Pete Lit: (Holiday) Photo of the Day

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(Holiday) Photo of the Day

If you're into photoblogs, No Commercial Potential is one of the best I've come across. Phineas X. Jones (a frequent Gapers Block contributor) has real talent. Check his stuff out.

December 22, 2004 in Photography | Permalink

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Recent Reads

Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Good but less than essential novel of African tribal life, tradition versus modernity.

Alan Sillitoe: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Entertaining comic novel of youthful irresponsibility.

Patrick Hamilton: Hangover Square
Disturbing portrait of alienation, obsession and mental illness.

Ian McEwan: Amsterdam
Two men strive to make their mark and when thwarted then seek revenge, but a third gets the biggest revenge of all.

Tarjei Vesaas: The Birds
Relentlessly sad novel of helplessness and not belonging.

Pär Lagerkvist: Barabbas
Beautiful and quietly powerful story of an unrequited longing for faith.

Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
Brilliant, angry, timeless satire of the entire human race.

John McGahern: Amongst Women
Strong novel about what happens to revolutionists after the revolution is won.

William Trevor: Fools of Fortune
Lovely novel of revolution, revenge and self-imposed exile.

Gabe Durham: The Complete Genealogy of Everyone, Ever
Whimsical and very funny collection of stories about well-meaning losers.

Eric Bogosian: Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead
Outrageous, obscene, bitter, provocative - and laugh-out-loud funny.

Arthur Koestler: Darkness At Noon
A powerful, thoughtful and ultimately tragic discourse on revolutionary politics.

Kent Haruf: Eventide
Another lovely novel of the fictional small town of Holt, Colorado.

Matt Bell: The Collectors
Inventive and sadly beautiful fictionalization of the tragic Collyer brothers.

Tim Hall: Full Of It: The Birth, Death, and Life of an Underground Newspaper
Lively and funny novel of a New York rag sheet and the misfits who created it.

Nelson Algren: Chicago: City on the Make
Algren's classic, bitter love song to his city.

Nelson Algren: The Last Carousel
Fine collection of memoirs and stories from late in Algren's career.

Michael T. Fournier: The Minutemen: Double Nickels On the Dime
Thoughtful and passionate discussion of the Minutemen's great album.

Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Powerful but bitter and bleak story collection that I will not be reading again.

Aleksandar Hemon: Love and Obstacles
Strong story collection from one of my favorite writers.

Jack Conroy: The Disinherited
Fine account of working-class Midwest life in the treacherous 1920s and 30s - but more of a documentary than a novel.

William E. Leuchtenburg: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940
Very fine and highly informative study of FDR, the New Deal and the Great Depression.

Edmund Wilson: The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump
Very fine collection of essays from 1930-31 on the early days of the Great Depression.

Mark Costello: The Murphy Stories
Devastating portrait of a man and his family, marriage and unfaithfulness.

John Cook: Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records
Excellent history of the indie rock label.

Matthew Sharpe: The Sleeping Father
Well-intentioned but less than successful novel of family dysfunction.

William Walsh: Questionstruck
Unique compilation - just the questions from Calvin Trillin's books. Oddly compelling.

Eric Schlosser: Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
Interesting studies of three underground economies, albeit more of a compilation than a unified book.

Greg Kot: Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music
Brisk, informative and entertaining account of how musicians and fans are taking back control of music.

Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Overlong and unsympathetic portrait of an unhappy woman and those around her.

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The great American tale of epic quest. Funny and still relevant.

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Comic but ultimately sad tale of a controlling, conforming society.

George Orwell: 1984
Brilliant, compelling, sobering. Orwell’s masterpiece is every bit as relevant today as the day it was written.

Henry David Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the Woods
Truly great narrative on simplicity, self-sufficiency and communing with nature.

Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Wonderful narrative of a year spent farming one's own food, eating locally and saving the planet.

Muriel Miller Branch: The Water Brought Us: The Story of the Gullah-Speaking People
Informative account of the Gullah culture of the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia.

Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own
Compelling discourse on the critical need for freedom and privacy for women fiction writers.

Ander Monson: Neck Deep and Other Predicaments
Inventive essays on the writer's intriguing past and mundane commonalities of his everyday life.

C.S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Lewis recounts his battle with grief and loss, somehow emerging with hope.

Michael Harrington: The Other America: Poverty in the Untied States
Passionate 1962 study on the state of poverty in the richest country in the world.

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend
Purported classic with a fascinating premise which doesn't quite deliver.

Patrick McCabe: Winterwood
Promising but ultimately disjointed and disappointing story of love, kin, home and myth.

William Trevor: Death in Summer
Lovely, understated novel of loneliness and a quest for belonging.

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
Charming collection of Old World tales, of life and piety and death.

Budd Schulberg: What Makes Sammy Run?
Devastating portrait of ambition and success in 1930s Hollywood.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House on the Prairie
Classic account of 19th Century pioneer life.

Charles Simmons: Wrinkles
Innovative and fascinating telling of an otherwise ordinary story.

Pär Lagerkvist: The Dwarf
Powerful and furious novel of war, religion and humanity.

Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts
Odd, bitter, angry - might be a classic, but I'm not quite sure.

Stona Fitch: Give + Take
Offbeat caper novel of crime and philanthropy.

Erich Origen and Gan Golan: Goodnight Bush
Quietly brutal satirical sendoff to the worst President in U.S. history.

Nick Hornby: A Long Way Down
Four strangers consider suicide but together somehow find reason to go on.

READINGS 2001-10

Pete Lit

Literary pretendings, off-the-cuff insights and the occasional rant.

(Holiday) Photo of the Day

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