Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored by John Lydon

Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell

Critics and Connoisseurs
Marianne Moore

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious
    fastidiousness.  Certain Ming
        products, imperial floor coverings of coach-
    wheel yellow, are well enough in their way but I have seen something
            that I like better--a
                mere childish attempt to make an imperfectly bal-
                        lasted animal stand up,
                similar determination to make a pup
                    eat his meat from the plate.

I remember a swan under the willows of Oxford,
    with flamingo-colored, maple-
        leaflike feet.  It reconnoitered like a battle-
    ship.  Disbelief and conscious fastidiousness were
            ingredients in its
                disinclination to move.  Finally its hardihood was
                        not proof against its
                proclivity to more fully appreciate such bits
                    of food as the stream

bore counter to it; it made away with what I gave it
    to eat.  I have seen this swan and
        I have seen you; I have seen ambition without
    understanding it in a variety of forms.  Happening to stand
            by an ant-hill, I have
                seen a fastidious ant carrying a stick north, south,
                        east, west, till it turned on
                itself, struck out from the flower bed into the lawn,
                    and returned to the point

From which it had started.  Then abandoning the stick as
    useless and overtaxing its
        jaws with a particle of whitewash--pill-like but
    heavy--it again went throught the same course of procedure.
                        What is
            there in being able
                to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude of
                        self-defense;
                in proving that one has had the experience
                    of carrying a stick?

1924

Stalin's Curse by Robert Gellately

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

A quiet, slow-gathering story of a recently-widowed woman, Nora Webster, and how she gradually surfaces back into life after her husband's death.

Mason's Retreat by Christopher Tilghman

Excellent novel, set on Maryland's Eastern Shore, during the run-up to WWII.  Brought to mind "Howard's End" by E.M. Forster.

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

great sprawling book about a woman, her husband who is stricken with Alzheimers, and their son.  tremendously moving.  just what you think you know everything, you realize you know nothing, and that is a book about living.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

Addictive for the lengthy commute. So far I've listened to:

Countdown to Armageddon (5 parts, WWI)

Radical Thoughts (on the evolution of the idea of a "Red Menace" in America)

Thor's Angels (4-hourson European tribes after the fall of the Roman empire in 472 and in the ensuing 1000 years, what used to be known as "The Dark Ages")

Logical Insanity (a history of aerial bombing between 1895 and Hiroshima)

Wrath of the Khans I & II (long series on Genghis Khan)

Brothers Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On you? by George Clinton

Great, couldn't put it down, drives me back to the gaps in my pfunk musical library.

A Moveable Famine by John Skoyles

Ironweed by William Kennedy

Legs by Williams Kennedy

If I don't Breathe How Do I Sleep, poems by Joe Wenderoth

The Fun Parts: Stories by Sam Lipsyte

The Life of John Berryman by John Haffenden

 Advantages to working at Johns Hopkins so far: access to an extraordinary library, ability to find all of Bill Knott's scattered books of poetry.  Amazing poet, a model for me of self-creation.

Revolver: Poems by Robyn Schiff

 Too many words, not enough punctuation.

The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai

While reading it, kept forgetting what it was about as the unknown-to-me proper names continue to pile up.

One More thing: Stories and Other Stories by BJ Novak

Wanted to hate it.  Liked it. Like heavy Steve Martin, or lite Donald Barthelme.

March 2026 - Re-reading it. Still like it, and after now becoming an Office super-fan.

It's a little long - not in pages but in number of stories included, some of which are only a paragraph or two, or a couple lines. The shorter ones just seem like polished jokes in prose form. Some of the longer stories are quite interesting, although the final one, about the poet who becomes a translator and finally just rewrites THE GREAT GATSBY, seems to have been a better concept than story.

Still, I've recommended it to several peopl.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

Something to do while waiting for the next Wolf Hall installment.  Something to do, but not much.

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by William Kennedy

Re-reading after 30 plus years.  Even better.  "Screwing your own wife is like striking out the pitcher."