Left Coast Justin > Recent Status Updates

Somebody with too much time on their hands recently counted up the number of times European cities were mentioned in all the books in Google Books from 1920 - 2020. It's not too surprising that London, Paris and Rome occupied the top three spots. From there, counting down, we have Berlin, Florence, Vienna, Athens, Dublin, Amsterdam and Brussels.

I'm a little surprised about Brussels. Nothing Scandinavian?

Gosh DARN this guy is good!

My favorite book of the year so far? (1/3 of the way in).

Once, she taught an entire class with a smear of tapenade on her forehead. How did it get way up there?She had no idea, and her students didn't tell her. They'd let her keep of the charade of imparting knowledge with a sandwich condiment on her face. Humiliations never seem survivable until you go ahead and survive them.

I wonder what Amazon knows about me that I don't? All of a sudden they keep recommending books to me on the general topic of "Advice for the Dying".

A little sad this morning, having learned about the death of peerless nonfiction writer William Langewiesche a few months ago. He seems to have live the life he wanted, though.

Sorry for all the old reviews popping up -- doing some housekeeping on my bookshelves.

Might be of interest to Bay Area writers:

Tommy Orange will be hosting an Advanced Writing Masterclass at the Mechanics' Institute Library on Oct. 04. Details at

https://milibrary dot org/events/23515

After three pages, I went and checked out a stupid spy novel. I have the feeling I'm going to need it after finishing this one.

I suppose it's no surprise that this is utterly engrossing.

Too busy reading work stuff to read fun stuff 😒

Big ol' sigh....

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/202...

I went to an interesting talk a couple of days ago given by Jon Cho-Polizzi, a half-Korean half-Italion wholly Californian professor at UMich who translated the Turkish-German novel Djinns, among others. The topic of AI inevitably came up, and he made some good points about AI language tending to regress to the mean while most novelists try to write in ways that aren't so standard and familiar.

I went to an interesting talk a couple of days ago given by Jon Cho-Polizzi, a half-Korean half-Italion wholly Californian professor at UMich who translated the Turkish-German novel Djinns, among others. The topic of AI inevitably came up, and he made some good points about AI language tending to regress to the mean while most novelists try to write in ways that aren't...

It's a long book and I don't read very fast in German. I'm going to be disciplined and finish this before starting anything else, so no more reviews from me for a while.

Fans of Tommy Orange, particularly in the SF Area, might be interested in this:

https://www.milibrary.org/events/mast...

The Mechanics Institute Library is hosting a writing workshop led by Mr. Orange on April 26th.

I'm slogging my way through two *long* books, but need to think about what I'm going to read next. I am not a fan of George Orwell's fiction, but picked up a copy of his nonfictional "Road to Wigan Pier" which I read back in college and would like to revisit. Also, cheered on by many GR friends of excellent taste, grabbed a copy of Wally Stegnar's "All the Little Live Things."

I've been doing re-reads -- currently Philipp Dettmer's Immune and Diana Marcum's The Tenth Island -- until I have time to get to the library again.

I will be checking in here for a while longer, but am migrating to Storygraph. Hope you all can join me there! "GR without Amazon" and hopefully without all the bugs.

I'm finding this deeply frustrating at this point....Sometime I feel Wang may be onto something, but for a nonfiction work this is staggeringly inarticulate.

Re: Cormac McCarthy

There's always a sense of vindication when learning an author you can't stand was in fact a total scumbag in real life.

Screw you, Bezos. I'm out.

Is anyone else finding that one of the few useful features on this site -- the 'Compare Books' feature -- rarely works anymore?

Enough of the microaggression, Amazon. If you hate readers, then just disengage and shut this site down.

I visited The Dalles for the first time in my life this weekend, which is the odd name for a grubby town in Oregon, and home to Big Chief Bromden in Ken Kesey's incomparable One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I really need to re-read in adulthood some day.

I think I'm in love. I bought this based on a NY Times review -- spies, set in the ugly parts of France that I used to frequent, infiltrating MAGA types -- and this, and this was the first sentence:

"Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said."

Swoon

I was interested by page 2, and by page 10 I realized I was in the hands of a master storyteller. I don't know why this seems so effortless for some authors and flat-out impossible for others.

Indulging in a thriller binge after yesterday's trip to the library:
-The Red Queen by Juan Gomez-Jurado
-Moscow X by David McClosky
-Duplicity by Ingrid Thoft
And then one 'political family drama' called 'Let's Not Do That Again,' by Grant Ginder.

This book I'm reading (When in French: Love in a Second Language) is much better than I had any right to expect. I've stopped marking highlights because essentially there's something noteworthy on every single page so far. Mrs. Collins can write.

I read and reviewed this a few years ago, but GR ate my review and I really couldn't remember it well enough to review it again. But I remembered I enjoyed it, and am enjoying it again on a second reading.