that.

Harriet Klausner

 “No Need to Ever Read Another Book” 2009-11-01
By Bartleby (scrivner) (Southern Pines, NC)
Better, much better than the Bible. Contains more education than a Ph.d. Become smarter than your friends by reading this. The only book you ever need shipwrecked on a desert island. Answer all the questions and win the Dumbel prize for literature. Read some of these questions every day and become enlightend. Instead of the invocation at the beginning of congressional sessions have them read and discuss some of the questions. My dog loved it. My aquarium fish are still pondering one of the hard ones I gave them. I want a scrolling screensaver with the questions. I want wall paper with the questions. Issue one to every one serving a life sentence, give an autographed one to Bernie Madoff, maybe not, its too good for him. Send one to Obama as he ponders Afghanistan and Health Care reform. Give one to your ex-wives, only if you still like them. Home school your kids with only one book. Write your own.

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Progressing from small-time scams to counterfeiting rings to even bigger criminal enterprises, Giuseppe Morello exerted ruthless control of Italian neighborhoods in New York, and through adroit coordination with other Sicilian crime families, his Clutch Hand soon reached far beyond the Hudson River.

The men who battled Morello’s crews were themselves colorful and legendary figures, including William Flynn, a fearless Secret Service agent, and Lieutenant Detective Giuseppe “Joe” Petrosino of the New York Police Department’s elite Italian Squad, whose pursuit of the brutal gangs ultimately cost him his life.

Combining first-rate scholarship and pulse-quickening action, and set amid rustic Sicilian landscapes and the streets of old New York, The First Family is a groundbreaking account of the crucial period when the American criminal underworld exploded with violent fury across the nation……..
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 “As close to a history book of the underbelly as you’ll want to read” 2009-12-16
By Dustin F
One major aspect of this book is how it bleeds with research. It’s clear tons of effort went into getting the details and stories correct. This book is the result of painstaking investigations and painstaking research, and that makes for a lot of gruesome accounts of crimes.

The other major aspect of this book is that it was written beautifully. Yes… beautifully. For the topic, that’s hard to believe, but this book is as enjoyable to read as a thrilling novel. You want to know what happened next in this almost inspiring rags to … ashes account.

What’s the book really about? A man comes to our society, like many, wanting to make something by working hard. He pioneers a system of crimes that is lucrative and relatively stable. A basic plan that is used to great affect after it kills the first faction… leading to the ultimate conclusion about the fascinating mafia.

If you or someone you love is interested in crime or the mafia, this book deserves my unqualified recommendation. However, it’s painstaking detail about a horrible thing. That is not for everyone. This, to me, is American History (I love the country… not a ding on her whatsoever, but this is part of the history!)

 “Mike Dash does for the Mafia what Thoreau did for Nature.” 2009-11-29
By Jeremy Williamson (Brooklyn, NY)
The First Family is nothing short of excellent and superior historical true crime writing. Mike Dash has set the bar extremely high with The First Family, which reads like a historical novel but is in actuality more akin to an extraordinarily well researched academic tome complete with multiple pages of notes in reference to works cited, and a full bibliography in regard to the vast source material. All said, amazing content, when authored by a true craftsman, makes for an awesome read! Hopefully Mike Dash will continue to apply his obviously formidable talents to the American Mafia, both historical and contemporary. Here’s to you Mr. Dash! A well deserved full 5 stars!

 “The Genesis of Organized Crime” 2009-10-25
By Rose Keefe (Canada)
The Mafia is one of those organizations that Hollywood and the media have turned into a household name. Its current public face is the fictional Tony Soprano. The closing years of the nineteenth century and the dawning of the twentieth were the halcyon days of Giuseppe Morello, who was known to cop and criminal alike as `the Clutch Hand’ because of a deformed arm. The nickname could just as well have derived from his talent for seizing any opportunity to make crime pay.

Mike Dash has written an engrossing account of Morello’s ascendancy from the dusty streets of his native Corleone, Sicily to the saloons and tenements of New York, where he became the much-feared boss of the Italian-dominated rackets. He counterfeited American and Canadian currency, masterminded insurance scams, and unleashed Black Hand terror on his frightened countrymen, all the while building and strengthening a gang that became the first organized crime family. Morello’s vicious rule encompassed some of the most sensational examples of mob violence in the city’s history, such as the Barrel Murder of 1903 and the Masseria-Maranzano war of Sicilian succession. The ageing Clutch Hand served as advisor to Joe `the Boss’ Masseria in the latter conflict, and was killed by Maranzano gunmen in August 1930.

As with his previous books, Dash focuses on primary sources, such as the records of the U.S. Secret Service (which tracked Morello during his counterfeiting days) and the memoirs of its New York bureau chief, William Flynn, who pursued the Clutch Hand’s gang as doggedly as another legendary mob-buster, NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino (whose war with the Mafia and brutal murder are both covered in detail). Chilling anecdotes mingle with archival evidence to tell a story that rivals the best crime fiction.

“The First Family” is one of the finest accounts of the Mafia’s shady and bloody beginnings. Those who enjoyed this book are advised to also read Thomas Hunt and Martha Machecha Sheldon’s “Deep Water”, which is a similarly authoritative and original treatment of the 1890 assassination of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy, which was America’s first widely publicized Mafia hit.

 “The Start of the American Mafia” 2009-10-25
By Michael Buck (wisconsin, usa)
I didn’t know what to expect when i purchased this book in august. I had, of course heard of Clutch Hand Morello, and some others in this book like Ciro Terranova and Ignazio Lupo before but never had read about them in any in depth tomes before. They were more or less mentioned in passing in such books as A Man of Honor by Joe Bonanno or The Valachi Papers by Peter Maas. These stories had references only to Morello in respect of his role in the Castellamarese War as the right hand man of Joe The Boss Masseria. I had no idea of the pivotal and exceptionally violent role Morello played in the founding and expansion of the New York mafia. This story is wonderfully told, in intricate detail, well honed like the knife that slit Benedetto Madonia’s throat in the opening pages. It is brilliantly eloquently written. To use the primary sources of the day was doubtless a daunting task for Mr. Dash, a task he took on with great relish and scored a stunning triumph, a tour de force of this little known era. The murders committed in this book seem to come one after another after another, from New York and Pennsylvania to Sicily. The subjects of this book, though shrouded in the murk of mystery, and obscured by a century of time past nevertheless come out as fascinating characters, ruthless, brutal, enterprising, and although their methods of moneymaking seem primitive by today’s standards of mafia power, their tentacles of influence and control quite stunted in comparison to the later mob, nevertheless they are the true genesis of the American dream for Cosa Nostra. Every gang, just like every government and army have to have a tenuous start sometime and this was the tenuous though inexorable rise of the American Mafia. It is contained brilliantly in these pages, untold in such fashion before. It is a story that needs to be known by mafia and crime buffs as well as students of American and Italian history. Mike Dash has done a phenomenal job in bringing to light a dark and hithero almost unknown subject. This book is as excellently written a book on the Mafia as i have seen. More books about this subject should be written to the high standards of quality that The First Family has achieved. It is a tremendous work and i cannot recommend it highly enough. Absolutely fantastic.

 “”And then the trouble started…”" 2009-10-20
By J. M. Jacobs (East Helena, MT, USA)
I found this one to be a sleeper when I first started reading it. Early on there’s a section where all the key individuals are listed and their activities and outcomes are enumerated. (Think: the BEGAT section of the Bible – yes, that exciting)

I almost set this one aside as I went through that territory, but I’m glad I didn’t give up at that point. What follows is a history narrative of the Mafia in America and partly of its roots in Italy.

You can understand how a group like the Mafia would have started in early 20th century America. You’re in a strange land with strange customs, but your people tend to group and live together in particular areas of New York and the eastern seaboard primarily. Chicago, New Orleans and, later on, Las Vegas and even other cities come later. “Strength in numbers” is the operative mode for the early Mafia and that’s how they got started.

Originally it’s pure extortion, simple as that. If you don’t pay, bad things can happen to you. This is followed by counterfeiting where you use the “Family” as your primary distribution channel for the ‘funny money’ you’re printing. Along comes the Roaring 20′s and Prohibition and booze becomes the coin of the realm Mafiawise.

Lastly, drugs and weapons become the hot commodities. Each time, the financial reward ante is upped slightly and more people who get in the way meet their Maker or simply disappear. By ‘disappear’, I mean DEAD, not GONE. “Dead men make lousy witnesses,” eh?

This book does a great job of charting the lineage of the Family in America. After reading it, I have a much clearer idea of the makeup of the Mafia and what its influence has been and is yet today in our country. They were a much more far reaching enterprise than I first thought.

At the end, I was left with a deep longing… to watch The Godfather-Parts I and II again and pay close attention to the Family Business end of both movies. Thanks to this book, I’m quite sure I’ll get something new out of two of my favorite films.

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What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry: from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the staff of The New Yorker, what Paul reveals is astonishing and makes one realize how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul barely manages to realize all of this himself, and the result is a tenderly romantic, hilarious, and inspired novel……..
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 “Poetical Writer’s Block” 2009-12-15
By Roger Brunyate (Baltimore, MD)
Paul Chowder is a poet, once somewhat well-known, but now going through a dry spell. Right now, he is living on a farm in New England, doing just about anything he can to avoid writing the introduction to the anthology of verse he has been commissioned to assemble, entitled “Only Rhyme.” Exasperated, his girlfriend of six years has left him, though he loves her hopelessly still. So now he potters around the house, takes books to bed and never reads them, makes a half-hearted attempt to clean out his study, mows his lawn until the mower breaks, does odd jobs for friends, gives bookstore poetry readings attended by thirteen people — anything to avoid having to set his artistic credo down on paper.

Yet set it down he does. This witty, self-deprecating narrative contains more insight about poetry than most textbooks. Indeed, Chowder has ideas about rhyme and meter that you probably won’t find in any textbook, though they make perfect sense. Clearly he is in love with verse — so deeply in love with it that his own talent pales in comparison — hence his writer’s block. Poets, well-known or obscure, from Elizabethan times to the present, are his friends; he meets Edgar Allen Poe in a laundromat, or Theodore Roethke limping at twilight down his lane. Some poems he mentions only with a glance of passing wonder; some, like Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” he analyses in detail. He illustrates his theories with diagrams and typographical tricks; he even scribbles snatches of song in musical notation to show how a poem should go. It is a book to make you rush to the web to learn more about the poets mentioned. You want to read it at least twice: once for the story, and once to follow up all the references in it. It really ought to be published with an accompanying anthology, although copyright considerations would presumably prohibit it.

Nonetheless, the book is labeled a novel, and not a memoir or poetry textbook. As such, it is unique, or almost so. The nearest things I can think of are FLAUBERT’S PARROT by Julian Barnes, in which an offbeat disquisition on the French novelist covers a story about the modern scholar writing about him. Or perhaps the book I have most recently been reading, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery, which hides a touching personal story behind a series of essays on French culture. Chowder’s story falls somewhere in between the two; he is more engaging than Barnes’ character, but he does less than Barbery’s. I found myself reading (avidly) for Chowder’s insights, but losing patience with his flippant avoidance of the job at hand — though fortunately the author does not leave you hanging at the end. All the same, three stars at most for Baker’s book as a novel, though five for his infections delight in poetry and what it can do.

 “Brilliant novel of ideas” 2009-12-09
By Mr. Kurt Tidmore (Ireland)
When someone describes a book as a ‘novel of ideas’ it’s almost a sure bet it’s boring and lacks believable characters (think Ayn Rand), but there are a few exceptions and this is definitely one of them. The basic story line of The Anthologist is the struggle of a poet to put together an anthology of rhyming poems. The problem is he has a huge writers block as regards the introduction. Boring, right? Wrong!! This particular poet is someone you’ll want to take home and make a cup of tea for, someone you’ll want to sit down and have a long talk with. He’s a disturbingly honest klutz who also happens to talk more interestingly about poetry than anyone you’ve ever known. Admittedly talking interestingly about poetry isn’t something most of us have ever heard anyone do, but in this case it’s fascinating, even for those of us who didn’t think we gave a damn about poetry. This book makes poetry and poets as interesting as athletics and athletes or crime and criminals. It’ll send you digging for those old anthologies of poems you put in the back of your closet after college. And it’ll make you sound incredibly smart the next time you get caught in a discussion of literature.

 “Funny, smart, entertaining” 2009-11-26
By G. Noble (Sydney, Australia)
This is funny, entertaining writing which requires from the reader a semblance of wit and intellect, and also a none-too-sexy love of extended exegises on the poetic process and writers’ block. I must say though that there were times where the book could have done with a bit of editing (I had to skip past some of the more detailed arguments about poetry) but this is a minor criticism of a book that was often actually hilarious. Baker’s intelligence, wit and obvious joie de vivre is a pleasure to journey with.

 “May be the best part of your day” 2009-11-08
By Jay C. Smith (Portland, OR USA)
Imagine a novel that is in large part a poetry lesson. The chief plot element involves whether the narrator will ever overcome his writer’s block, although there is also a sub-plot involving whether he will catch a mouse in his kitchen. If you knew just these three things about it would you want to read it? Probably not. But then, what if you also knew the author was Nicholson Baker? “Aha!” you might think, just the sort of thing he could pull off.

Baker’s narrator, Paul Chowder, is a poet who hasn’t been publishing much recently, although he has a commission to produce an anthology. His once live-in female companion, Roz, has moved out, apparently in large part because Paul has failed to make headway writing the introduction to the book. His delinquency seems understandable when we learn that his own poems have been only free verse, although the anthology is to consist entirely of rhyming poems. “But then again my own poems sickened me,” Paul tells us, “so I was confused.” Yet he persists. “My life is necessary because I sustain the idea of poetry through thick and thin,” he says.

True to his mission, interspersed with his reportage of his mundane daily life, Paul tells us what he thinks about poetry. He has opinions about meter, rhyme, enjambment, translations, and more. We also hear what he thinks about dozens of specific poets. Paul’s views are often quite insightful, sound enough that we perhaps may take at least some of them as Baker’s own.

But we can never take Paul too seriously. This is a man, after all, who reports that he once encountered Poe in a laundromat, but couldn’t elicit “Ed’s” explication of the poem he was working on, one about a raven.

Paul draws us into his own fixations by addressing us, his readers, directly throughout. He just assumes that we will follow along and be interested, much like some chatty neighbor you may have experienced, and it turns out that he is right. His digressiveness is a key element of the charm of the novel. He can move in the course of a single paragraph from the history of poetry to the history of clothespins and then back to poetry, for example. When after discussing the life and poetry of W.S. Merwin he abruptly interjects “I miss my mom and dad” and then returns directly to Merwin it doesn’t seem too odd. It’s just Paul being himself.

After two hundred pages we have come to care for Paul, about whether he will ever win Roz back, for instance. A catharsis occurs as he participates on a panel at a writer’s conference in Switzerland. I won’t disclose how it all turns out for him, but here is a clue: you should know enough already.

Read The Anthologist and you may find it to be the best part of your day — perhaps it will even inspire you to write a poem or two.

 “A Love Ode To Poetry” 2009-11-08
By Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA)
When I was in college, I used to love to read poetry. I devoured poems by Ferlinghetti, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Why am I starting a review with a look back to my own past favorite poets? Because that’s what The Anthologist is REALLY all about; our personal relationship with poetry. I challenge anyone to read The Anthologist and not instantly get on the Internet and look up Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish, James Fenton’s The Vapour Trail, or any poem by Mary Oliver or perhaps, Selima Hill. It’s nearly impossible.

Anyone — poetry reader or non poetry reader — is in for the treat of his or her life. The conceit Nicholson Baker uses is to create a character — Paul Chowder — who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poem. But he’s procrastinating: the muse isn’t with him, the love of his life has left him, and he’s beginning to wonder if he can create something new and fresh. So he ruminates and ruminates and ruminates some more — on the various love lyrics, ballads, sea chanteys, and rhymed couplets that he has connected with through the years.

Do you know what an ultra-extreme enjambment is and why it’s the key to the whole poetry conundrum? You will after reading this book. Have you ever wondered why poets such as Vachel Lindsay or Ezra Pound were so depressive and in the latter case, outright crazy? Paul Chowder has his theories: “poets are our designated grievers.” Do you believe that poems need to rhyme to be GOOD? See what Baker’s character has to say! Are long poems better than short poems? Chowder ruminates, “They can all be cut down to a few green stalks of asparagus amid the roughage.” I guess that settles THAT!

What poetry reader cannot swoon to a statement such as: “A Ted Roethke poem is like an empty shoe you find at the side of the road that some manic person has cast aside on a walk but Louise Bogan’s poems are cared-for shoes in a closet, tight and heavy around their clacking wooden trees.” What NON poetry reader won’t want to read both Roethke and Bogan to find out what Paul Chowder means? And when Chowder says, “I was hoping to find a crack in the pavement where my ailanthus of a poem could take root” — every would-be poet can relate.

I am not the type of reader who underlines — I like my books pristine. But I took out my pencil and underlined whole passages of The Anthologist. THAT’S how good it is. After reading The Anthologist, I’ve resolved to go back to reading poetry for the love of it once again. Maybe I’ll start with Mary Oliver…

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 “A ‘must’ not just for California collections, but for any library strong in immigration issues” 2009-11-20
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
California’s Imperial County covers deserts, date groves, and more – it draws right across the Mexican border and generations of migrant workers have roots and history tied to the county. This weighty study of Imperial County offers an unprecedented survey of not just the county but the social issues involved in illegal immigration and border issues, considering the county’s early history, its challenges, its descent into poverty, and its immigration history and connections with Mexico. Never has another county been given such thorough historical and social analysis, making IMPERIAL a ‘must’ not just for California collections, but for any library strong in immigration issues.

 “A mixed review” 2009-10-12
By las cosas (Ajijic-San Francisco)
I wrote and rewrote my review of this book (in my head) endlessly as I read this book. Often that mental drafting served the purpose of venting, since after about page 300 my partner made it clear she was tired of hearing how annoying I found the book. “Stop reading it or stop telling me about how much you dislike the book.” Fair enough. But I did want to finish the book, and despite my great annoyance I now want to track down a copy of his 7 volume treatise on violence.

I have for years wanted to like Vollmann’s writing. But after a few pages I always give up, and am annoyed at myself (and Vollmann). Imperial is a subject that interests me, so I decided this was the book I would read all the way through. And I did, including the source section. This is the only review I’ve written where I could envision writing a review, in all sincerity, with a 1 or 3 or 5 star rating (though I detest the requirement of assigning a numerical “grade” to a review). So here are a few reviews for this book.

One star – why is this classified as nonfiction?

Think of a student assigned a paper called “describe the various social, economic and natural forces currently faced by Imperial County, California.” My student heads to the library, wanders through the stacks and lodged between Ellis Island and the peopling of America : the official guide and California state register and year book of facts (at least in my library) is a 2.5″ thick bright red book spine with one word “Imperial.” My student opens the book at random to chapter 88, which reads, in its entirety:

I can’t believe in people. Did you ever consider them as machines-machines that make eggs? And in material advantages they are already well supplied.

Why, I would be sick to my stomach if a rode down that valley in California, over those long miles owned by one man. He sold out at a fancy price. Imperial County shows rapid increase. The constant threat of heavy shipments…seemed to be a depressing factor. I am willing to give a good deal of credit to the new methods of retail food stores.

Because of market conditions in 1934, the equivalent of 300,000 crates of lettuce were unharvested in the Imperial Valley. She’s dancing with someone else, the bitch!

“Let’s face it Bill. Investigative reporting is not really your strong suit.” [page 922]

Five star – persons interviewed: 120, bibliography includes an impressive quantity of primary sources, he visited the area for a decade in order to assemble the research. And as every reviewer feels the need to say…it is over 1,100 pages! (I was touched by Brianna Lusk’s unusual candor in saying “despite the local buzz generated from the book’s publication…the Imperial Valley Press was unable to track down a local resident who has finished it.”)

Three star…

He writes very well, is endlessly earnest, and is willing to search almost endlessly (or at least a decade) to uncover more elements (though not necessarily facts…and again, this purports to be a nonfiction book) of what he considers to be Imperial. But this is one of the most snarky books I have ever encountered! In a footnote the author asks if the book would be better if he were more cynical. Frankly I can’t imagine how the book could possibly be more cynical. It is simply that he uses a quirky method to display this cynicism. As the book progresses Imperial does also, mainly through increased irrigation, and then the progress stops and Imperial slides backwards, mainly because of water issues. This is told in a pastiche of stories using historic photos, public records and interviews. But interspersed through these is a continual repetition of sentences such as “I have never been cheated out of a dollar in my life” to shadow all of his “facts” in a deep cynicism.

This is an author with a massive axe to grind. We are told several times during the book that he started Imperial, or the idea of Imperial, as a novel. On page 1116 we were finally told what we already know very well, which is that “I began my as yet unwritten novel by hating Los Angeles.” By hating urban, by hating the rich, by hating, hating, hating the INS. The list is exceedingly long of the things he hates in this book. But with a couple of exceptions, he doesn’t say that. Instead he provides you with a large set of “photos” describing a geographic area. But what he chooses to describe, and the photo-montage he creates with those descriptions speaks as strongly to what he leaves out of the descriptions as what he includes.

I also found it annoying that he has written a study, history, whatever that purports to describe both the Mexican and United States portions of Imperial. Annoying because the author speaks not a word of Spanish. I find this incredible. And if that isn’t insulting enough to Mexico, he then uses as an early interpreter a homeless guy who not only smells but calls the Chinese Mexicans he talks to “gooks.” Are we surprised that none wish to have anything to do with this “interpreter” and the author?

 “Extremely Verbose Ramblings – So Not Worth it!!” 2009-09-20
By N. Swindell
This book had a point, to share the disintegration and sad state of Imperial County, Ca. However, the author rambles, babbles, and goes on in such a disjoined fashion, that the book is a tedious, torturous, tiresome read. Totally disappointing, am donating my used book to Goodwill.

 “verbal irrigation” 2009-09-10
By Joseph N. Stennett (New York)
A gush of words and facts that, like desert irrigation, at first

produces impressive results, but cannot be sustained in the long

run. And one thousand pages of this stuff is a very long run.

 “Editing would have helped” 2009-08-12
By Kevin Clark (Cincinnati)
I understand Vollman’s strategy but this book fails in this form. Some chapters are one sentence long and convey no information whatsoever. Some are many pages yet equally convey no information. Some convey a lot of information which may or may not be true. Vollman is the sloppiest researcher I have ever read. Any other author would have pared this down to a 500 page book, and it would have been great. As a Southern California resident I enjoy a lot of this book, such as the chapters about the formation of the Salton Sea, but the size and scope force one to skip a lot. People edit books for a reason.

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For more than half the nation’s history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings—and the patients who lived in them—neglected and abandoned.

Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors—chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home.

Accompanying Payne’s striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne’s photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, “where one could be both mad and safe.”…….
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 “Beautiful and interesting” 2009-12-06
By Iris Gersten
That book is wonderful! The pictures really capture the loneliness and alienation of a patient diagnosed with mental illness.

And the essay by Oliver Sacks is very informative and interesting.

I strongly recommend it to anyone who is fascinated with asylums.

 “”Mute and Heartbreaking”" 2009-12-03
By John Rygielski III
These words used by Oliver Sacks in the foreword make perfect sense when viewing these photographs by Christopher Payne. I enjoyed the foreword, as it paints a picture of what these institutions were supposed to be, not just what they’ve become. Without such an introduction, the impact of these images is not fully realized. As much as I know you’ll want to skip ahead, I recommend reading the foreword first, it’s worth it in the end.

The words “asylum” and “mental hospital” don’t conjure up the most comforting of thoughts. These places have been the setting for so many horror flicks and books that we instinctively go there in our minds upon hearing their name. But this book does not portray them in such a light. If there is any disturbance, it’s our own head imagining us being there, not anything intentionally frightening about the pictures. The images range from documentary to breathtaking. There are a lot of images here, more than I thought would be when I purchased the book. Although I am a big fan of black and white, the color photographs are what impressed me the most, especially the interiors. I can only think to describe the tone as cool, yet peaceful.

This book is well worth it.

 “fabulous!” 2009-10-13
By Elizabeth M. Moore (marion, oh usa)
This book is haunting and fascinating. The photography is beautiful; and the forward is very interesting, giving much detail as to the rise and fall of the asylum in our American history. This book is everything I hoped it would be. I’ve spent hours perusing its pages.

 “Book about as empty as some of the places it features” 2009-10-09
By Asylum Historian
The book is beautiful but there is a lot of empty space in the book which left me dissatisfied.

Numerous Blank Pages raise the question was the book proofed before publishing and if so what is the intent of a page being part of the page numbering sequence of the book but having nothing on it.

Is there any explanation for all the blank pages amongst the photos?

Additionally, I found the book to be as empty in content as some of the pictures portray the places the author visited. The inclusion of an essay doesn’t make it a typical coffee table photography book and certainly leads into the pictures and provides background. The essay tries to convey the story of these places and with that being said I felt that each picture could have used a little description and/or anecdote. Instead of just a photograph with a label stating where each picture was taken I feel the reader would have enjoyed a little background on the picture presented. Whether it be a description or history of something in the photograph or a little history on the hospital I felt that was something needed to keep me really into the book instead of just quickly turning the pages. If there was something there with the photography to read the book would have been much more of an experience for the reader.

 “Fascinating and beautiful” 2009-10-06
By Book Collector (Savannah, GA)
This collection of photographs contains an illuminating forward by Oliver Sachs and beautiful, melancholy views of historically significant architecture that should have been preserved. There’s also an interesting section at the end about the tragic destruction of Danvers State Hospital in Boston, the magnificent building that first piqued my interest in this subject. I look forward to seeing more from this photographer.

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Emma Dial is a virtuoso painter who executes the works of Michael Freiburg, a preeminent figure in the New York art world. She has a sensuous and exacting hand, hips like a matador, and long neglected ambitions of her own. She spends her days completing a series of pictures for Freiburg’s spring exhibition and her nights drinking and dining with friends and luminaries. Into this landscape walks Philip Cleary, Emma’s longtime painting hero and a colleague and rival of her boss. Philip Cleary represents the ideal artistic existence, a respected painter, fearless and undeterred by fashion. He is unmatched by anyone from Emma’s generation. Except, just possibly, Emma herself. Emma Dial must choose between the security of being a studio assistant to a renowned painter and the unknown future as an artist in her own right.

Samantha Peale writes with astonishing insight about a young woman who risks everything to fulfill her ambitions as an artist.

……..
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 “Creatives of All Kinds — Read This One!” 2009-11-04
By Wanderer (Bend, OR & Greenville, SC)
It’s not much of a story. Here’s the plot: Emma Dial was a very promising art student who is growing old while making a good living as a studio assistant for a famous artist. The good living keeps her from making her own art. Her creative juice is nourishing her boss’ reputation, not her own. That’s about the sum total of the plot. What artist / writer / sculptor / playwrite do we know that’s not been in that situation?

This was a tough read because I wanted to just reach through the book, take Emma by the shoulders, and shake her initiative into action. I realized along the way that my own resolve needing a good shaking.

This book makes the reader see in themselves their wasted, suppressed, overwhelmed, underdeveloped creative lives and can maybe give a new spark to them. If you are a creative person whose creativity is mired in mundane tasks and economic practicalities, read this book! You will see yourself; you will examine yourself; your impatience with Emma may translate into action to meet your own creative needs.

 “Intelligent and Inspiring” 2009-09-30
By A reader (Portland, Oregon)
A friend gave me this book with a knowing look: I am a woman artist who took many years to finally get down to work and make my art. I worked in galleries and for non profits and told myself I was being an adult, supporting myself, and that my art would someday follow. That someday somehow kept getting delayed until a major upheaval changed everything. So, I read The American Painter Emma Dial with a mixture of joy and uneasy recognition. Peale perfectly captures the way a young artist can get stuck–not just in a job, but also in a group of friends, friends who also aren’t moving ahead and who manage, in tiny almost invisible ways, to hold you back as well. Shifting one’s life and priorities so that creativity takes center stage is one of the most profound and elusive maneuvers an artist faces. But that is how a creative life becomes possible. It was a pleasure and a privilege to read Peale’s fictional account of a talented, cool, but not particularly self-aware woman wake up and accomplish the difficult and lifesaving move into mature, conscious art-making.

 “Greatly pleased by this work” 2009-07-30
By J. Hildreth (NY, NY)
I greatly enjoyed this novel, all fears it might be “chick lit shopping agonies” were erased quickly and I read this book on my breaks and commute to eagerly reach the ending in several days. The story is an interesting window into a contemporary NYC millionaire artistworld, and the power dynamics of celebrity and wealth relationships – or is Emma Dial simply serving a long apprenticeship and an adult’s uneasily discernable and seemingly contradictory path to find what she needs? The quality of Peale’s language is very admirable, a sparse style, some of the paragraphs read like prose poems in the most wonderful way, careful and playful word choice, but you don’t find long paragraphs describing what everyone looks like. And yet I feel like I knew these characters. Peale’s use of dialogue is advanced, people don’t waste time when talking-they’re elite and educated-they don’t have time to waste talking-and when they do engage in conversation, it is significant or disastrous. There’s also a very subtle humor throughout the tome: the whole idea of a painter paying someone else to paint his works, then people paying millions of dollars for the paintings amuses me to no end- as well as the idea of successful artists poaching each other’s assistants from each other . (Emma was certainly undercompensated, although impressively enough for someone her age in those days. ) But no one gets slaughtered in this book which is nice for a change from my usual fiction reading choices, and Emma is very sensitive, she drops out of life for 4 days after she smokes a little appropriated maryhuana. found myself back in a familiar NYC that interestingly isn’t pinpointed specifically timewise in the text – the `Bush is bombing again’ fleeting reference could have been any Bush – and I like this, it gives a sort of fuzziness to the city background. There are no freaking cell phones which I think is notable. I unhesitatingly recommend this book to all intelligent adult and other serious readers.

 “Book Review” 2009-07-06
By Devin Boyle (D.C.)
As someone who has spent their adult life studying art history and attempting, however unsuccessfully, to create my own work, I really enjoyed this book. I would recommend it to anyone who has even the faintest interest in art. It provides great insight into the mind of a struggling artist.

 “Brilliant, energetic writing” 2009-06-20
By Eli Lederman (London, UK)
What a fabulous read! Samantha Peale writes with energy and zeal that evoke the visual sensuousness of the paintings her heroine executes, and the sheer drama of her soul-searching and ultimate self-discovery. Exhilarating passages emerge from stylistically stunning language, stacatto and fluid, like geat brushwork. This book is a work of great craft that captures in its subject the tumult of human creativity and talent. Along the way, it is pure fun, describing (painting?) scenes of artworld parties and bohemian lifestyles with such richness and revelation that the reader recalls the rooms. Thrilling. Could not put it down.

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It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.

In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . ……..
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 “Not worthy of Pynchon” 2009-12-01
By Matthew Pinzur (Miami, FL)
I never put books down, but had to make an exception. I like Pynchon, but this was just a mess. Every chapter was another empty character, a plot stuck in neutral and no sign that the tangle would ever come together. If the last quarter makes it all worthwhile, then so be it… I’ll have to live in ignorance.

 “Inherently Bad” 2009-11-27
By Steve Dossey (Somewhere just beyond or before the crossroads)
This book must have been written by a cute undergraduate student working under Pynchon’s wing. The stoner jokes are not funny. The zeitgeist of the sixties is clearly contrived. This is an attempt to find the groove that Tom Wolfe, Tom Robbins and to a lesser extent Vonnegut so adeptly mined. Pychon’s attempt however is a miserable failure. If this MS had been submitted by an unpublished writer it would have been universally rejected. I left my copy in hotel room trash can. Really pathetic.

P.S. I have read V, Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49 which are all vastly superior works.

 “Much more than a beach read…” 2009-11-25
By oddsfish (Winters, TX)
I am perhaps the odd person here in that I’d never gotten around to reading Pynchon until Inherent Vice. So, I can’t say much about how it relates to the rest of his canon. That’s a canon, though, that I soon hope to explore after reading this novel. Having finished it and digested it for about a week, I’ve come to the conclusion that Inherent Vice is just a startling book, one of the best novels I’ve read in years.

There’s so much to say about it, but I’ll just highlight two key reasons for why I loved it. First, it is a fun read. A lot of reviewers have described Inherent Vice as a beach read because of its ubiquitous humor, the vibrant rhythm of the dialogue and storytelling, the nostalgic feel of 1960s California, a likeable and mysterious central character (Doc), and a loose but amusing plot centered around a hippy detective’s quest to solve a case (that’s not even the case he starts out investigating). It does possess all of those aspects. That said, I wouldn’t call it a beach read. I’d think you might call it a beach read if you’ve only been reading Pynchon’s previous novels and the like. But the novel’s too philosophical, it frustrates the conventions of the detective genre too much, and its plot is hardly coherent and easily grasped–it’s just not a beach read. But all of those entertaining qualities are still present. What it is is a fun *and* literary read. I just think people are a little shocked at those two qualities being combined for once.

Second, the more I think about the novel, the more I think that it has a sad and beautiful thematic center. One aspect of the plot concerns the character Coy Harlingen and his family. Coy and his wife Hope had been heroine addicts unable to keep from destroying their own lives and the life of their daughter Amethyst. I won’t give away any details, but Coy has been estranged from the family (in a way that helped Hope to get clean and set up a more solid livelihood for Amethyst), leaving them saddened with only some pictures to remember him by. At some point, Doc thinks of Amethyst and thinks that she “deserves something more than faded polaroids to go to when she gets the little-kid blues.” Doc sets out to find Coy.

I think that image sums up a lot of what’s going on in the novel. There’s a hard hitting critique of our late capitalist American culture that we have traded the image for the thing. Somehow, we’ve lost our ability to connect to the world (it’s a shifting, decaying natural world in the novel), to others, and to our most natural desires. We’ve lost sense of the real. And so we face a future in which authentic livelihoods can barely be remembered and can hardly be accessed… The novel attempts to articulate something of that loss and to look for a way out of the fog…

It’s a fun read. But don’t think it’s just a fun read.

 “The Master Does it Again” 2009-11-23
By C. A. Boylstein
I have not treated Pynchon’s latest novel as a “beach read” as some reviewers on amazon describe it. Thomas Pynchon is America’s greatest living author and one of its greatest writers ever. His is a true late modern voice who follows Fitzgerald and leads us by the hand into hyperreality. Completing his California trilogy (CoLot49, Vineland, now IV), Pynchon’s new protagonist, Larry “Doc” Sportello is a deconstruction of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade. He is not hard edged, or tough – he’s Karmic.

If that doesn’t sound of interest to you, perhaps there’s a new vampire or wizard book coming out?

Anyway, if you are considering reading this book, read the reviews offered by the New Yorker or NYT – not some 12 year olds pretending they read books like these on Amazon.

 “Lost In the Fog” 2009-11-20
By T1818
The ending of ‘Inherent Vice’ has Doc Sportello the ‘hero’ of ‘Inherent Vice’ lost in a fog. ‘Inherent Vice’ is a very 60′s novel but at the same time it shows that a lot of the 60′s was missed by people in the 60′s. A lot of people were lost in the fog. There are really no larger forces at work here. The basic plot has been covered by hundreds of movies and books. In ‘Inherent Vice’ people are being tossed and turned by outside forces of which there is no attempt to grasp. Sex is available. Have sex. Drugs are available. Take drugs. People are flawed. Original Sin aka inherent vice is the key human fact. This is by no means a jeremiad against hippies. The guess is that hippies and now ex hippies are a substanital portion of Pynchon’s ‘crew’. Thomas Pynchon has the best natural ability of any writer in the US maybe the world but Pynchon here decided to write a book of half played out dope riffs. Of course much dope humor really does fall flat and fail to reach a punch line. The second half of the book is somewhat entertaining as the plot comes together somewhat entertaingly a first for Pychnon. ‘Inherent Vice’ might be filmable. ‘Inherent Vice’ is in many respects a valentine to 60′s hippies but the 60′s are still a mystery of which ‘Inherent Vice’ offers no clarification.

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From the National Book Award–winning, bestselling author of Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West. Nobody Move, which first appeared in the pages of Playboy, is the story of an assortment of lowlifes in Bakersfield, California, and their cat-and-mouse game over $2.3 million. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. It salutes one of our most enduring and popular genres—the American crime novel—but with a grisly humor and outrageousness that are Denis Johnson’s own. Sexy, suspenseful, and above all entertaining, Nobody Move shows one of our greatest novelists at his versatile best.

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 “Tight curves, tall pines, and geezer rock” 2009-12-09
By Noddy (New York)
What Gene and Dean Ween are to rock music Denis Johnson is to crime writing. Hell, make that just writing, period. The man is an uncommonly fine scribbler any way you slice him. I’ve read Nobody Move literally about seven or eight times now, in serial form you understand, and honestly think the guy a miracle of farking nature. That’s why I got myself Nobody Move in book form too–reading Playboy on the subway is something of a faux pas apparently. Right at the end of page four, for instance–the actual second page of this stupendously funny and entertaining story–Johnson types up the following short description of Jimmy Luntz:

“A shave, a haircut, a tuxedo. He was practically Monte Carlo.”

Hysterical. A little later when Anita sees Jimmy toss his gun into the river, Johnson notes the following about the gambling warbler:

“A slouchy guy, a skinny guy. He wasn’t wearing a Hawaiian shirt at the moment but undoubtedly possessed several.”

Or what about the bookie’s collector and shooting victim Ernest Gambol? This dude with the impossibly large head is lounging in Mary’s gaff after that laugh-your-pants-off phone call from Juarez, just sitting there staring into space with his wounded leg out on the ottoman, and here is what Johnson has to say:

“His brow looked even heavier than usual. He kept his lips clamped together. It didn’t seem possible, but maybe he was thinking.”

See, this is exactly why I’m reading for the umpteenth time this nifty and explosive little noir. Some folks complain about the seemingly abrupt and inconclusive ending but for me the only problem with the ending was that it was in fact the end and I didn’t have any more of Johnson’s scintillating prose poetry to feast on. Let’s hope some dope doesn’t get the bright idea of turning this pitch-perfect novel into a movie–some books are just too dang good for the routine blandishments of the silver screen.

 “Crime Narrative Lives Up to It’s Title, Not Moving Along That Is” 2009-11-19
By Kyle Slayzar (Bismarck, ND)
There is something to be said of protagonists of a story that people either cannot relate to or simply do not care for. Anti-heroes are one thing, but when combined with personalities that make them anything but likable makes the story really difficult to follow as you cannot bond with the characters. Nobody Move!, a crime novel by Dennis Johnson, falls into this trap with two protagonists, Jimmy Luntz and Anita, two people on the run together as they met drunkenly at a local bar to which they fall for each other, copulate, and scheme together.

Jimmy is a gambler that is running from a bookie, whose enforcer he shot, and is a true scoundrel but without the Han Solo sexiness. In fact, he’s a complete jerk, someone you wouldn’t mind seeing disappear instead of being the main “hero” of the story. He isn’t even likable. Even Bernie Laplante in the 1992 film Hero (portrayed by Dustin Hoffman) was likable in his antics and attitude; Luntz is just an (three letter expletive deleted). Anita is the only character that is remotely likable as she is the victim of blackmail by her former husband, a district attorney. However, her character quickly becomes unlikable as she also becomes the same three-letter expletive deleted word as Luntz when she engages in crime, sex, drinking, and goes on rants about how degrading it is to shop at JC Penny. Great, now she’s a pompous, arrogant three-letter expletive deleted name.

To make matters worse, it seems as though the whole plot centers around booze, sex, and more f-bombs than a Lil’ John music video. I am not, at all, a prude, but I think there’s a point where such themes contaminate the theme and overall flow of the story by becoming more dominant than the plot itself.

The only redeeming factor in Nobody Move! is that Will Patton narrates. The guy was awesome in Copy Cat and The Postman (probably the only redeeming quality in that film) and does an excellent job in narrating Nobody Move!

All in all, I would recommend John Grisham novels if you want to be moved by mystery.

 “It’s all about the narrator” 2009-11-18
By Rhonda Roberts (Orlando, Florida)
Short and sweet, you can breeze through the whole thing in a little more than five hours. Perfect for an extended trip or a week of commutes.

The story is hard to follow. The narrative jumps from character to character; you are never sure who is telling the truth, or if there is one. When Luntz was introduced as a member of a Barber Shop Quartet, I immediately suspected everything afterward was an alcohol fueled fantasy taking place inside his mind. Without revealing whether it was or not I can tell you it doesn’t matter. Keeping your attention fixed on the story is much harder than staying with the plot.

The magic shining jewel in all this is the narrator: Will Patton. He reminds me of a very nasty 1990s Robbie Robertson (for research, consult ‘Robbie Robertson’. It doesn’t matter what the story does – all you want to do is listen to him. His sensual, threadbare voice does what the story does not: takes you to another place – a very dirty place full of sex, sin and dreams.

Will Patton is the only reason I would recommend this. I believe he could read the ingredients off a Burger King wrapper and make it sound like Julia Child’s best Boeuf Bourgogne.

 “No Depth” 2009-10-20
By Richard A. Mitchell (candia, new hampshire United States)
There is virtually nothing to recommend this book except it is mercifully short. There is no character development and the plot, as thin as it is, is far-fetched. Lots of blood and core and amateurs shooting pros fill the 196 pages.

One of the leading characters, Luntz, is a loser of a gambler who owes big money. He shoots Gambol, the enforcer, in the leg. Being an amateur, he does not finish him off, so of course, Gambol survives to chase him down. At the same time, the beautiful damsel, Anita, about to plead guilty to embezzling $2.3 million, links up with Luntz for no accountable reason. The prosecutor and the judge have the money she embezzled, so of course, everyone joins forces to get it back. What few plot twists and turns that do occur all happen in the last twenty to thirty pages. They are too late and too feeble to save the book.

There was potential at the outset, with Luntz a possible loveable loser of a schmuck gambler and Anita a clever conniver. But the potential is frittered away.

I was not sure while reading this whether the book was an attempt to do a noir modernization of Hammett or a spoof of the genre. Either way it did not work for me. I found it lacking in either attempt. I would skip this one and, next time, I will not pick a book by the award the author won for a prior novel.

 “Crime Noir” 2009-10-18
By Bennet Pomerantz (Seabrook, Maryland)
The style is called Crime Noir. With authors like Spillance, Collins, Hammett, Cain and Gorman. It is the darker side of detective fiction. It is a complex puzzle that builds to a finally that twists and tuens.

A man who owes a large sum of money to a small time crime boss. The boss sends an agent to collect. The man shoots the hood, steals his car and leaves him for dead…but the collector didnt die. Now this formula thriller becomes a high stakes game of Cat and mouse. Murder, blackmail and triple crosses fill these CDS..you will be hooked

This audio production recanted by narrator Will Patton is a dark place where life’s low lives act and react. If you want a major thriller that builds and intrigues, you found it here. It is worth listening to!

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

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 “Great extension of bldgblog.com” 2009-09-23
By Alexander M. Jack (Charlottesville,VA)
Only half way thru , but a so far a greatcross section of the infamous blog. It’s urban fantasy in forgotten or banal cityscapes; the remainders from a very large equation.

 “more than I expected, exactly what I wanted” 2009-09-10
By Maayan Roman (New York, NY)
This book does an excellent job of further developing ideas from the blog into a format appropriate for a book while still maintaining the feel of a blog. Great for a long train ride or as a coffee table book. It uses architecture as a lens for delving into related aspects of society and takes enjoyable turns into the stretches of imagination, science fiction, and fantasy, all while still making observations on society. Definitely recommended. You certainly do not need to read the blog to enjoy the book.

 “Intellectual Fireworks !” 2009-09-02
By Pierre Gauthier (Montréal)
This unusual book, a spin-off from an actual blog, is unusually imaginative, creative and stimulating.

The author’s topic is architecture, which he defines very broadly. So, he discusses underground structures _ largely sewers in fact, climate control _ as a complement to urban design, sound environments as well as landscapes in the distant future. Literature, music and cinema are inextricably meshed into the «architectural» exposés.

Though he often extrapolates lyrically, the author is convincing when he claims to base his discussions on realities and scientific facts.

The book reads almost like a magazine since throughout the main text, neatly organized in chapters, are interspersed related articles and interviews, some very short, some half a dozen pages long.

The work is abundantly and quite pertinently illustrated with quality colour photographs, many very artistic.

A prior visit to the blog may prove useful to the potential reader although the book is definitely more polished and thus highly recommended to anyone curious and open-minded.

 “A catalog of enthusiasm and imagination” 2009-08-07
By Robin Sloan (San Francisco, CA)
There are a couple passage in Geoff Manaugh’s intro to The BLDGBLOG Book that are worth noting here, because they frame the book in a way that’s not necessarily obvious just looking at the title & description:

“In other words, forget academic rigor. Never take the appropriate next step. Talk about Chinese urban design, the European space program, the landscape in the films of Alfred Hitchcock in the span of three sentences — because it’s fun, and the juxtapositions might take you somewhere. Most importantly, follow your lines of interest.”

And then:

“Finally, I want to reiterate that BLDGBLOG is fundamentally about following, and not being ashamed by, your own enthusiasms, whether or not they are rigorous and appropriate for the academic mores of the day, or even interesting for your family and friends.”

So that gives you a hint: this is not just a book about architecture. It’s really a book about enthusiasm and imagination. It reads like a catalog of excitement and wondering-what-if. And there’s something in here for anyone with a curious mind.

 “The architecture of pleasure” 2009-07-04
By Stephen Silberman (SF, CA USA)
Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG is one of the most invigorating, subversive, visually engaging, and purely pleasurable outposts on the Net, and those qualities carry over into this beautifully written and designed book. The range of Manaugh’s restless intellect is breathtaking, incorporating everything from urban design to climatology, music, astronomy, pop culture, and much more. Under the guise of writing a blog about architecture, Manaugh has crafted a tribute to the world-transforming power of imagination itself. Along the way, he wrestles with some of the most athletic and ambitious minds of our time, including the late novelist J.G. Ballard, classicist Mary Beard, architect Lebbeus Woods, and urban theorist Mike Davis, author of “City of Quartz” and “Planet of Slums.”

It’s hard not to laugh out loud when reading “The BLDGBLOG Book,” because Manaugh’s own imagination is so astonishingly fertile and nearly child-like in its refusal to abide in comfortably deadening assumptions. Like a prodigious three-year old armed with a flaneur’s comprehensive street-level knowledge of the way things work, Manaugh relentlessly interrogates everything we take for granted about the environments we create. The overall effect is to open new vistas in what appeared solid and settled, as if you’d suddenly discovered a secret passageway to the unknown in your own cramped apartment — one of Manaugh’s pet obsessions.

For example, hearing about a collaboration between architects and sound engineers to create “sonic windows” in a house that bring the outside aural environment indoors, Manaugh imagines the resident of such a house — built above a glacier — nearly immobilized by awe and wonder. “Crystalline pressures of melting ice 3,000 feet below you suddenly break, sending cascades of sound shivering upward through the house’s foundations,” he writes, with a taut lyricism rarely found in books these days, much less on blogs. “Some days it’s impossible to get out of bed, hypnotized by unearthly noises.”

What is this kind of writing — science fiction? Magical hyper-realism? Who cares? Manaugh has succeeded in creating his own genre and remaking the world on his own terms. To him, the oncoming parade of catastrophes of economy, population, and climate are arguments for striving ever more boldly to refashion the world in accord with our innermost desires.

One of the first people to recognize the author’s young genius was Allen Ginsberg. Though Manaugh only elliptically refers to his teenage apprenticeship with the late author of “Howl” and other poems in this book, it’s easy to see why Ginsberg was smitten. Manaugh is able to fuse abstract musing with concrete particulars in a way that is particularly suited to our historical moment, yet harkens back to the restless probing of reality embodied by Ginsberg’s own poetic mentor, the pioneering 18th century multimedia poet William Blake. Even the modus operandi of this book — the fervid “hyperlinking” between seemingly disparate realms of emotion, experience, and intellectual discipline — feels appropriate for our densely networked, neurotically twittering era. But unlike other blog books, this volume will outlast our ever-accelerating Now, because it’s so luminously written. It’s easy to imagine a smart kid stumbling on scans of “The BLDGBLOG Book” in some pocket-sized Library of Congress on Mars 100 years from now and feeling energized to take up his or her own outrageous vocation.

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In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark—as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer.

To numb the pain of failure, Ferguson found comfort in drugs and alcohol, addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a glass of sherry.) But his story has a happy ending: in 1993, the washed-up Ferguson washed up in the United States. Finally sober, Ferguson landed a breakthrough part on the hit sitcom The Drew Carey Show, a success that eventually led to his role as the host of CBS’s The Late Late Show. By far Ferguson’s greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen, a milestone he achieved in early 2008, just before his command performance for the president at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson talks a red, white, and blue streak about everything our Founding Fathers feared.

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 “I loved it” 2009-12-12
By Martushka
Ever since we happened upon the author’s show, we have been recording it every night to watch the following morning. Even before reading this book, we have picked up hints in the midst of his popular-culture banter that his range of knowledge is very deep. Few talk-show hosts evidence as impressive an acquaintance with history, literature, languages, music and art as Craig Ferguson, nor do they wax as profound (and personal) as he chooses to do on occasion.

His book was predictably hilarious, and demonstrates how versatile and brilliant he is. He is not only an accidental American, but an accidental writer, film producer, actor and comedian. He is also a great example of an autodidact (to use his word), another testament to his brilliance.

The writing is engaging and flows, and the final pages inspiringly wrap up the narrative.

 “A funny account of a journey from Glasgow to Hollywood” 2009-12-12
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
AMERICAN ON PURPOSE: THE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES OF AN UNLIKELY PATRIOT comes from an author who calls himself Scottish at heart and American in soul, and provides a funny account of his journey from Glasgow to Hollywood. From his Scottish upbringing and heavy drinking problems to his career struggles, this gritty self-assessment will find a home in any general lending library.

 “Craig Ferguson’s life before sobriety and success.” 2009-12-11
By judith stein (Catskills, NY)
I’ve been watching Mr. Ferguson for several years and so was eager to read this book. I find his type of comedy very funny and enjoy his tv show.

The book was just about what I expected. Since a great deal of his material on tv and on the tv special of this year was about his previous experiences and his life while drinking and doping, there was not a great deal in the book that was exceptionally new material. There were some things that I didn’t know but really not many since he refers to this material over and over again. He is really best at his improv. type of show.

THe book was relatively well written, easy to read, not long (I finished it in one sitting). I think that it was a true autobiography from what I knew prior to reading it. There were no suprises. I would have enjoyed more pictures and a peek into his real life now. I believe he tries very hard to protect his private life which is certainly understandable.

I believe this is a book for his true fans since I believe you need to know of him and enjoy his style before you would buy the book. It took me quite awhile to purchase it even as much as I enjoy his work. The reading level of the book is not exceptional and you don’t have to have more than a 6th grade reading level to read it. I would not reccomend it for anyone that age, however. If you are looking for comedy that’s not what this is. It’s just what it says it is, which is very much what he presents…He’s forthright and seems to be quite honest in presenting the bad with the good.

Overall, I wasn’t disappointed and don’t regret purchasing the book.

 “Craig Ferguson Doesn’t Disappoint” 2009-12-10
By School Board Gal (St. Louis MO USA)
If you like Craig Ferguson on The Late Late Show, you will like this book. His words jump off the page with the same enchanting voice and sometimes painful bluntness. In many ways, it’s astonishing he’s still alive and (relatively) sane, considering the life he’s lived so far. Read this book, because it will only increase your enjoyment of this truly amazing man, whom I’m proud to call my fellow American.

 “A good peek into what makes Craig, Craig!” 2009-12-10
By Linda Jones Boonstra
I love Craig on TV, so I HAD to have this book. I’m glad I bought it, it’s quite the insight into how Craig grew up and became the very funny man he is! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I recommend it highly.

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