CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY
Alan Paton
Phil (Bridges - not Bowles, not Dickey) said he was going to read this book and he asked if I wanted to read it too and I did. It's about South Africa. I mostly don't know anything about South Africa other than that I love Ladysmith Black Mambazo and I saw that Paul Simon documentary. The first couple chapters are a lot like THE GRAPES OF WRATH (which I love): float above a landscape and the desctruction of a landscape; make the economic and the environmental indistinguishable from each other and from the moral and the personal; float across faces and then settle on one. There were a lot of lines that I liked a lot. As a white person reading a book about black people and white people that was written by a white person, there were also a few lines that made me cringe. Everything being written now will probably sound alarmingly patronizing in 60 years, I guess. But this was good; I liked it and I'm gonna look for some of Paton's short stories.

TOO BRUTE! TOO BRUTE!
Dakotah Burns
My friend Dakotah wrote this book. First I knew people on the internet who knew Dakotah's sister on the internet and then I knew Dakotah's sister on the internet and then I knew Dakotah on the internet and then I knew them both in real life and now I know them mostly on the internet again. My friend Daniel drew the cover. First I knew Daniel in real life but now I know him on the internet. I like everything in this book, but as usual I like the shortest poems the best. Dakotah calls his best and shortest poems TENSE MOMENTS:

ANOTHER TENSE MOMENT AT MASS

During the homily a woman
begins to paint a portrait of the Holy Ghost

SAGA VOL. 1
Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples
This is a collection of the first six SAGA comic books and I liked it enough that I might start going out and buying each issue when it comes out every month, which I've never done before. It's just a solid sci-fi story with badass art. It's violent and vulgar, but mostly without being stupid or too actiony for me. All I really want out of sci-fi is a new universe that feels like a real universe, and this one usually does. I have similar things to say about the first book of the new WONDER WOMAN series, which I also liked quite a bit.