I don't know why, precisely, but I have an unhealthy attraction to the works of Charles Bukowski. While his writing style is very compelling, I find that the stories themselves, or the situations described, draw me in.

This book has a very similar effect. I don't know if it is the almost morbid attraction of losing everything, and barely getting by, that is what I find fascinating. Perhaps it is the sometimes liberating idea of not having to worry about work, or bills, or anything of the sort. Wretched though the situation Orwell goes through in this book, it's still very romantic.

This is Terry Pratchett's most recent Discworld book. I enjoyed it more than the last two books, mainly because there was more Death. Death is my favorite character in his books, probably because I'm a sucker for amusingly bewildered people. The absurdity resonates with my own sense of humor. Based on the number of people who laugh at my jokes, (and I know it can't be because I'm not funny) I would have to say that it's not an especially common type of sense of humor. In-jokes and dry wit are one of the great joys of life, and of Discworld books. I've been reading them for years now, and I don't get tired of them.

Anyway, this one is about time, or Time, and a typically slapstick adventure involving monks, an emaciated-looking rodent (another of my favorites), accountants, and a milkman. Recommended, but not as much as the earlier books. Especially the ones with more Death.

This is a collection of letters, from someone writing as "Wanda Tinasky", to a small-town alternative newspaper. Some say that these letters were the work of Thomas Pynchon, basing this on the letter-writer's style, and Pynchon's residence in the area at the time the letters were written, while he was working on Vineland.

This book made me feel like an idiot. I like to think I'm an especially intelligent and well-read person, but whoever this letter writer is, he or she loses me with their references. I actually need the concordances for Pynchon, as I need them for the letters in this book, and not just for the comments about people local to the community.

While reading Pynchon's stories and novels, I was able to delude myself into believing that anyone could have the same level of contextual detail if they were given four to ten years to write a novel. However, the letters to the editor, written after reading an issue of the weekly, were composed and returned in time to be included in the next issue. I don't know what the lead times were, but especially in the pre-Internet-search era, you're not going to catch random and obscure french lit references (for example) unless you have them committed to memory.

You're probably not going to be interested in this unless you're a Pynchon fan, and even then, it might be hit and miss. $22 won't break you, though.

Apparently, someone has built a rather convincing body of evidence that the Tinasky letters were not written by Pynchon, but by Tom Hawkins.

This is a decent book on investing. I bought it because I've been a pretty unsophisticated investor over the past few years, and I figure that I could stand to learn a few things. This book is drawn from the author's experience with a father who earned a decent salary, but could not make it work for him, and an "adopted" father (the father of a childhood friend, actually), who taught him how to change his thinking about money.

The interesting part of this book, and the part that could have been distilled down to thirty pages, is a clarification of what is actually an asset and what is actually a liability. He has a bunch of other stuff in there that is somewhat interesting, but the basic accounting concept is what I found most valuable. Some of his tactics and bits of advice conflict with my personal ethics, but to each his own. Easily worth the $10.

Incredibly well-written book about a revolt at a college campus. My only beef with the book is the same beef I have with almost all "post-modern" books: These people can't finish a book! They seem to cruise along, hit their page allotment, and abruptly invoke deus ex machina or cause the main character to behave completely outside the established parameters from the earlier part of the book.

I still recommend reading this one, though. Pynchon's back-cover comment, "This book comes on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch." sounds excessive, but it's dead on.