Book Acquired Recently: Jennifer Pashley’s States

Pashley, Jennifer. States. Lewiston: Lewis-Clark, 2007. Pashley gave a reading of her fiction at Utica College last week, and it was one of those experiences where literature provided exactly the message I needed to hear at the time. I am always amazed and grateful when this happens. The reading was powerful enough that I wasContinue reading “Book Acquired Recently: Jennifer Pashley’s States”

Books Acquired Recently

Davis, James L. Legendary Locals of Greater Utica. Charleston: Arcadia, 2013. I am still relatively new to Utica, and thus continue to seek out books about it to help orient me to the area. I’ve read some of Davis’s work on the city before and appreciated it, thus decided to buy this book. It willContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”

Book Acquired Recently: Rudy Wiebe’s Come Back

Wiebe, Rudy. Come Back. Toronto: Knopf, 2014. Rudy Wiebe has been an important author in my life, and of course he is one of the most influential Mennonite writers ever, so when his new novel came out I was eager to purchase it. It hasn’t been published in the U.S. yet, but I was ableContinue reading “Book Acquired Recently: Rudy Wiebe’s Come Back”

Books Acquired Recently

Blake, William. Blake. Ed. Ruthven Todd. New York: Dell, 1960. Browning, Robert. Browning. Ed. Reed Whittemore. New York: Dell, 1960. Herbert, George. Herbert. Ed. Dudley Fitts. New York: Dell, 1962. Herrick, Robert. Herrick. Ed. William Jay Smith. New York: Dell, 1962. Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson. Ed. John Hollander. New York: Dell, 1961. Keats, John. Keats.Continue reading “Books Acquired Recently”

Book Acquired Recently: Women in Clothes

Heti, Sheila, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Sharpton, eds. Women in Clothes. New York: Blue Rider, 2014. I read a review of this book in BookForum and thought it sounded amazing, so I bought it from one of amazon.com’s independent sellers. It is the results of a survey the editors did of women about clothing. TheContinue reading “Book Acquired Recently: Women in Clothes”

Book Acquired Recently: Motion: American Sports Poems

Blaustein, Noah, ed. Motion: American Sports Poems. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2001. One of my colleagues is teaching a course on sports and literature this semester, and was telling me about this anthology, which is one of the course texts. It sounded interesting enough that I decided to buy a copy from theContinue reading “Book Acquired Recently: Motion: American Sports Poems”

Book Acquired Recently: Adirondack Ghosts II

Macken, Lynda Lee. Adirondack Ghosts II: Haunting Tales of New York’s North Country. Forked River: Black Cat, 2003. This evening the old Utica psychiatric hospital (“Old Main”) was open for tours for the first time in several years, and I went with some friends. I was excited to see inside of the building (which isContinue reading “Book Acquired Recently: Adirondack Ghosts II”

Books Acquired Recently

Bechdel, Alison. Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama. 2012. Boston: Mariner, 2013. I will be teaching Bechdel’s book about her father, Fun Home, in one of my classes this fall, and as preparation for this I acquired Are You My Mother?, which is her book about her mother. If it is even half asContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”

Book Acquired Recently: Mary McCarthy’s The Group

McCarthy, Mary. The Group. Orlando: Harvest, 1989. I just won this book in a raffle at the Utica Public Library. I haven’t read any of McCarthy’s work before, but the raffle ticket was free with my purchase at a local coffeehouse. The novel’s blurb is an enticing one, and apparently it is scandalous enough thatContinue reading “Book Acquired Recently: Mary McCarthy’s The Group”

Magazine Acquired Recently: Baseball Cards, April 1990

My favorite hobby as a boy was collecting baseball cards, and in my infinite nerdiness–present even then–my first-ever magazine subscription was in 1990 to the now-defunct Baseball Cards magazine. I have been unable to ascertain when Baseball Cards stopped publication, though a safe guess is that the major mid-1990s sports card market crash caused itsContinue reading “Magazine Acquired Recently: Baseball Cards, April 1990”