<< So are you now in Portland, OR or Portland, ME?
(Curious minds want to
know) >>
Oregon. To keep to theme, I'll review some book purchases,
and noir
atmosphere. It doesn't seem too hard-boiled here, but there's
lots of fog and
grey skies. Much different from the other urban, more
crime-ridden places
that I've been. I've come from Washington, DC--Pelacanos
territory--and have
also lived in NYC and San Francisco (my transience keeps my
car insurance
high). The hardest place, though, was... (envelope please)
New Haven, CT.
Someone should set a crime novel there. The week I arrived
one of the high
level New England wise guys was found in the river with lead
in the back of
his head; I personally knew people who were shot at, pistol
whipped, knifed,
and worse. One friend was robbed at knife point at the back
entrance of a
funeral home while a wake was going on.
Portland has better bookstores than all those other places
combined (though SF
Bay Area not counted in the combination). I fell behind on
the summer's
posting when New York stores were discussed. I say for
bookstores, skip the
city and drive up into the Berkshires where there are many
many good used
rural bookstores and barns. I find that big expensive cities
have trouble
supporting used bookstores (a thin margin business
generally). I think NY's
famed Strand is overrated--and also picked over; timing is
everything there.
Just doing a little casual looking, here's what I've bought
in Portland (all
used): Derek Raymond: Devil's Home on Leave, How the Dead
Live, I was Dora
Suarez (How many Factory books are there?--I read He Died
with Eyes Open
about a year ago--blurb from Willeford's Miami Herald
review); two original
Black Lizard reprints: Roger Simon: Dead Meet (originally
called Heir) (anyone
know this book?) and Hallas (aka Knight): You Play the Black
and the Red Comes
Up; Dan Kavanagh: Fiddle City (on MT's and others'
recommendation); Geoffrey
Household: Rogue Justice (a sequel to Rogue Male that I had
never heard of);
and Paco Ignacio Taibo II: An Easy Thing. Is this last book
recommended. Was
there early discussion of Ignacio Taibo? (Oh, and also
yesterday I found
Jonathan Latimer's Red Gardenias).
In addition to the famous Powell's Books (with several area
locations), there
is a new/used store called Murder by the Book--good
selection, knowledgable
staff.
I'll report on the Raymond for this month's reading. Maybe I
missed a
discussion of him at the start of the month?
Uh, sorry--long winded again. Best, Doug
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.