Incoming Books: Week of March 1st

A small pile of new stuff this past week, four from a library sale and two from a side trip to Midtown Comics -- my sons & I were in the city to see Fiasco Theater's Measure for Measure at the New Victory, which is highly recommended and only running for two weeks -- which I will dispose of quickly:

The Complete Peanuts 1987-1988 by Charles Schulz -- somehow I got 1989-1990 before this one, and so I haven't been able to read the latter. Oh, sure, twenty-year-old daily strips can be read out of order, but that doesn't mean they should be!

Human Diastrophism, another one of the big fat trade paperbacks reprinting big chunks of the Love & Rockets saga. This one is the second big piece of Gilbert Hernandez's '80s work, and I'm getting ever closer to a big re-read of the entire series -- and actually having it all again for the first time since the flood.

Life by Gwyneth Jones -- I don't think I've ever read Jones, and how often do you find an Aqueduct Press book in a library sale? I couldn't pass it up.

Them by Jon Ronson -- this is his first book, about chasing down people who believe completely insane things, which I'm interested in to begin with. Ronson is also the author of The Psychopath Test, which was quite good. Add that to a fifty-cent trade paperback, and it's full of win.

Empire Falls, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo. I've never read Russo, but now if I ever have a burning desire to do so, I'll have something to turn to.

And Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong. I've been reading Theroux's travel books for probably twenty years now -- though somewhat desultorily, since I haven't gotten through all of them yet -- and I've never tried one of his novels. This felt unfair to Theroux, so now I have one of his books at hand in case the unfairness gets too much for me to bear.