Random Thoughts

I’m exhausted after two days of Desertfest, so I thought that another mystery might be the right thing to vegetate with.

And it is indeed. This is another quite amusing and pretty smart mystery. But — it’s not as good as the two preceding books in this series. Those two books were so chock full of ideas and jokes, while this is way more straightforward. There was a six year pause between this and the previous book, so I’m going to go ahead and guess that Stevenson had used up all his plot twists and didn’t quite know how to continue.

Which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the books in this series, but I think I’ll keep reading and see how things go. At least a couple more books, because while not as good, this book was still a very pleasant way to zone out.

Third Man Out (1992) by Richard Stevenson (buy new, buy used, 4.1 on Goodreads)

I don’t really buy a lot of art books — it’s weird. I mean, I’m really into comics, so it would be natural to also be into art books, but I’m not. I usually just get bored after a few dozen pages and flip through the rest of the pages quickly.

But this one is awesome. I guess there’s something almost narrative going on in the pictures, and between the pictures?

It’s just one banger after another.

And it’s funny.

This was published by the Whitney museum in conjunction with a retrospective, and the printing is awesome, too. And the binding! As a physical object, it’s impeccable. Why can’t they print comics this well?

There’s also a whole bunch of essays/interviews included in this hefty book. I found some of them to be a bit… dry, and there were some pieces that were just about how rad New York was in the late 70s. I love that genre, but it feels clichéd when you stack several after one another.

But mostly good text pieces. One by David Wojnarowicz, for instance.

Perhaps I should start looking more at books in the art section of the bookstore…

I’ll Be Your Mirror (1996) by Nan Goldin (buy used, 4.64 on Goodreads)

A month ago I hacked up a package to conveniently list books by authors I like, but have missed:

While testing it, I ended up buying about 20 books, and this is one of them. Hooray for technology!

Hempel is, of course, known for her very short stories, and this book has more than a handful of those. But half the 140 pages of this slim book are taken up by a single story, Cloudland, so that’s unusual.

It’s all very good. I particularly liked the one about the full service shelter. I liked Cloudland just fine, but I didn’t really find it convincing.

Sing to It (2019) by Amy Hempel (buy new, buy used, 3.64 on Goodreads)