{"id":46,"date":"2008-07-31T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T16:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2008-07-31T16:46:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T16:46:00","slug":"summer-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/summer-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/uploaded_images\/325342-707793.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/uploaded_images\/325342-707790.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>Just back from a few days in Derbyshire and the summer storms have begun in earnest. Not found time to write here recently, though I have been making random comments <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/canfan\">here<\/a>. Most of my &#8216;followers&#8217; seem to be self publicists, so I&#8217;d welcome some people I actually know&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>While in Winster, I demolished one entire fat novel, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steve_Tesich\">Steve Tesich<\/a>&#8216;s  &#8216;Karoo&#8217;, a comic masterpiece about a self destructive script doctor, as recommended by Frank Cottrell Boyce. I also read the first third of Philip Davis&#8217;s fine <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oup.com\/uk\/catalogue\/?ci=9780199270095\">biography<\/a> of one of my favourite writers, Bernard Malamud, an absorbing, superbly researched study, particularly good on the drafting process. I continued my trawl through selected comic works of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brian_Michael_Bendis\">Brian Michael Bendis<\/a> by reading the first half of his &#8216;Alias&#8217; series, which is pretty good, but not up there with his amazing &#8216;Daredevil&#8217; sequence, which got me reading about superheroes for the first time in about twenty years (not that I&#8217;ve stopped watching superhero movies &#8211; I&#8217;ll be off to see &#8216;Dark Knight&#8217; asap now that I&#8217;m back.) I&#8217;ve also started reading a novel that I picked up off a bookshelf in our borrowed cottage (I&#8217;ll give it back, honest), John Wain&#8217;s &#8216;Hurry On Down&#8217;, one of those seminal fifties novels that I&#8217;ve often heard about but never actually read. It looks like fun and is, of course, out of print. Above is the nicest cover I could find online, the first edition rather than the Penguin I&#8217;m reading (yours for a mere \u00a3168 <a href=\"http:\/\/images.google.co.uk\/imgres?imgurl=http:\/\/www.sotherans.co.uk\/Books\/stockimg\/sized\/325342t.jpg&amp;imgrefurl=http:\/\/www.sotherans.co.uk\/Books\/Modern.php&amp;h=100&amp;w=68&amp;sz=3&amp;hl=en&amp;start=4&amp;sig2=KaGYw2CWmpPl3IEOi6LF7A&amp;tbnid=6dmUIZ8ejAhv7M:&amp;tbnh=82&amp;tbnw=56&amp;ei=heGRSMmADZ2W0gTa6_GsBg&amp;prev=\/images%3Fq%3Dhurry%2Bon%2Bdown%2Bwain%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG\">here<\/a>, bibliophiles). After this, I plan to move onto the second of David Peace&#8217;s West Riding quartet, soon, I hear, to be a TV series. And next week I might just do some more writing of my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just back from a few days in Derbyshire and the summer storms have begun in earnest. Not found time to write here recently, though I have been making random comments here. Most of my &#8216;followers&#8217; seem to be self publicists, so I&#8217;d welcome some people I actually know&#8230; While in Winster, I demolished one entire fat novel, Steve Tesich&#8216;s &#8216;Karoo&#8217;, a comic masterpiece about a self destructive script doctor, as recommended by Frank Cottrell Boyce. I also read the first third of Philip Davis&#8217;s fine biography of one of my favourite writers, Bernard Malamud, an absorbing, superbly researched study, particularly good on the drafting process. I continued my trawl through selected comic works of Brian Michael Bendis by reading the first half of his &#8216;Alias&#8217;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}