What I’m reading this week

Mailer by Peter Manso. Purchased for $2.65 at the Borders on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. (It’s closing in January, so everything is marked down 20% or more.) I’d devoured this book growing up—it’s an oral biography with a lot of gossip—but hadn’t seen the revised edition, with its incredibly vitriolic afterword by Manso. His disillusionment with the last two decades of Mailer’s career isn’t hard to understand, but his tone of condescension and bitterness toward everyone involved—including Mailer’s wife and kids—makes it difficult to take him seriously. Still, this is a mostly fine book that I’m glad to have in my library again.

The New Cold War by Edward Lucas. Research for my second novel, which I’m scheduled to deliver in September.

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. I recently realized that I could put together a complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips for only $24 by shopping the bargain bin at Better World Books (easily the best online used bookstore around), so I snatched them up right away. This collection, which came out in 1992, probably represents the strip’s creative peak.

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. This is the most useful recent guide I’ve seen on the publishing process, with hundreds of pages devoted to what happens after you sign your book contract. (The only thing missing, as far as I can tell, is a guide to writer’s taxes.) Not to be confused with The Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth, which is the first thing that came up when I searched for it on Amazon. (Although that looks pretty interesting, too.)