Loot and New Jersey

I Black Friday-ed this year, I pray you pardon me. The scene of the crime was the Chatham Bookseller in Madison, New Jersey, a really stellar crammed shop with a $3 paperback fiction shelf that's better than yours. From there I picked up a copy of Richard Russo's BRIDGE OF SIGHS and Iris Murdoch's THE SEA, THE SEA. I almost bit the bullet on a John Updike collection of criticism just because of its amazing cover (holy shorts tan!) but then remembered I was supposed to be buying presents for other people.


There were a lot of Richard Ford books around, which didn't strike me as weird the more I thought about it.

Later we went to a nearby comics store where I didn't buy anything but ogled Arne Bellsdorf's graphic novel BABY'S IN BLACK about the early years of the Beatles, and the giant box containing Chris Ware's BUILDING STORIES. What I hear about Comics These Days is that nobody particularly likes The New 52 and Green Lantern has been unfairly maligned by its terrible 2011 adaptation.

On the train back to New York I read part of Daniel Wolff's THE FIGHT FOR HOME, about rebuilding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I picked this up at the library after reading an op-ed the author wrote about Hurricane Sandy and Asbury Park, and was originally looking for his book about that city, but now there's some common ground (sadly) between them.