yet another massive haul [here's how it all started ... again]


* movies/cult: Joe Bob goes to the drive-in is the first of a few entertaining books by drive-in pulp afficionado Joe Bob Briggs (yegads! he was in Face/Off !!). I've relished Profoundly Disturbing: The Shocking Movies that changed history, and so this book should be an entertaining read

* Mamet: This time it's A collection of dramatic sketches and monologues

* Harlan Ellison: It's the famous Mefisto in Onyx and Approaching oblivion : road signs on the treadmill toward tomorrow : eleven uncollected stories

* Potty Pulp: The selection for the week is Michael Crichton's The terminal man

* I-should-be-reading-this-except-I-never-knew-about-it: Men of tomorrow : geeks, gangsters and the birth of the comic book [thanks Hirak]

* Pet grouses: Public Transportation in the US: The city in mind : meditations on the urban condition, another book from James Howard Kunstler (the author of the splendidly titled The Geography of Nowhere) featuring a chapter dedicated to my sprawlopolis Atlanta

* Language: The power of Babel : a natural history of language by John McWhorter (featuring an example in Hindi involving a person called Apu that provides yet another variation in placing parts of speech)

* Good old Philip K Dick: Galactic pot-healer

* old nuggets: The Ipcress File by Len Deighton: having already enjoyed the droll film, it seemed a shame that the first edition in the unnamed-government-spy series was not part of my personal cache of Deightons-from-the-raddii-kii-dukaan