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Quote
"There's a bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things out." - Lou ReedOctober 29, 2013 in Music | Permalink
About Me
Reading
- Knut Hamsun: Under the Autumn Star [BIO]
Listening
- Giant Sand: "Death, Dying & Channel 5" [BIO]
Writing
- Wheatyard
(Kuboa Press) - "Siren"
(CCLaP Weekender) - "The Way Business Is Done"
(CCLaP Journal) - "The Afternoon Party"
(Goreyesque) - "Singing for the Here and Now"
(Anthology of Chicago) - "Remember, Never Forget"
(Skive Magazine) - "Prague, Oklahoma"
(Daddy Cool: An Anthology of Writing by Fathers For & About Kids) - "Pursuit"
(Skive) - "Mahalia"
(Midwestern Gothic) - "Tangled in Wishes"
(Journal of Microliterature) - "The Last Final Copy"
(On the Clock: Contemporary Short Stories of Work) - "Conned and Bruised"
(A Twist of Noir) - "One Son Resists"
(Green Lantern Press) - "Clean and Bright"
(Joyland) - "Button"
(Shoots and Vines) - "Alleys Are the Footnotes of the Avenues"
(Shoots and Vines) - "Moonlight"
(decomP) - "Quit These Hills"
(Big Pulp) - "Mercy Day"
(RAGAD) - "Deep in the Northwoods"
(Wheelhouse Magazine) - "Howard Holds Court"
(Birmingham Arts Journal) - "Waiting On a Train"
(RAGAD) - "Power"
(The Clarity of Night) - "Guaranteed"
(Spillway Review) - "Big Question"
(Boston Literary Magazine) - "This Time"
(55 Words) - "Immortality"
(THE2NDHAND) - "Freewheeling"
(Dogmatika) - "The Fixer"
(Gapers Block) - "Ralph's Last Call"
(The Angler) - "Can't Be Happy Today, But Tomorrow"
(Skive Magazine) - "Mighty Casey"
(Zisk) - "Ectoplasm"
(Storyglossia) - "Captions Without Photos"
(Gapers Block) - "Blown"
(Writer's Resource Center) - "Have A Pleasant Commute On Metra"
(This is Grand) - "The Retreat"
(monochrom) - Published Here:
"The Copper Responds"
"One Evening in St. Paul"
"The Lovely Miss Underwood"
"Insomnis"
"We Do Not Approve"
"The Ghoul's Evening Visit"
Various Microfiction
More Me
- Photo Gallery
- Old Home Page
- Email Me: pete_anderson [at] comcast [dot] net
My Women
Friendly Links
- Brown Bear Software
- Beth Janicek
- Gapers Block
- Bookslut
- Maud Newton
- Books for Breakfast
- Ben Tanzer
- Nick Ostdick
- Richard Grayson
- Shaz Rasul
- bighappyfunhouse.com
- Fading Ad Campaign
Distant Worthies
- Last Plane to Jakarta
- Ben Katchor
- The Onion
- Salon.com
- Center for American Progress
- MoveOn
- Utne
- The Nation
- AlterNet
- TomPaine.com
- NewPages
- Tom Tomorrow - This Modern World
- Ted Rall - Political Cartoon
Archives by Category
- Books
- Chicago Observations
- Current Affairs
- Fiction (my writings)
- Memoir
- Music
- Personal
- Photography
- Zines
Archives by Month
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
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Recent Reads
Mencken covers the Scopes Monkey Trial, eviscerates the fundamentalist prosecutors.
Wonderful story, impeccably told, richly written. Brilliant.
Mild, disappointing novel that should have been more about its ostensible subject.
Portrait of an opera diva that would have been more interesting if she had never left home.
Fine novella of early Nebraska settlers.
Tedious, digressive, oppressively ornate.
Richly drawn, passionate, lively and witty tales of everyday lives, with love, lust, faith, ambition and tragedy on vivid display.
The smarmy slang quickly wears out.
Flashes of greatness, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Lively stories, vivid settings, hapless characters that you can't help rooting for.
Desolation from a flood, and characters who were already desolate to begin with.
A family somehow finds a way to survive unspeakable loss.
Another excellent novel from the strange Czech master. Comic, tragic, wryly funny, thrilling and grim.
Conclusive evidence that Melville should have stayed with fiction.
Erratic story collection. Some greats, some duds.
Lovely account of a vanishing (and now vanished) culture.
Not fiction at all, just long-winded philosophy.
Thrilling story of seafaring and hidden identity.
Dragged on a bit, but a good finale for the series.
Thrilling, exhausting, exasperating. A truly thorny classic.
Promising, but unevenly written and ultimately dissatisfying.
Novelization of the great film which, sadly, adds very little to the original.
Passionate, angry, courageous and eloquent firsthand account of American racism.
Vivid, all-too-real story of an aimless, drifting young man who refuses to change.
A spare but passionate tale of faith, anti-faith and doubt.
Sorrowful to bittersweet to laugh-out-loud funny. A wonderful introduction.
Youthful tragedy and the struggle to move beyond.
Promising premise, but unfocused and frustrating.
Memorable blues novel with much to say about authenticity and identity.
Strong collection of stories from throughout Maxwell's long career.
Good literary thriller, though it dragged more than a thriller should.
Quietly powerful story of a man coming to grips with tragedy, his dissolved marriage and life's disappointments.
Short, punchy, erudite and witty essays from one of the world's great curmudgeons.
A witty and rollicking story of eight old men looking for meaning.
Not bad, but not good either.
Angry, passionate and fearless account of the poor people of the East End of London.
A quiet, rich portrait of a man's lonely but oddly satisfying life.
The epic "To Build a Fire" and other great Alaskan adventure stories by the master.
Lovely, gentle and quiet novel of remembrance.
The trials, tribulations and difficult customers of a Chicago cab driver.
Riveting, brutal, at once ugly and beautiful.
Courageous novel about a woman's liberation, written and published decades before its time.
Mesmerizing, intoxicating, disturbing. A truly great book.
A fragile relationship shatters, on the wedding night.
Seven men, one night, too much drinking, too much (in a good way) unburdening.
Great premise, not so great execution.
Simple, earthy and often funny novella of proletarian Swedish life.
Charming little novel of early 20th Century Iceland, a young man and a national hero who is not quite what he seems.
Quiet, delicate and lovely novel of a good man's dying days.
Anderson's first novel only hints at the greater things to come.
Controlling society, youthful rebellion. Familiar yet fresh.
Landmark narrative of Irish-American life. Epic at times, deeply flawed at others.
Joyous, maddening, gorgeous and ugly, just like the band itself. A triumph.
Lively, exciting story that mixes Cold War intrigue, magic realism and young romance.
Eloquent, elegant, compassionate, gritty and genuine.
Uneven collection of essays from later in Algren's career.
One strong novella of an unlikely romance, one weaker novella about a lost teenager.
Excellent collection of essays on fatherhood. Funny and poignant.
One guy juggles relationships with two women, which rarely turns out well.
Promising story premise undermined by underdrawn characters and underplayed conflict.
Lonely residents of a London boarding house find themselves lost without the man who brought them together.
Brilliant, revolutionary and real. An uplifting, triumphant story of a woman's difficult journey to self-fulfillment.
Uneven collection of essays, marred by vagueness and generality.
Angry, fiery, passionate memoir of Wright's childhood and teenage years in the repressive South.
Dark, cynical and tragic novel of a dubious heavyweight contender.
Charming, delightful, marvelous evocation of a vanished place and time.
Psychological portrait of an obsessive young man.
Great storytelling about a dying future world and how it got that way. Clean and simple, yet deceptively deep.
Another marvelous book from Haruf, full of his usual warmth, compassion, atmosphere and sudden, riveting action.
Stark, gripping, eloquent, touching poems of Ireland, past and present.
Passionate ideas, imaginative phrasing, vivid imagery.
Brilliant portrait of a priest balancing between the pious and secular worlds.
Familiar voice, familiar obsessions, unfamiliar sci-fi setting. And it all works.
Marvelous tale of cruelty, greed, independence, tradition and family ties.
Too much text, too few photographs.
Boldly audacious, brilliantly vivid depiction of Hell.
Sluggish, wordy, repetitive, endless buildup without much payoff at the end.
Fun collection of some very awful poetry, by poets both renowned and obscure.
Despite its shortcomings, one of the great classics of Western literature.
Enjoyable story collection which could have used more grit.
Microfiction pieces that intrigue but don't quite fully connect.
Fascinating early stories from the Norwegian master.
Joliet stories that hit you in the gut, and the heart.
Solid, fun, often touching collection of stories about hair metal songs.
Good but not classic novel burdened by overwritten and digressive prose.
Priviliged but unhappy people take personal honor to its extreme.
Subtle but affecting portrait of a marriage, war and human compassion.
Early collection of poems from the Irish master.
Bleak and quietly profound.
Loathsome protagonist, meandering narrative, overwritten prose. Mediocre.
Lovely, quiet yet powerful collection of stories about people who are lonely but often not alone.
Funny, angry, incisive stories and essays about war, peace and humanity.
Mediocre collection of overly clever stories.
Haunting novel of grief, longing and reaching across time.
Disappointing retelling of the classic Ulysses and Penelope myth.
Entertaining, lively collection of traditional poetry.
Funny collection of monologues and stories.
Tense, biting story of family and retribution.
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Member since 07/2003
Member since 07/2003