What Are You Reading in May?

What is on your reading list this month?

Do your reading habits change with the seasons, or are you always equal opportunity?

I’ve kind of been all over the place this month, reading wise, which is pretty typical of me.

Since 1st May, I’ve finished:

  • M Train by Patti Smith
  • Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction by Cathy Whitlock
  • The Ice Cream Blonde: The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd by Michelle Morgan
  • Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered by Dianne Hales

I’m in the midst of reading:

  • Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis
  • Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style by Cintra Wilson

To be finished by 31st May:

  • Art on the Block: Tracking the New York Art World from SoHo to the Bowery, Bushwick and Beyond by Ann Fensterstock
  • I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist by Betty Halbreich with Rebecca Paley
  • Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters Edited by Bill Morgan and David Stanford

What is your favourite book this month?

Which book on your list do you most look forward to reading?

Please share with me in the comments.

Happy reading!

[Alternative Muses] Birthday Mashup: Randall Jarrell/Orson Welles

“A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”-Randall Jarrell (born 6 May 1914)

Orson Welles, press interview following the WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast, October 31, 1938

Orson Welles (born 6 May 1915), giving a press interview following the WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast, October 31, 1938.

A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books Summer Preview 2016

If I’m not reading, I’m adding books to my to-be-read list. That list is monstrously long–maybe not a mile, but getting there!

Here are some of my newest additions, courtesy of the Spring Preview 2016 Catalog from Daedalus Books.

  1. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson (#60392). $4.98.
  2. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature by Ben Tarnoff (#60993). $5.98.
  3. The Calvin Handbook Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis (#60437). $6.98.
  4. Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer Contributions by Frank H. Goodyear, Elizabeth O. Wiley & Jobyl A. Boone (#41026). $6.98.
  5. Charles Dickens’ Favorite Daughter: The Life, Loves, and Art of Katey Dickens Perugini by Lucinda Hawksley (#51293). $5.98.
  6. All the Poems by Stevie Smith (#69176). $27.95.
  7. The Roosevelts: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (#60819). #12.98.
  8. The True Benjamin Franklin: An Illuminating Look Into the Life of One of Our Greatest Founding Fathers by Sydney George Fisher (#54011). $4.98.
  9. The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford by Wendell Berry (#53435). $3.98.
  10. Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper (#54592). $4.98.
  11. Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion by Anne Somerset (#54294). $6.98.
  12. The Dragon Throne: China’s Emperors from the Qin to the Manchu by Jonathan Fenby (#61060). $5.98.
  13. The 1900s: Britain in Pictures Edited by Paul Richardson (#54183). $5.98.
  14. The 1910s: Britain in Pictures Edited by Paul Richardson (#54184). $5.98.