Lots of books lately

I've been reading a ton, but lax about posting.

But I read all the Sandman comics, which were really fun... I read the original ten, then the eleventh, and now I'm slowly making my way through the Death comics (sort of part of the Sandman series--related)--but I'm waiting for them to come in from the library, and I want to read them in order... so there's that.

I read Believers by Charles Baxter, who I continue to love love love... got his selected and new stories from the library too, looking forward to reading those, though I think I've read a lot of them already. The selected and new stories is called Gryphon, which is the title of the first Baxter story I read, in the 1986 Best American Short Stories, edited by Raymond Carver, found randomly on a shelf in my house, and probably one of the most influential volumes of my life--largely because of "Gryphon," probably, though not entirely, by any means. The Table of Contents for the 1986 BASS can be found here. Carver's intro is amazing, too. This includes many excerpts from the intro.

I also read Memory Wall, by Anthony Doerr--I talk about two of his other books here and here. Excited to read more by him.

I also read 8, by Amy Fusselman. I read her novel The Pharmacist's Mate fairly recently as well, too. I don't remember why I put them on hold at the library, how I heard of her. Not really my kind of thing--sort of pomo--but I read them both and was engaged. I don't know!

Finally, I read Rat Girl, by Kristin Hersh, which my sister loaned me ages ago. I've been a fan of Throwing Muses and Hersh's solo work for a long time--fifteen, twenty years? But I wasn't so feeling the need to read this memoir. Partly I just don't like memoirs so much. And there are so many books--a memoir by a musician ends up being low on my priority list (though I did love Patti Smith's memoir about her and Robert Mapplethorpe). But this was a good book. Kristin Hersh becomes friends at college with Betty Hutton (yeah, the Betty Hutton!), which is awesome. I love reading about how she writes songs, how they show up in her head... yeah. I liked this book.

For now, I'm back to the James Tiptree, Jr. stories, and I'm still reading this book about tomatoes, Tomatoland, which is really creepy and amazing. I have a million other books waiting to be read--library and otherwise--updates to follow, I'm sure.