Currently reading
Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
Collected Stories of William Faulkner
The Glass Key
The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)
Accent on Form: An Anticipation of the Science of Tomorrow
The Expert versus the Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts
War and Peace
The Position of Things: Collected Poems 1961-1992
The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (Mandarin Chinese and English Edition)
Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers
The Postman Always Rings Twice / Double Indemnity / Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories
after dashiell hammett elevated the nickel pulp to classical status (knopf published his works just as they were serialized), in comes cain. where hammett's books are written from the p.o.v. of law & order, cain usually takes the opposite vantage: the sociopath, or one finding his or herself at odds. i haven't read all the stories in this edition and look forward to them. serenade is also well worth a read, lurid as it might get. his book the butterfly was his biggest seller, 'tho: it's about incest (more prevalent in america than one might otherwise suspect).cain's hard-boiled prose (honed from apprenticing as a journalist) has great pace, momentum, and drive ('tho mildred pierce isn't a thriller. his dialogue is incredible, often running a full page without he-saids, and she-countered, and always moves the story in new directions.(from here raymond chandler takes over, with a protagonist who's been on both sides of the law, in novels whose prose is hot as a hound in a boxcar barrelling past a full harvest moon)
