Summer of '49 - David Halberstam

In a time when there is no baseball to be had, its nice to go back to a time (long before I was born) when the game, and life, perhaps seemed simpler. The cast of characters from the 1949 Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees jump off the page. Unfortunately, even after so many years, the Red Sox still lose. It is clear that Halberstam favors the Yankees. A fun and quick read to prepare for (a baseball-less?) summer.

Saint Mudd - Steve Thayer

An old-fashioned novel of gangsters, newspapermen, whores, cops, and children. The story takes place in St. Paul, Minnesota during the Great Depression as prohibition is coming to an end. The city is overrun with lawlessness and crooked police. Part mystery, it is also a remembrance of the city's by-gone time. The details pop and invoke the streets, the hills, and the river.

Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake

A strange and difficult to categorize, sometimes fantastic work of a world unlike our own. Titus Groan takes places in the land of Gormenghast, a land that Peake has conjured whole-cloth. It feels at once alien and familiar. The work is populated with characters simultaneously medieval and modern. It reads like a fable and study of palace intrigue. Accessible on the first reading, I anticipate revisiting Flay and Rottcodd, Swelter and Lord Sepulchrave.