What's a noise dude reading?

richard stark - the hunter

Everything I've read from the Parker books has been very entertaining. I'm not usually into the whole hard-boiled style but Luc Sante's blog sold me on this series. It was nice to see them published again with Sante doing the intros.

I actually slightly prefer the Dortmunder books, but I like pretty much everything that Stark/Westlake wrote.

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, keep getting images from the Peter O'Toole film which I wish i didn't would like it more if my mind created its own images.

Also Judge Dredd/Hammerstein.

finished:
osamu dazai - no longer human (very bleak!)
gene wolfe - book of the new sun
georges simenon - maigret and the death of a harbor master

reading:
charles williams - the wrong venus
robert b parker - the widening gyre (still digging these)
donald westlake - get real (the first dortmunder i am reading. i have a few others that i got at thrift stores i haven't checked out yet. but i love the parker & grofield stuff, and some of the other one-off novels of his i have read as well--361 was good, so was Somebody Owes Me Money.

Adam Winkler - Gunfight: The Battle Over The right to Bear Arms in America

I'm about 150 pages from the end of Bolano's 2666

reading now:
the jewel in the skull - michael moorcock (silly pulpy sword & sorcery but i like that stuff sometimes)
the wrong venus - charles williams (dirty-book themed crime caper, love williams.)

just finished:
the hot spot, also by charles williams. for fans of the usual suspects -- willeford, thompson, goodis et al. small town car salesman gets tied up with two women and several criminal activities ensue.

gave up on get real.

i'll get back to it.

Any Simenon recommendations, ian? I picked up a nice Maigret omnibus yesterday and started with Liberty Bar.

i am fairly new to simenon actually, but he is probably my wife's favorite writer after Raymond Chandler. She swears by all the Maigret mysteries. Of the non-Maigret stuff, I thought Dirty Snow was a-mazing.

the jewel in the skull - michael moorcock

could never get into anything outside the sci fi except elric. is that corum or hawkmoon or what?

i'm trying to read "the golden space" but it's pretty hard going (see sci fi thread, recently)

tempted to switch to babel 187 or engine summer

that is some hawkmoon action.
i never read anything outside the elric when i was a kid.

ditched "Vineland" to do 3 barthelmes on the trot.
on 4th & enjoying immensely. he clicks for me, unlike the pynch. an effortless read.
also 1/2way through "the ticket that exploded". not read any burroughs in abt 15yrs & i forgot just how fantastic he gets at the top of his game.

finished 2666. really blew me away unlike Savage Detectives which I thought was pretty overrated. not sure what I'm going to pick up next. someone left a book called "Hopeful Monsters" by Nicholas Moseley in a free pile on the sidewalk and I grabbed it but not sure if I want to read it now.

oh yeah also read Ragtime a while ago, that was good